GP2X Nes Sequencer, Difficult?

[Silberstein]

I'm not an all that experienced programmer, but I propably not all that bad either. And I'm quick to learn. Right now I'm about 75% through learning java, but after that I though I would give C++ a go. (I am familliar to the language as I did some small suff a few years ago, but never really got in to it.) A friend of mine would LOVE to see a NES sequencer for the gpx2, and it seems like an interesting project. So I though could ask you some question about this. First of all, how hard do you think it would be?

To write the it from scratch would of cource be very difficult, but maby there is some nice librerys out there one could use? If not, maby code could be ported? I'm NOT asking for code examples or for someone to walk me through this. I would just be very greatful for some general advice thats all. Since I have almost no experince of C++, you could save me a lot hassle just by pointing me in the right direction.

Thanks a lot.

/David

 

[tekt5]

sorry, this may be irrelevent, but what is an nes sequencer (out of curiosity)

 

[Silberstein]

Well basically it would be a simple MIDI-interpreter capable of emulating the NES sound chip. In other words, a program that can play Nintendo Midi music. And that would be the hard part. The next step is to impement som kind of GUI for composing your own tunes.

 

[Ravnos]

Well basically it would be a simple MIDI-interpreter capable of emulating the NES sound chip. In other words, a program that can play Nintendo Midi music. And that would be the hard part. The next step is to impement som kind of GUI for composing your own tunes.

​

For just playing NES tunes, there are already plenty of apps out there. Nosefart is the first one that comes to mind, but if you google for "nsf player" you can probably find plenty. The hard part would probably be the composition.

 

[Silberstein]

Well basically it would be a simple MIDI-interpreter capable of emulating the NES sound chip. In other words, a program that can play Nintendo Midi music. And that would be the hard part. The next step is to impement som kind of GUI for composing your own tunes.

​

For just playing NES tunes, there are already plenty of apps out there. Nosefart is the first one that comes to mind, but if you google for "nsf player" you can probably find plenty. The hard part would probably be the composition.

​

Sounds good. I think I bumped into Nosefart googling around a few days ago. Actually I have a copy lying on my desktop. Then porting (for instace) Nosefart would be a good start?

 

[aapje89]

Well basically it would be a simple MIDI-interpreter capable of emulating the NES sound chip. In other words, a program that can play Nintendo Midi music. And that would be the hard part. The next step is to impement som kind of GUI for composing your own tunes.

​

For just playing NES tunes, there are already plenty of apps out there. Nosefart is the first one that comes to mind, but if you google for "nsf player" you can probably find plenty. The hard part would probably be the composition.

​

Sounds good. I think I bumped into Nosefart googling around a few days ago. Actually I have a copy lying on my desktop. Then porting (for instace) Nosefart would be a good start?

​

I guess so...

 

[Silberstein]

Seems like it is written in C. I appolgize for my ignorence, but is there a C compiler available for the gpx2? :unsure: If so, would it be a bitch to port you think?

 

[Ravnos]

Seems like it is written in C. I appolgize for my ignorence, but is there a C compiler available for the gpx2? :unsure: If so, would it be a bitch to port you think?

​

GCC + the appropriate libraries should let you cross-compile for the GP2X. I haven't tried it yet myself (as I don't have my GP2X yet) but that's most people will be using.

 

[Silberstein]

That's great! So it should be able to compile and run even without a lot of rewriting of the source? Or is that a matter of which libraries it depends on?

 

[mic]

In other words, a program that can play Nintendo Midi music.

NES music is not "MIDI". It's just data in any arbitrary format that happens to be accepted by the sound driver used by that game/demo. So what an NSF file actually contains (besides the header) is this data and the sound driver (6502) code.

 

[Silberstein]

And I am fully aware of that. It COULD be midi though, and the principle of midi of fully applicable on the NSF concept. It is instructions for a sequencer. Since midi is a more common I just though that description would make more sense, though maby not completely accurate. Actually, my first thought was to manage the Nintendo music in midi-format, though I have now abandoned that thought in favour of NSF. For quite obvious reasons.

 

[Jarska333]

I'd recommend NSFE. NSF's with timing, tags and all that.

http://slick.panicus.org/notsofatso.php

A winamp plugin with sources, I'm pretty sure the specifications are there, also. Maybe usefull, maybe not.
http://slick.panicus.org/docs.php?id=NSF

A very good plugin, btw.

 

[Silberstein]

Thanks for the info. I will dig into it right away!

 

[Silberstein]

Hmm, which format I will choose will probelby depents much which of the two sequencers that could be ported most easily. Both are good in their own way I guess. A pure nes sequencer/composing tool would actually not need the features of NSFE. But as the format seems to be a bit more flexible it could be good if I would like to extend functionality later on.

 

[Silberstein]

By the way, I've tried to figure out how to create NFS-songs of you own. (Say I would like to write a tune of my own, not ripping it from a nes-rom). Is instructuins to the sound chip in a 6502 assembler the only way to go? If so, well.. I guess I will have to learn the assembler as well. Actually that could be alot of fun, I would love to know more about low level programming, and this seems to be a very good oppertunerty to do so.