Author Topic: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?  (Read 19466 times)

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Offline Radical Pi

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Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« on: March 13, 2010, 08:08:22 pm »
Several years ago, Omnicalc was released, which to my knowledge was the first time that music in calc games seemed feasible. But the sound that Omnicalc could produce wasn't particularly amazing or high quality (although compared to whatever competition it may or may not have had [I don't know], it must have been great), and as far as I know no one ever really used the sound capabilities of Omnicalc for anything more than a gimmick.

Skip ahead to whatever year RealSound came out. This app proved that the 83+ was capable of high-quality sound, but again, the music revolution that I had been expecting didn't happen.

My question is, why? Does no one think it would be worth it? I think everyone can agree that music adds to a game.
Does everyone think it would be too hard to make? Step back and look at all the TI-Boys and Axe Parsers and then tell me again that you think we can't pull it off. :P

Or am I completely wrong and it actually is the standard nowadays? I haven't been back for long, after all.

Side note: While writing this post I kept searching through ticalc.org for any games that I could find that did have music. I thought I succeeded when I found a DDR clone that required Omnicalc... but then it said it just used it for graphics  :-/
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2010, 08:20:04 pm »
the reason for this is because you must buy a 2.5 mm male to 3.5 mm female adapter to fit the headphones in the calculator link port. Because not everyone want to spend money on this nor search for one (these adapters are hard to find in some areas) just to be able to listen to music on calc, music/sound on calc draw little interest. You can use headphones from an old Xbox 1 too, by removing the plastic thing on the 2.5 mm plug, but then the sound only comes one way since there's only one speaker, and since Xbox is discontinued since 2006, these are hard to find today. Another solution is using an AM radio on a radio station with no signal, but the sound quality is terrible. Had the 83+ link port been 3.5 mm, sound on calc would be much more popular.

Another reason is that it slows down games considerably. If you search this forum well, there's a Guitar Hero demo with sound somewhere. Look how low the sound quality had to be decreased for sound to not take almost the entire calculator CPU usage. Notice how the few games with sound, such as Pyoro, only does beeps instead of long sounds/full music because otherwise the game would run incredibly slow. Notice how the softwares that actually can do music/sound while processing other stuff are for 15 MHz calcs only (like the Game Boy emulator for the 83+SE/84+ calcs).

Also, about RealSound: All TI-84 Plus calcs released after April 2007 cannot run RealSound because of a stupid hardware change by Texas Instruments in their calcs. This same hardware change, which is the replacment of the 128 KB RAM chip with a 48 KB chip combo, is what also causes Usb8x/Msd8x, Omnicalc RestoreMem(/Virtual Calc and TI-Boy SE to not work on any TI-84 Plus calculator released after this change, and even crash, in some case. Blame TI for this one. I don't see how they're gonna save money by using 80 KB less RAM in each calc.

I thought about doing a DDR game with sound before, or even a music maker, but since in BASIC the entire execution would stop during sound playback, it would be impractical.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2010, 08:22:41 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline jsj795

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2010, 09:52:18 pm »
Yeah, I thought about using omnicalc's play feature (which is the music) within the game, but I could not find a way to play the sound while the game went on. It would definitely have slowed the game down to a crawl, to the point that it would not be playable.


Spoiler For funny life mathematics:
1. ROMANCE MATHEMATICS
Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair
Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy
2. OFFICE ARITHMETIC
Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime
3. SHOPPING MATH
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need.
4. GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
5. HAPPINESS
To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.
6. LONGEVITY
Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.
7. PROPENSITY TO CHANGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.
8. DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

Girls = Time * Money (Girls are a combination of time and money)
Time = Money (Time is money)
Girls = Money squared (So, girls are money squared)
Money = sqrt(Evil) (Money is also the root of all evil)
Girls = sqrt(Evil) squared (So, girls are the root of all evil squared)
Girls = Evil (Thus, girls are evil)
*Girls=Evil credit goes to Compynerd255*

Offline ztrumpet

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2010, 09:59:15 pm »
I've tried to use Omnicalc's sound function in games, but the problem I hit was keypresses don't even register while a note is being played. :(

Offline Hot_Dog

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2010, 10:10:04 pm »
I know that in languages such as QBasic, the computer would execute the next instruction immediately after starting the last note of a sequence of notes; the note could play for 5 minutes, and yet the program would run instructions during those five minutes.

If the calculator does the same thing, I can't imagine how hard it would be to have the program run through one note at a time and execute instructions in between.

Offline Quigibo

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2010, 10:12:23 pm »
I think those are all good explanations.  The speed is probably the most major of those issues, but even when its not an issue, how many people have you seen carrying around headphones and plugging them into their calculators to play a game?  Its pretty inconvenient in my opinion since it doesn't really add much to games that are already so limited in color and resolution, it hardly enhances the experience.  I only added it to Pyoro because I thought it would be cool and I always wanted to try it.  Yet I don't even own a pair of those headphones.  I just spliced the link cable so I could bypass a speaker to it.

Axe will for sure have some type of ToneOut() command that will be like the pause command except play a frequency instead of doing nothing.  But that's about all you can do since anything more elaborate really takes a toll on the processing speed.  There is no hardware 'audio driver' so you must use software which makes it really slow.
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Offline jsj795

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2010, 10:17:04 pm »
I actually have a 2.5mm headphone, but it only has one earplug. I found it lying around in my house, and I think it was supposed to be for an old phone or something. Yeah, anyways, it would be pretty weird to play on calc with the headphone on. Also, since a lot of people play calc games in school, even if they had the 2.5mm headphone, they wouldn't use it.


Spoiler For funny life mathematics:
1. ROMANCE MATHEMATICS
Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair
Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy
2. OFFICE ARITHMETIC
Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime
3. SHOPPING MATH
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need.
4. GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
5. HAPPINESS
To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.
6. LONGEVITY
Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.
7. PROPENSITY TO CHANGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.
8. DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

Girls = Time * Money (Girls are a combination of time and money)
Time = Money (Time is money)
Girls = Money squared (So, girls are money squared)
Money = sqrt(Evil) (Money is also the root of all evil)
Girls = sqrt(Evil) squared (So, girls are the root of all evil squared)
Girls = Evil (Thus, girls are evil)
*Girls=Evil credit goes to Compynerd255*

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2010, 10:42:24 pm »
I personally think the headphone themselves wouldn't be a big issue. Most people these days carry their iPod or mp3 player at school, so they would have headphones with them. THe real major issue about headphones is really the size of the I/O port. There's also the fact outside an ASM program, when headphones are plugged in, key response is horribly slow

Offline calc84maniac

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2010, 10:43:23 pm »
Volume is very low, as well. It would only work in very quiet areas.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #9 on: March 13, 2010, 10:48:40 pm »
If I remember, when not inserting the adapter completly in the link port, volume became twice louder, but if the sound was originally stereo, then it became mono. I wonder if this could damage the calc, though...

Offline Radical Pi

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #10 on: March 13, 2010, 10:48:55 pm »
Everyone has good points, but for the sake of possibly inspiring someone with an idea, I'll give some counterpoints.

Not everyone has the right equipment: Then make it an optional feature, a little something extra for the people who can use it.

It slows down games: Then don't use it in a processor-heavy game? I can't exactly think of any genres that fit this though... trivia games? Maybe some kinds of puzzle games? There must be something that doesn't need to be calculating all the time.

People play the games at school: No real way to hack around this issue I guess.

Volume: *remembers my frustration with RealSound's volume* yeah... nothing there.

As for Axe eventually having at least a simple sound-related command, I'm glad. I'll try to use it to its fullest extent, even if that means building a concept around its slowdowns.

I guess this is for all practical purposes a fool's quest, but I still wish that weren't the case.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #11 on: March 13, 2010, 10:55:57 pm »
Well it's alerady optional to begin with, since if you don't have headphones you can still run the programs fine. You just won't get the full speed advantage of no sound support, unless the game has a no-sound mode, but then that makes the code larger or slower.

As for processor-heavy, in BASIC there isn't much games that would remain playable at all with sound. Even a RPG would run very slow, plus someone mentionned about keys not being registered during sound playback. This would make games hard to control. As for ASM, then I guess you have a good point, though, but if you notice, Pyoro, with just tiny beeps, is alerady running at a somewhat low framerate compared to many ASM games, and it's not the grayscale that slows it down because F-Zero has grayscale too and runs at like 30-40 fps, even if it has grayscale Mode 7 to render every frame. Also the TI-Boy SE sound argument won't work, because TI-Boy SE requires a 15 MHz calculator to run. It's way too much demanding for a regular 83+.

I think if you really want a game with sound that bad, you should maybe give it a try, because for many programmers, adding sound to our games isn't really rewarding in the end, since like 3 people will enjoy this feature, and it's a major hassle to add to games, especially in assembly.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2010, 10:57:37 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Radical Pi

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #12 on: March 13, 2010, 11:02:09 pm »
I didn't know the TI-Boy was SE only. I guess I should have researched that more before making this topic >_<
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #13 on: March 13, 2010, 11:39:17 pm »
One thing tho, in TI-Boy SE, when disabling sound, the speed gain is barely noticeable at all. But again, since the processor is 15 MHz, maybe it allowed Calc84 to multitask more, or maybe use interrupts or something, to allow sound to run without slowing the rest down. Sometimes, 2.5x higher MHz can make a big difference. If I remember, there was a SE-only version of the GH clone and it had much better sound quality than the other one. Given how long sound has been done for calcs so far, though, there is definitively a reason why it was not used that much on z80 calcs yet, even if we had 3D and other advanced features for ages.

Offline calc84maniac

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Re: Why isn't music in calc games the standard yet?
« Reply #14 on: March 13, 2010, 11:46:54 pm »
Not only that it has 15MHz, but also because it has much more flexible interrupt frequencies. Interrupts on the 83+ can't go fast enough to play most note pitches, so sound playing is usually forced into the main loop or just played on its own.
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