Spectrum Computing

Hello,

Is there a possibility to have music in game coding game on Speccy 48k ? I found program called Beepola that gives option to do 2 channel + drums music and export it to assembly code. Still - its not too cpu expensive ?

Thanks in advance for reply

With regards to in-game music, what usually happens is that the game plays one note after each iteration of the game loop. You can see examples of this in Manic Miner or in Globus (the latter is the best example, as it uses the Music Box engine, which is presumably what you wish to use as well).

All you need to do is compose your song in Beepola using either the Music Box, Music Studio or ROM Beep engines, and then compile your song with the option to exit after every note. Then, just call it from your code after each loop of the game logic.

Something to consider though is that any sort of sound output on the 48K models is pretty processor intensive, as the CPU is having to control the loudspeaker directly, so you'll have to really optimize your main code if you want your game to run at a decent speed with music.

It’s next to impossible. The best example of the greatest amount of action on the screen while playing multichannel BEEPER music I can think of is the menu screen in Dark Fusion. That’s about as much as you can do.