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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: Paulie85 on November 28, 2010, 08:18:11 PM
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I downloaded some Amiga games I hadn't played for years and I was reminded of one of my pet peeves. Some games(e.g. Leander,Chuck Rock, Elvira Arcade...) make you choose between sound fx and music which really takes away from the gaming experience. If games such as Beast and Turrican can have both whilst being impressive graphically why can't these others as well? Is it just lazy programming?
PS Why don't more games make use of EHB mode as it double the amount of colours?
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In order to have both the music must be created with 3 channels. Then 1 channel can be reserved for effects.
Making music with only 4 channels is damned hard. Making it with just 3 is even harder.
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Making music with only 4 channels is damned hard. Making it with just 3 is even harder.
Thanks Piru, so it is down to the skill of the musician.
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Yeah, pretty much. It would be technically possible to have one channel of a four-channel song interruptible by the sound effects, but it would be tricky to compose songs that sound all right if one part suddenly cuts out. Doable, though.
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It could also be a memory limitation. It's possible for a game to have 4-channel music playing and have sound effects that temporarily cut out one of the music channels (like Aladdin). I'd say one of the reasons a lot of old games let you choose between Sound FX or Music is because they were designed for 512kb A500 systems which wouldn't have enough memory to hold all the samples for the game and the music as well.
The more colours you use in a game the more resources it needs to move everything around, so it took a pretty skilled coder to make a fast game that uses 32 colours, let alone 64. Another reason for EHB being underused is that it's very challenging for the pixel artist to come up with a 64 colour EHB palette that doesn't repeat colours everywhere. Of course they could just focus on the first 32 colours and only use the other 32 as shadow colours, like in Desert Strike, but hardly any games use the full EHB 64 colour palette for all the in-game graphics the way Fightin' Spirit does.
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In order to have both the music must be created with 3 channels. Then 1 channel can be reserved for effects.
Making music with only 4 channels is damned hard. Making it with just 3 is even harder.
Then there was AB3D 2 which, at least in it's 4-channel configuration had 3 channels for sound effects and one for music :lol:
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I'd say one of the reasons a lot of old games let you choose between Sound FX or Music is because they were designed for 512kb A500 systems which wouldn't have enough memory to hold all the samples for the game and the music as well.
Yeah, I was thinking memory may be an issue, that's why I was a little disappointed when Leander said "Extra memory detected and used" but still made me choose between fx and music.
Also on the ehb palette, I found that if you made your first 32 really bright the last 32 were more useful rather than being relegated to shadow colours.
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Yeah, pretty much. It would be technically possible to have one channel of a four-channel song interruptible by the sound effects, but it would be tricky to compose songs that sound all right if one part suddenly cuts out. Doable, though.
Turrican 2 does this quite a bit.
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I wonder if anyone ever made a game for Amiga where the sound effects are triggered in time with the beat, sort of like Rez.
That would be very groovy.
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That would be cool, loads of demo's do it. But I can't think of a game that does.