Blip Australia 2012 Genesis ROM Flyer

After a few months of work it's finally finished...



Code: Batsly Adams
Gfx: Wazpy
Music: Animal Style

Download the ROM here!
http://australia.blipfestival.org/files/BlipAustralia2012.bin


I got to try out a ton of new stuff here, learned a ton in the process.

A few notes:

Wrote a new scene handler, allows separate scenes that can exit gracefully regardless of changes in video modes. Scene timers can be easily adjusted.

New smooth non-blocking palette fading.

VDP DMA routines work perfectly now, most effects are applied to a tilemap in RAM then DMA'd over right after vsync. A 32x32 map finishes in vblank with time to spare, which means no more tearing!

Wrote a utility to split GIFs into frames and convert them into tiles / palettes. Have a special struct for sprites to handle this output for easy manipulation too.

The large comet is 128x128 -> 16 32x32 sprites stitched together!

The green/blue lines in the announcement scene have a (subtle) transparency effect surrounding the black bar. Used the shadow/highlight registers on the VDP here for certain tiles to simulate opacity.

And finally: a full speed plasma effect, which was the holy grail of visual coding for me. Thanks so much to Andy B for help with the optimization.


Can't wait for this!

Blip Australia 2012

I'm extremely proud to announce that I'll be performing at Blip Australia 2012! I'm honored to be part of such an incredible lineup.

Check it.

7bitHero (BNE)
10k (SYD)
Abortifacient (SYD)
Batsly Adams (US)
Bit Shifter (US)
Derris-Kharlan (MEL)
Dot.AY (MEL)
_ensnare_ (UK)
Hally (JP)
iLKke (SYD)
Lazerbeat (UK)
little-scale (ADE)
Nullsleep (US)
Patric C (DE)
Saitone (JP)
Trash80 (US)

http://australia.blipfestival.org/

Workbench 11/2/11

This is the cleanest it has been since it was built.

Card Preview

Circuit card preview in collaboration with Jeremiah Johnson. The result of a few months of circuit design / code.






Release info will be up soon!

Fontana's I/O Sep11

Wrote a new Genesis text scroller that uses the SD-card on the everdrive! The ROM takes any (8x8) bitmap font from a folder and copies it to RAM for scrolling. The string is precompiled, working on an neat interface to edit on the fly at gigs / save previous names to SRAM.



Had so much fun at that show, everyone was amazing.

PCB Design

So I've been on a roll since I've setup new workspace/benches (thanks again Adam / Todd!). I decided to go through my old parts / unfinished projects to tie up some loose ends. Setup a few devboards for a PIC / attiny / propeller. Had nothing in mind, but after some playing around, I had an idea for a project. Contacted Jeremiah Johnson (www.nullsleep.com) to collaborate. The function will remain a secret until gli.tc/h but I can say that it's my favorite project to date, and I'm super proud about how it came out. Got intimate with some (frequency/amplitude/phase) modulation, learned a bunch about surface mount design and SD card interfaces too.

Designed the PCB in Altium, had a few ups and downs. The 3D renders are pretty neat and overall the experience was pleasant. Any hangups were probably due to a misunderstanding how libraries / custom parts are handled.

Ordered 20 boards, they arrived in about 10 days. Doh, botched silkscreen on the front. I think I may have overloaded their silk machine, I'd imagine those halftone dots could cause a problem since each counts as an individual shape. Luckily none of the text was affected and the back is absolutely perfect. They look amazing otherwise, excellent quality.

Fixed it up with my vinyl cutter anyway, it's temporary until rev 2, but that's okay! Looks great.

Works better than expected, can't wait to show it off!

WTPA2 DPCM Drumkit Test

RB drum kit run through a USB-midi converter to the WTPA2.



I fixed a bunch of bugs with the sample code, I had the DAC return to zero immediately after the sample was done playing which caused a nasty click/pop. Now it gracefully levels out any inactive channels.

WTPA2 DPCM support

WTPA2 code modified to load native NES samples (1-bit DPCM) from a uSD card. I could have converted them to wave but what's the fun in that?



Uploaded to WTPA via ISP/STK500 devkit.

128 samples taken from Bucky (explod2a03)'s DMC pack.
http://theshizz.org/forum/index.php?/topic/25657-n-e-s-sample-pack-v1/

As always, big ups to Todd Bailey (www.narrat1ve.com). If you're even remotely interested in this stuff you owe it to yourself to get a kit.

Chipocrite @ Lebowskifest

did visuals for lebowskifest philly! (2 x genesis + gp2x)

chipocrite absolutely rocked the place!

FaMI VRC6 Support!

Implemented VRC6 (for powerpak users) - Both square channels + sawtooth working perfectly

Channel remapping - MIDI channels can now be reassigned on the fly with a controller in P1. They can even overlap! So you can assign a single MIDI channel to multiple channels on the NES and they will play simultaneously. A detune / transpose option was added so you can create multi-channel leads if you are using this as a live instrument.



Sent out a couple of demo boards - a few bugfixes later and things are stable! It's pretty much interface / sound preference coding from here on out!

BOSTON8BIT Presents: PAX East 2011 Chiptune Showcase

I'll be performing visuals on March 11-13 from 11am-2pm at PAX East in the jamspace. Stop by and check out some amazing artists / say hello!

=== FRIDAY ===
Cathode Rays
Oxygenstar
Active Knowledge
Animal Style
Bit Shifter

=== SATURDAY ===
AdamGetsAwesome
Zen Albatross
Danimal Cannon
Br1ght Pr1mate
Smiletron

=== SUNDAY ===
7th Gear
Facundo
Shortsleeves
Disasterpeace
glomag and Corset lore

=== VISUAL ARTISTS ===
InvaderBacca
HN_i_C
Batsly Adams

In da lab

NSF sync x 2 WORKING

DrunkenNES

Edit: If you're looking to contact me you can use (lousy spambots.)


The third in a series of new NES peripherals - I present to you...

Wow such an overwhelming response for this thing! I'll put up a video with more of the screens / music - hopefully by tomorrow.

Thanks Jessen for taking video - there is actually a lot more to the game - I'll try to find some more!

2011 Feb 26 - Drunken NES Breathalyzer - Pulsewave at The Tank, New York from EM Dash on Vimeo.

So about DrunkenNES. I had recently done a workshop for 8static and bought a bunch of sensors to show the basics of physical computing. I came across an alcohol sensor and thought it would be fun to play with. I hooked it up to a scope and showed it to a couple of friends I had over. A couple of hours later we had a ROM with the sound pitching up as it detected more alcohol - which we really couldn't stop laughing about.
I got to leverage all the previous work in the NES communications driver I had written for the Arduino (using an RBBB in an enclosure). We forced a friend to drink for science - we all did a lot of drinking for science. The thing is actually pretty accurate provided you didn't have a drink in the past 3 minutes - it was fun having excel open "collecting data".

So alcohol sensor -> ADC on Arduino -> NES communcations driver -> gameport #2 -> homebrew software on NES powerpak cart

We decided to make it a full fledged game from there - AdamGetsAwesome helped me test the circuit / wire up the cart - Kris Keyser managed to learn Famitracker and wrote a great soundtrack in a few days - and I commissioned a few artists to generate some graphics (Alex Baderian, Emi Spicer, Kathleen Wisneski). I'm still amazed everything pulled together so well. I'm actually ashamed to admit that the code is about 5 times as long as the MIDI interface (2500+ lines of 6502 assembly!) - really complex. I made great use of bankswitching with the MMC1 mapper to handle all of the nametable / music data.

Features:
* 6 states you could rank in depending on your reading:
sober / getting started / buzzed / tipsy / drunk / wasted
* Each state to have up to 4 screens with 2 frames of animation each and cycles through each every time it's hit (you should never see the same screen twice).
* Fully functional 6-digit hi-score table (saves to SRAM for battery backed scores)
To keep it fun - the score is derived from your reading - not your rank (I.E. I can have a higher "drunk" score than someone else).
* Original soundtrack (10 tracks by Kris Keyser!)

Also: the foundation of the game is based entirely on crumby animal puns - see below

FaMI Update

Total revamp - almost fully MIDI compliant! Major update soon.