nesdev.org

Well, a lot of arcade hardware at the time had sound made out of discrete components (instead of proper sound chips), and sine waves were pretty common. I suppose that the triangle wave is there to allow doing a (very) crude imitation of those sine waves, although in practice everybody would use the square waves anyway...

rainwarrior wrote:The periodic noise thing did help a little, but it's got a tinny TIA-esque sound to it, and also can't be used at the same time as regular noise, obviously.

Inability to use bass at the same time as noise didn't stop SID composers though.

The NES, Neo Geo, and Atari 7800 were the only consoles to really use CHR ROM. At first, NES games used CHR ROM bank switching to give a separate set of tiles to each game mode. But as ROM sizes soared and mapper ICs gained smaller windows, games started to use it for tile animation. This partly made up for the smaller video memory bandwidth associated with only being able to write about 128-160 bytes to VRAM during vertical blanking. Dr. Mario used CHR animation to jiggle the viruses, an effect later seen in Shiru's homebrew games. Cosmic Epsilon even used CHR banking as a makeshift texture mapper. But before the jiggling grass and quicksand of Super Mario Bros. 2: Mario Madness, did any games make extensive use of CHR animation in the background, be it CHR ROM or CHR RAM?

Bregalad wrote: The Triangle channel on the NES might be the channel with less features, but hironically it's my favourite one. I just love this channel Probably because it's sound is so distinctive on the NES. Square waves and white noise is a common denominator of all PSGs in the world, triangle is also common but the NES' triangle really has it's specific sound.

That's funny you mention that. It seems like the NES was the only console to actually use triangle waves extensively, as other consoles that could do it (C64, Game Boy) only do so on occasion. Many C64 games use the triangle solely for triangle kicks, while not a lot of Game Boy/Color games use the triangle wave. Tetris theme A and Wario Land 3: Above the Clouds (Night) are the only Game Boy/Color songs (that I know of) to prominently use the triangle wave. It also seems like the NES, GB/C, and C64 were the only consoles capable of triangle soundwaves.

OneCrudeDude wrote:It also seems like the NES, GB/C, and C64 were the only consoles capable of triangle soundwaves.

Anything with a wavetable could do triangle, so there's also PC-Engine, MSX-SCC, and Virtual Boy, off the top of my head, but probably many others. Of course, once you reach a certain point, arbitrary waveforms are possible on nearly everything.

I know that on the Mega Drive you can get something between a triangle wave and a sawtooth wave with FM (not quite triangle, but eh - think of it like "25% cycle duty triangle wave", whatever that means), I imagine you can do the same with the Master System with the FM add-on (not as accurate since it only has two operators, but at least close).

Also you can get a triangle wave with additive synthesis, if your hardware supports that:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... iangle.gif

tepples wrote:Inability to use bass at the same time as noise didn't stop SID composers though.

I don't understand what this means, at least not in a way analogous to the SMS. You have two other arbitrary channels that can each be playing a bass tone while the third is using noise on the SID. On the SMS, you don't.

Perhaps you're referring to percussion sounds made with short bursts of noise alternating with tonal sounds? Doesn't have anything specific to do with bass, but it's a common technique on SID and AY tunes. It can be done on the NES too, if you really want to, but on the NES it's not a natural solution to a hardware problem like on these other chips.

For what it's worth, I think that despite the SID's great versatility of waveforms, its lack of effective volume control on the channels made the music much more difficult to balance than the NES, which had fairly independent volume on most channels. A great deal of SID music is blaring and loud, and few composers for it had the skill to overcome this limitation.

A lot of FM music is in a similar boat. FM is extremely versatile, but it's very difficult and time consuming to make patches that sound beautiful and balanced together. There are some really wonderful FM game soundtracks, but the average is really rough sounding.

Did anyone mention the Atari Pokey used in the 7800 and other Atari 8-bit computers? I'd say this chip was almost as good as the NES APU. Four channels, 4-bit volume, variable-with pulse, noise, and some other weird waveforms available. The big limitation on this one is the frequency control is only 8-bit, but otherwise it's a really capable chip. I don't think it often got used to the extent it was capable during its commercial run though.

Sik wrote:Also you can get a triangle wave with additive synthesis, if your hardware supports that.

You can get any waveform with additive synthesis (though a triangle is an easier one, since it will require fewer harmonics to approximate well). What game hardware supported that? (Any FM chip can stack sines, but you're really reducing the number of effective channels with way.)

rainwarrior wrote:You can get any waveform with additive synthesis (though a triangle is an easier one, since it will require fewer harmonics to approximate well). What game hardware supported that? (Any FM chip can stack sines, but you're really reducing the number of effective channels with way.)

Actually depends on the algorithm (operator layout within a channel), e.g. one of the algorithms in the YM2612 is all four operators being slots (outputs), so that's basically four waves being added (at the cost of no FM). But yeah, I imagine that any 3rd gen system that supported FM would be using 2-op FM with the operators being hardwired serially (so no additive synthesis within a single channel).

Also on the topic of competition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WO6_3rDtqM
Parallax O_O

How exactly did C64 games manage parallax scrolling? Is this where the 64K RAM comes into play? They basically draw a bunch of tiles where imagery overlaps? If that's the case, you could do that on the NES, it just wouldn't be very easy due to chewing up a lot of data and the comparatively miniscule RAM. The C64 handles colors a lot differently than the NES, so color attributes can and will clash.

rainwarrior wrote:I think it was an important factor that the NES had graphics capabilities that were competitive for the time, but it was not really important that they be the best. The important thing was that the hardware was versatile and usable enough to make good games, and that the NES had a lot of good games.

So basically, Nintendo hit the jackpot in terms of hardware design. They really haven't been able to do that again, but the GameCube did come close. It just didn't have GTA, which was the be-all end-all of 6th generation games, but despite being the worst selling Nintendo home console, it had more than twice the games of the N64. They obviously did something right. Now Nintendo deliberately uses outdated hardware, and it has bit them with the Wii U.

OneCrudeDude wrote:How exactly did C64 games manage parallax scrolling? Is this where the 64K RAM comes into play? They basically draw a bunch of tiles where imagery overlaps?

Well, that's a gross oversimplification. In Flimbo's Quest (which has parallax scrolling unlike anything I've ever seen in any NES game) I think it's done by storing several versions of the same tiles, offset by different amounts, in addition to updating the parallax when the screen is soft scrolled on an 8 pixel boundary. NES games don't usually work like that, because software scrolling is not required, and VRAM bandwidth is limited.

thefox wrote:In Flimbo's Quest (which has parallax scrolling unlike anything I've ever seen in any NES game)...

See City Connection (but rougher), or Metalstorm, Sword Master, and Batman: Revenge of the Joker (smaller, but smoother) for examples of parallax either through redrawing or CHR animating.

ccovell wrote:

thefox wrote:In Flimbo's Quest (which has parallax scrolling unlike anything I've ever seen in any NES game)...

See City Connection (but rougher), or Metalstorm, Sword Master, and Batman: Revenge of the Joker (smaller, but smoother) for examples of parallax either through redrawing or CHR animating.

I'm aware of all of those games, I'd still argue it's not quite the same. City Connection just looks pretty crappy and choppy in general, Metal Storm/Sword Master/ROTJ have very obviously repeating patterns. Although the parallax in all those games looks good, it's still very NES-like (= CHR switching + mid-screen scroll changes), and it doesn't give quite the same feeling as a true second layer.

In both Flimbo's Quest and Thunderbolt, one of the 'background layers' is much simpler in design than the others, so maybe those would have to be redrawn 8 times to be done on the NES, at least so I think. In Flimbo's Quest, that would be the foreground/playable area. In Thunderbolt, it would be the background.

And I'm honestly kinda impressed with City Connection; would it have killed them to put one sprite at the edges of the 'road' to look smother? I mean the game flickers a lot, but only when there's like three 24-pixel wide police cars on the same line, which it does a lot.

rainwarrior wrote:

tepples wrote:Inability to use bass at the same time as noise didn't stop SID composers though.

I don't understand what this means, at least not in a way analogous to the SMS. You have two other arbitrary channels that can each be playing a bass tone while the third is using noise on the SID.

One channel still has to be interrupted to make the noise.

Perhaps you're referring to percussion sounds made with short bursts of noise alternating with tonal sounds?

Yes.

Doesn't have anything specific to do with bass

Other than that interruption of melody is likely to be more noticeable than interruption of bass.

It can be done on the NES too, if you really want to, but on the NES it's not a natural solution to a hardware problem like on these other chips.

Triangle kicks interrupt triangle bass all the time on NES.

The big limitation on [POKEY] is the frequency control is only 8-bit, but otherwise it's a really capable chip. I don't think it often got used to the extent it was capable during its commercial run though.

That and Atari cheaped out on the 7800. It originally intended to put a POKEY in each console but changed to putting a POKEY in each cartridge that needs it.

Sik wrote:Actually depends on the algorithm (operator layout within a channel), e.g. one of the algorithms in the YM2612 is all four operators being slots (outputs)

For a pure triangle, you might get away with 1, 3, 5, and 7, as the 9th harmonic is 38 dB below fundamental. For an NES-like triangle, though, you'll need some way to construct the 31st and 33rd harmonics that carry the aliasing.

Now about parallax scrolling playfields: MSX can't scroll at all, so Pippols for MSX has to store the playfield graphics 8 times in the MSX's CHR RAM.

Has anyone of you seen this? I couldn't find a video of it but the D64 can easily be run in VICE. It's a lot of NES tunes played on the SID, and most of them sounds amazingly like the real thing.

I also found this very cool SID like Famicom version of the music from Cybernoid on the C64, also very impressive stuff but it cheats quite a bit by using VRC6.

The C64 was a pinnacle of American Engineering. It could emulate almost any kind of sound you threw at it, when the NES needs expansion audio. On the flipside, as Rainwarrior said, it has an obscenely loud and harsh sound, and everything just sounds crude. Doesn't the C64 also suffer from some form of power parasitism? One of the components starves the SID of power (or vice versa), which might explain that sound.

Also, I read conflicting information about the Game Boy's audio. Some sources say that it had selectable sound channels not unlike the SID (at least, channel 3 could be either triangle or sawtooth while channel 4 could be either noise or DPCM), while many others say it actually used wavetable synthesis for channel 3. And could the original Game Boy play DPCM samples like the NES? I know there are some GBC games that make heavy use of DPCM, but only a handful of Game Boy games used the sample channel period. I think Pokemon Yellow is the most prominent example.