/vr/ - Retro Games

I finally managed to get my Game Boy audio driver to a point where I'm happy with it. Not much to show for it, though. Music was never really my thing, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

The biggest new feature is support for multi-channel percussion. Using the noise channel by itself for percussion ends up sounding pretty thin, so a second channel is sometimes used to give it a fuller sound. This is done briefly enough to add body to the sound without interfering with the rest of the music.

Before, it was possible to do this manually by writing both the percussion part and the regular part onto the same musical "score". It's horribly messy doing it that way, though, so I came up with a better solution: hijack the existing sound effect system and use it for percussion, too. Basically, turn the percussion into sound effects. Because sound effects can use multiple channels, and they take priority over music, supporting multi-track percussion comes naturally. Just dedicate one music track for percussion, and it becomes as easy as playing regular notes.