[Coco] New game for CoCo3 - new C libraries for RSDOS

Roger Taylor rtaylor at bayou.com
Sun Nov 30 00:04:00 EST 2003


At 08:45 PM 11/29/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>I know that I wouldn't be able to do that probably.  For now it looks like
>I'm going to stick with CBASIC for making Minihog, which means it won't
>scroll, but it should be JUST quick enough for playing (When you reach the
>end of the screen it jumps to the next, like with Rad Warrior or Predator).
>I'll see what I can do for writing music/sound with the speech sound pak
>modified for the CoCo 3's high speed poke.  If I slow down the program for
>the sound on a typical ss pak it'll bog down the game and wouldn't be worth
>playing.  The ss pak has a buffer of memory to store the data for
>sound/music so it'd be independent, letting the CPU deal with everything
>else it needs to.  It's kind of like having a sound card for the CoCo.
>Perhaps that's something someone can make for the CoCo 3...a sound blaster
>like sound card that'd plug into one of the MPI slots, but that's just me
>thinking.  If someone did that I would definitely write routines for it for
>MiniHog.

The Orchestra-90CC Pak is a dual 8-bit digital-to-analog converter, so it's 
a sound card.  The built-in ROM just happens to have a nifty music program 
in it that knows how to pump the waveforms out, but you can always use the 
card manually.

You simply POKE the waveform in real time just like you do with the CoCo's 
6-bit DAC port, only you have TWO 8-bit ports (for stereo).

I think my MUSICA 2 driver for Projector-3 simulates stereo a bit by 
splitting the 4-voice music file into 2 channels, each having 2 voices.  It 
sounds okay running through a home entertainment system.

My problem with the Orchestra-90CC card is that it filters the highs, so 
you get a smooth/low-tone sound no matter what you do.




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