HOWTO: Put BeepFX Sound into ZXB code

[britlion]

Shiru's Beepfx (http://shiru.untergrund.net/files/beepfx.zip) is quite an interesting tool for sound effects. He doesn't believe it can be used for tunes - but it can do different pitched "tones" and include pauses, and that spells tune to me. Beepola is probably a better choice for real tune making, though.

Anyway - the asm it produces is not compatible with zxb's assembler. So I did the working out of how to tweak it to work.

So the sound calling routine would look like this:

Code:

SUB sound(soundNum as uByte)
asm
#include "BeepFXPlayer.asm"
#include "SoundData.asm"

SoundEnd:
pop IX

end asm
end sub

And BeepFXPlayer would always be the same tweaks, so I present my version here:

Code:

playBasic:
play:
    ld hl,soundEffectsData    ;address of sound effects data
    di
    push ix
    push iy

    ld b,0
    ld c,a
    add hl,bc
    add hl,bc
    ld a,(hl)
    inc hl
    ld h,(hl)
    ld l,a
    push hl
    pop ix            ;put it into ix
   
    ld a,(23624)    ;get border color from BASIC vars to keep it unchanged
    rra
    rra
    rra
    and 7
    ld (sfxRoutineToneborder+1),a
    ld (sfxRoutineNoiseborder+1),a
   

readData:
    ld a,(ix+0)        ;read block type
    or a
    jr nz,readDatasound
    pop iy
    ei
    jp SoundEnd

readDatasound:
    ld c,(ix+1)        ;read duration 1
    ld b,(ix+2)
    ld e,(ix+3)        ;read duration 2
    ld d,(ix+4)
    push de
    pop iy

    dec a
    jr nz,sfxRoutineNoise



;this routine generate tone with many parameters
sfxRoutineTone:
    ld e,(ix+5)        ;freq
    ld d,(ix+6)
    ld a,(ix+9)        ;duty
    ld (sfxRoutineToneduty+1),a
    ld hl,0
   
sfxRoutineTonel0:
    push bc
    push iy
    pop bc
sfxRoutineTonel1:
    add hl,de
    ld a,h
sfxRoutineToneduty:
    cp 0
    sbc a,a
    and 16
sfxRoutineToneborder:
    or 0
    out ($fe),a
#line 78               
    dec bc
    ld a,b
    or c
    jr nz,sfxRoutineTonel1

    ld a,(sfxRoutineToneduty+1)
    add a,(ix+10)    ;duty change
    ld (sfxRoutineToneduty+1),a

    ld c,(ix+7)        ;slide
    ld b,(ix+8)
    ex de,hl
    add hl,bc
    ex de,hl

    pop bc
    dec bc
    ld a,b
    or c
    jr nz,sfxRoutineTonel0

    ld c,11
nextData:
    add ix,bc        ;skip to the next block
    jr readData



;this routine generate noise with two parameters
sfxRoutineNoise:
    ld e,(ix+5)        ;pitch

    ld d,1
    ld h,d
    ld l,d
sfxRoutineNoisel0:
    push bc
    push iy
    pop bc
sfxRoutineNoisel1:
    ld a,(hl)
    and 16
sfxRoutineNoiseborder:
    or 0
    out ($fe),a
    dec d
    jr nz,sfxRoutineNoisel2
    ld d,e
    inc hl
    ld a,h
    and $1f
    ld h,a
sfxRoutineNoisel2:
    dec bc
    ld a,b
    or c
    jr nz,sfxRoutineNoisel1

    ld a,e
    add a,(ix+6)    ;slide
    ld e,a

    pop bc
    dec bc
    ld a,b
    or c
    jr nz,sfxRoutineNoisel0

    ld c,7
    jr nextData

Finally, you need to run beepfx, and compile just the sound data to asm.

You'll get something like this:

Code:

soundEffectsData
    dw .sfx0

.sfx0
    db #01
    dw #0032,#0064,#01f4,#ffec,#0080
    db #00

This needs some massaging to work. Change "soundEffectsData" to "soundEffectsData:"
Change "." to "soundEffectsData" And make labels have a : on the end.
Search and replace "db" with "defb"
Search and replace "dw" with "defw"
Replace # with $
All done!

Worked example:

Code:

soundEffectsData:
    defw soundEffectsDatasfx0
    defw soundEffectsDatasfx1

soundEffectsDatasfx0:
    defb $01
    defw $0032,$0064,$01f4,$ffec,$0080
    defb $00
soundEffectsDatasfx1:
    defb $01
    defw $0014,$0190,$00c8,$0005,$0110
    defb $01
    defw $001e,$0190,$00c8,$0008,$0110
    defb $00

you can then save this as something lime soundata.asm and #'include this file into the sound routine listed above. Call with sound (n) for the sound number.

[boriel]

Britlion, seriously, this is FANTASTIC! :o
BTW: I've finally integrated the SPPixel routines within ZX Basic (Draw already uses them). I'm porting SPFill into the library as #include <SP/fill.bas>. Once it's done, I could try to include this one.

[LCD]

Thank you! this will be great! By the way, DB and DW is supported by ZXBC too, so no need to change them.

[britlion]

Britlion, seriously, this is FANTASTIC! :o
BTW: I've finally integrated the SPPixel routines within ZX Basic (Draw already uses them). I'm porting SPFill into the library as #include <SP/fill.bas>. Once it's done, I could try to include this one.

Way to go!

This will be harder to import, since it needs a chunk of extra data....

[britlion]

Thank you! this will be great! By the way, DB and DW is supported by ZXBC too, so no need to change them.

Hmm. I was sure that failed to compile when I tried it. I'll have a look next time.

[britlion]

Oh, the latest uploaded version of pacman now has sound, thanks to this!