Commodore Remix

Hi All !

edit: Game just about complete, just some more tweaks to do ... Latest version available to *download* now !!!

I was wondering if anyone would like to compose Music for a game I am working on called - " Office Worker " ? It is designed purely for fun and was put together with Game Maker 7 on the PC. All of the design and graphics are by myself.

Title Screen Screenshot:



Level 1 - Post Room Screenshot



Download Current Demo

http://www.arisfamily.co.uk/alex/worker.htm

Controls :

Cursors Left and right, Ctrl to Jump, Space to Fire Paperclips on Level 3 onwards. Esc to quit Game. Ctrl also is used to advance during intermediate screens.

Ideally it would be nice to have a Title Screen tune and perhaps In-game tunes. Midi format would be great, small file size, but MP3 could be an option as well. Also, Sound Effects are needed, that depends on whether anyone is interested.

I have done other game projects as well, check out my website :
http://www.arisfamily.co.uk/alex

Many thanks !

Looks nice. I have been using that program for years now. It's a fun tool. http://www.yoyogames.com/members/Mordi
Maybe I can make something for it? I've been wanting to compose some simple tunes for games for a long time, actually, but no project has come up that I was interested in.

Thanks Mordi ! I've had a listen to one of your tracks - " Ocean Loader 2 ", very nice ! I'll have a look at your Game Maker creations tomorrow, I've got to do some more work on - " Office Worker " tomorrow, firing Paperclips at people / objects on Level 3 onwards, this will help defeat an end level Boss or two !

Hey ! Mordi ! I really like the physics in your " Game Maker " games, Sci-Fi Engine has some pretty cool gun firing in it !

Take a look at my topic on Instant Music: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6949

Just doodle on the screen and it plays the doodles. If you have a 64, route from a MIDI cartridge to your PC and away you go. (Mind you, using MIDI forces the player to rely on the sounds from his soundcard wavetable, which can be excellent, decent, sub-NES level or even non-existent.)

That would be alright, even just for the beta version. That's all I can suggest other than swiping one of my theme tunes and crediting me on your game. (http://www.concept-single.net)

(By the way, I had no joy running it. It went straight to full screen mode where it chugged and then disappeared. My PC runs at 900Mhz with 512Mb RAM in, so I don't know what's going on there. I expected it to come as a D64 or a TAP or something! Love the screen grabs though.)

Commie_User wrote:Take a look at my topic on Instant Music: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6949

Just doodle on the screen and it plays the doodles. If you have a 64, route from a MIDI cartridge to your PC and away you go. (Mind you, using MIDI forces the player to rely on the sounds from his soundcard wavetable, which can be excellent, decent, sub-NES level or even non-existent.)

That would be alright, even just for the beta version. That's all I can suggest other than swiping one of my theme tunes and crediting me on your game. (http://www.concept-single.net)

(By the way, I had no joy running it. It went straight to full screen mode where it chugged and then disappeared. My PC runs at 900Mhz with 512Mb RAM in, so I don't know what's going on there. I expected it to come as a D64 or a TAP or something! Love the screen grabs though.)

I had a brief look at the information for the Instant Music program, it looks okay. I don't have access to or own any Commodore Hardware anymore, but I still use C64 and Amiga through emulation, not the same, but great otherwise !

The three current games that I have created on the PC, Bugsy, Elastic Band Warrior and Office Worker were created on different versions of Game Maker. Bugsy was created with Game Maker v5.3a which required less RAM and Graphics Memory on a PC. It was done on an IBM Thinkpad - Pentium II 266 MHz with 256 RAM and a 2MB Graphics Card a few years ago. Elastic Band Warrior and Office Worker were created with Game Maker 7.0 which requires a modern Pentium PC with at least 128MB RAM and a 32MB Graphics Card with the latest Direct X installed, these were done this year. So a lengthy possibly answer to why, possible the two latter games don't work.

I stumbled across this website : [ http://www.8bitpeoples.com/ ] there are a lot of cool chip style tunes, I've also asked for possible interest in for game music. Although I am starting to think that most people are busy / not interested or would like to be paid for any contribution ! Best not to give up or be down hearted though, I enjoy designing homebrew games and will continue to do so !

No, stick with it. As we both make our own productions for the love of it, I wouldn't mind chipping in.

If you take a listen to the music section on my Concept Single page, http://www.concept-single.net/, you can hear if what I'm doing may fit your project. Listen to all the tunes as I try to do as diverse a range of styles as I'm able. Then ask if I can do something-or-other and I'll have a go.

Either that or raid the MIDI websites of all the old tunes out of copyright. Since you're looking now up to 1959, you can get quite a variety there. After which I can try to work something out with it and record you the result.

For example, hear English Country Garden for 64 and Sound Expander (http://www.dustybin.org.uk/English_c64_S'Expander.mp3) or the Amiga and Commodore rendition of the Irving Berlin track Putting On The Ritz (http://www.dustybin.org.uk/Ritz.mp3).

Thought appeals, yes, thought appeals. Wouldn't mind doing a bit of game music. What do you reckon?

Commie_User wrote:No, stick with it. As we both make our own productions for the love of it, I wouldn't mind chipping in.

If you take a listen to the music section on my Concept Single page, http://www.concept-single.net/, you can hear if what I'm doing may fit your project. Listen to all the tunes as I try to do as diverse a range of styles as I'm able. Then ask if I can do something-or-other and I'll have a go.

Either that or raid the MIDI websites of all the old tunes out of copyright. Since you're looking now up to 1959, you can get quite a variety there. After which I can try to work something out with it and record you the result.

For example, hear English Country Garden for 64 and Sound Expander (http://www.dustybin.org.uk/English_c64_S'Expander.mp3) or the Amiga and Commodore rendition of the Irving Berlin track Putting On The Ritz (http://www.dustybin.org.uk/Ritz.mp3).

Thought appeals, yes, thought appeals. Wouldn't mind doing a bit of game music. What do you reckon?

If you are interested in doing some game music, you're welcome to have a go ! I think ideally something possibly jolly and original for the title screen, as a nice starter ! As for file types, Midi format favoured, however, MP3 format can be an option also. I found a Midi Tracker, similar to Sound Trackers on the Amiga : [ http://www.brothersoft.com/midi-tracker-13103.html ], its shareware ($29). It works on XP, I did try it on Vista, it did run a bit flaky. However, running it through XP compatibility mode might work.

Do you still own any Commodore kit ? I used to have a Sound Expander, Keyboard, the whole works. But when I migrated over to the Amiga, I sold it all. I feel the fool now, but still have fond memories. If I had the room and money, I get them all again and have a nice museum of Commodore stuff !

I've got my own software and equipment to make pretty much whatever I like. The PC is always the destination recorder so it doesn't matter what other computer I may use to make the actual music.

I assume your programs will use the Microsoft wavetable, as used to play MIDI files through the operating system. If that's the case I'll know which wavetable to monitor any MIDI parts through. After all, I don't want to orchestrate a piano part only to have it come out as the bassoon on someone else's PC.

Commodore kit? As I say, take a listen to the English Country Garden and Putting On The Ritz tracks I mentioned before. And as you can see from http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.braisher/daw.jpg, as well as http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.br ... Image3.jpg, my Commodore 64 gear is well catered for. Actually, I've much more than the pictures show by now, with PC networking, disk/tape transfer and multiple cartridges (inc. Action Replay) running concurrently, etc..

Amiga is similar, with an A500 running Workbench 1.2, Action Replay 3 and MIDI, plus A1200 running Workbench 3.1 I think, with two MIDIs, PC network link and hard disk stocked with various software.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.br ... Amigas.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.braisher/D.JPG

Commie_User wrote:I've got my own software and equipment to make pretty much whatever I like. The PC is always the destination recorder so it doesn't matter what other computer I may use to make the actual music.

I assume your programs will use the Microsoft wavetable, as used to play MIDI files through the operating system. If that's the case I'll know which wavetable to monitor any MIDI parts through. After all, I don't want to orchestrate a piano part only to have it come out as the bassoon on someone else's PC.

Commodore kit? As I say, take a listen to the English Country Garden and Putting On The Ritz tracks I mentioned before. And as you can see from http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.braisher/daw.jpg, as well as http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.br ... Image3.jpg, my Commodore 64 gear is well catered for. Actually, I've much more than the pictures show by now, with PC networking, disk/tape transfer and multiple cartridges (inc. Action Replay) running concurrently, etc..

Amiga is similar, with an A500 running Workbench 1.2, Action Replay 3 and MIDI, plus A1200 running Workbench 3.1 I think, with two MIDIs, PC network link and hard disk stocked with various software.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.br ... Amigas.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.braisher/D.JPG

Wow ! You have a serious amount of Commodore Kit and nicely set up as well !

I liked the English Country Garden and Putting on the Ritz tracks. The first time I ever saw a Sound Expander Keyboard, was at W.H. Smiths in Oxford back in the 1980's, it was playing the theme from Telstar. I look and heard on in amazement !

I think the Midi Player in Game Maker uses General Midi, it can be checked out easily enough though. I used to have Soundcards that used Yamaha Midi, some of the Midi Files for that played really well. Most of the PC's I've owned recently tend to have Realtek on-board, my newer Dell might have the same.

Were you able to look at Elastic Band Warrior on my website ? The game also requires a Title screen track, I'm not sure what kind of style, something urban, rock ... not sure !?! :O The game is based upon surreal events where I live, it could have been more bloody with other things, but the way it turned out with releasing good karma was good enough for me. In fact, I kind of like designing quirky games. Not saying the following hero game designers, Jeff Minter and Tony Crowther are quirky, I just love their style.

Elastic Band Warrior seems a lovely game. But it grinds so slowly on my PC, even someone with slow responses like me finds his enjoyment ruined! (But as my father's giving me no fewer than two PCs in the next few days, I can have a go on those and see how I fare.)

Looking forward to playing on the C64 and Amiga games you've made though. As I'm able to load them directly into my machines through the serial cables, I anticipate no niggly problems there.

When I've next got a sizeable amount of time, perhaps next week, I'll have a tinker and see what I can produce for it. First effort will more than likely be a fairly simple handful of open-ended melodies for you to loop and chain.

General MIDI's fine, you can scarcely go wrong with that.

And whilst I'm checking out and enjoying your stuff over the next few days, you may wish to look at some of my own old games, one of them being my favourite, Dirty Colonel: http://www.dustybin.org.uk/Colonel.d64

More rudimentary than your stuff, being done in simple BASIC, I used to try to be satirical, or just plain daft, to make the most of it. Mind you, Bird Flu came out glossier because I used the Codemasters game creator, and the less said about Dr. Shipman's Computer Emulator the better! (The whole foul batch can be found here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.br ... Parade.htm)

As for the Commodore gear, you should see it now. I've got my MIDIs, my Action Replays, my cynthcart, image scanner, wallmounted joystick for synth control, etc. Time will come when an updated photo will get bunged up.

You still there?

If so, I can try to make something out of The Typewriter by Leroy Anderson. It'd go lovely with your office game. The General MIDI wavetable seems to have made no allowance for bell and typing sounds but if I can't do anything strictly within the wavetable I can make a MP3 of a mix which would include a real typewriter.

http://thompsonian.info/type.mid

Commie_User wrote:You still there?

If so, I can try to make something out of The Typewriter by Leroy Anderson. It'd go lovely with your office game. The General MIDI wavetable seems to have made no allowance for bell and typing sounds but if I can't do anything strictly within the wavetable I can make a MP3 of a mix which would include a real typewriter.

http://thompsonian.info/type.mid

Yep ! I'm still here ! I was actually thinking of about this tune, the last time I heard it was on some documentary. The tune sounds quite bouncy, however, the midi sounds like it needs some work. Is there a triangle sound in midi ? That could be a bell, not sure about the typewriter sound, I guess there is no click type sound in the midi wavetable ? Also, is there a copyright issue with this song ?

Anything's 'available in MIDI' if you're prepared to program the waveforms on a synthesiser. As for preset General MIDI I have no idea. I presume not if the MIDI file doesn't fire them from the standard wavetable.

As this is a C64-centered site I could fire up the old girl later on and have a tinker about.

As the composition was put out in 1950 there are no copyright issues. As things stand you can't renew copyright, which accounts for the likes of Gerry Marsden and pals lobbying governent to change the law as their tracks will be in PD very soon.

Another thing I'm thinking about is to roll a simple repetitive melody for in the game itself featuring computers, telephones, doors closing, papers and pens being shuffled and other officey sounds.

Either that or I can point this other fella your way and see what he can do. He emailed me out of nowhere tonight after advice on C64 music making and I may direct him here.

Here's a first try at in-game music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvVc-oHW8tY

As there's no office-type sound effects in General MIDI, I may as well record the whole lot in proper audio and you can have that. It'll come out a lot more polished.

As it stands, hear this demo mix.