#23536 - zazery - Wed Jul 14, 2004 8:19 pm
I just found this article. I know the owner of the site and they always double check their sources before posting news. I guess it might be a bit harder to RE the sound engine then. Hopefully they will change it.
[url=http://nintendoinsider.com/site/EplAlFpVkuMXOSgEIi.php]
Here is the article[/url]
Last edited by zazery on Wed Jul 14, 2004 8:44 pm; edited 1 time in total
#23539 - benjamin - Wed Jul 14, 2004 8:29 pm
Is it me or does Nintendo implement some of the most draconian business and design deciseons one has ever seen?
#23546 - Abscissa - Wed Jul 14, 2004 11:22 pm
Hmm, if that is true, I would think that dozens of angry third-party developers would be enough to change their minds. After all, Nintendo is trying to build up better third party support - not destroy it again. Nintendo does have a history of being rather draconian - it's the only part of the big N that I don't like. The book "Game Over: Press Start to Continue" by David Sheff has some details on a lot of that stuff (Very good book, btw).
The explanation that article gives about having to take apart the CPU, Wi-Fi, etc. to get to the sound layer doesn't make much sense to me.
#23549 - dagamer34 - Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:01 am
Is there a source for this source? All is says is that it comes from Nintendo Insider. I'm kind of skeptical. The source could have been from a janitor working at Nintendo for all we know...
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#23555 - Gramps - Thu Jul 15, 2004 4:49 am
Okay, This is really a stretch for my personal knowledge,(technically speaking), but this really doesn't make sense to me.
First of all we know that the DS is going to be able to play GBA carts. Doesn't the GBA currently us a ARM7 processor? Wouldn't those carts be accessing the ARM7 processor? Wouldn't that mean they would be using the ARM7 in the DS?
And if not, wouldn't they be using the other processor in the DS? We already know that the GBA uses these sound engines. So if the DS is backwards compatable with GBA games, doesn't it make sense the this will still be available?
As I said, this is a little out of my league technologically, but it just seems like 2+2 doesn't equal 4 in this article.
#23573 - zazery - Thu Jul 15, 2004 3:33 pm
Probably with the ARM7 you are right but maybe not the ARM9. Then again no one has the DS except developers. I think this is for the DS games instead of the GBA games. Hopefully it's just something like they want to fix the audio system.
I talked to the person who owns the website. He is a good friend of mine and has been for many years posting 99% accurate news on whatever site he runs. The person who submitted this news to them is a long time friend of their website and he is a developer fo some company. I don't know any more detail but I think we can trust them on this news article.
#23574 - tepples - Thu Jul 15, 2004 4:04 pm
It depends on Nintendo's definition of the scope of the "sound engine".
Optimistic: Nintendo will provide a mixer (or an interface to the hardware mixer) as part of the DS operating system and will not allow licensed developers to write their own mixers or otherwise pass raw linear PCM to the hardware. This will probably shut out only those developers who want to include heavily data-compressed vocals (Puzzle Fighter and GSM Player anyone?) and real-time-synthesized instruments (music games with TB303 or other VCF based synthesizers?) in their games.
Pessimistic: Nintendo's sound engine will just take MIDI and wave files and then let the game make only volume and pan (no frequency change) adjustments to the wave file. Remember that if you can change the playback frequency of a wave file, you can make your own music engine.
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#24364 - modab - Mon Aug 02, 2004 7:15 am
It seems implausible to believe the arm7 cpu would be accessible magically for GBA games but not DS games. Indeed, this, along with some other clues point to the possibility that GBA games will run on the ARM9 chip, and not the ARM7. ARM9 is at least vaguely backwards compatible with ARM7, and perhaps completely. And the ARM7 chip is double the clock of the GBA one, so you'd think if you wanted true backwards compatibility you'd have had the same chip.
Additional wild speculation on Nintendo's reasons for lockout: The FCC requires that they do so, because the wifi controls can't be allowed to be modified. This is currently the problem Intel is having in open sourcing wifi code for Linux.
#24368 - foog - Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:40 pm
well, what do yall wanna do about it? bombard Nintendo w/ emails n stuff...?
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#24734 - SmileyDude - Tue Aug 10, 2004 6:17 pm
I'm not sure what Nintendo would gain by doing this. Have there been lots of problems with sound code on the GBA (or the GCN)? Why should Nintendo care about how a developer handles music playback? I can understand that they might want a developer to use a hardware mixer if provided, but if there is a reason why a developer might not want to use the hardware, why would they want to stop them?
Honestly, I think it would be insane not to at the very least provide two PCM channels (hopefully 16-bit) for the developer to use. If those channels are two of 16 channels that are routed into the mixer, that's fine by me. But they pretty much have to be there, IMO.
Imposing artificial limitations on developers for no good reason seems like a sure-fire way to piss off the very people you depend on.
_________________
dennis
#24757 - dagamer34 - Wed Aug 11, 2004 12:22 am
There is really very little to worry about. Either developers are putting up with the situation or they are more eager to try out the other features in the DS.
Besides, there was just a new slew of info today and it looks like there were 60 new games announced.
An Impressive Lineup of Games Demonstrates Appeal of Nintendo DS
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#24759 - tepples - Wed Aug 11, 2004 12:28 am
As one would expect, not one of the announced titles has a name that sounds like that of a music game.
_________________
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#24784 - fr4nz - Wed Aug 11, 2004 3:13 pm
#24788 - keldon - Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:18 pm
I don't see the problem. The music industry runs on programs that don't have direct access to hardware. And it doesn't mean you can't create your own music replayer because you can feed your audio to the mixer.
This is all much ado about nothing.
#24809 - tepples - Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:32 pm
| keldon wrote: |
| The music industry runs on programs that don't have direct access to hardware. And it doesn't mean you can't create your own music replayer because you can feed your audio to the mixer. |
The announcement sounded to me as though a DS game couldn't feed a PCM stream to the mixer.
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-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#24824 - keldon - Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:49 pm
The article just said no direct audio hardware access, and we would have to use the same sound library to output sound. Nothing different to what we're doing in Windows with DirectX.
#24829 - dagamer34 - Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:46 am
| keldon wrote: |
| The article just said no direct audio hardware access, and we would have to use the same sound library to output sound. Nothing different to what we're doing in Windows with DirectX. |
I don't see why people would complain anyway, unless Nintendo screws it up. But I don't see them messing up their last chance of redemption. If the DS succeeds, it will probably give the revolution some momentum too. And it REALLY NEEDS some momentum coming into the next generation.
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#24833 - tepples - Thu Aug 12, 2004 2:12 am
| keldon wrote: |
| The article just said no direct audio hardware access, and we would have to use the same sound library to output sound. |
But the article also stated:
| Jonathan Coley wrote: |
| This means developers can't write their own "music replayer, sound effects mixer [or] a decent music GUI for musicians" who don't know much about scripting and programming. |
To me, that would point toward no way in the API to open an audio stream (that is, restricting the API to just converted-.wav and converted-.mid playback) rather than to an audio streaming API similar to what, say, the Allegro library provides.
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#24843 - keldon - Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:37 am
Yeah, I read all that, but I think it was more opinion based on the idea; than a fact of implication. Maybe we should ask him?
#24850 - fr4nz - Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:44 pm
some info from shin'en (saw on gaming-age forums)
| Quote: |
Hi,
we can't reveal too much about hardware because of the NDA with Nintendo.
However, i can tell you some things.
Sound Quality of the DS can even surpass CD quality. Nanostray will use
our DSX soundengine. If you ever heard what we pulled out of the GBA
with Iridion2 you can imagine what is possible on the DS. Compared to
Iridion2 we doubled the mixingrate (from 21khz to 44khz), doubled the
resolution (from 8bit to 16bit) and doubled the soundchannels from 8 to 16.
The DS Graphics hardware is VERY clean. With correct programming you
don't have any graphical glitches. In comparison to a N64 game there is
a much higher framerate (N64 had usually 20-30 frames, Nanostray has
60fps). N64 games used to have very blurry images due to a couple of
hardware drawbacks. Nanostray has high resolution textures and an
absolut crisp look.
Best regards
|
#24870 - keldon - Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:16 pm
Doesn't this mean that we will be unable to access sound in Homebrew without creating our own library; because we most certainly won't be allowed to use any of the commercially available engines. And it doesn't help that NO official information will be available because not even licensed developers will be given it.
#24883 - Miked0801 - Thu Aug 12, 2004 10:25 pm
Of course we're given the info, but we don't like the info given and try our own things instead. Why Nintendo is so pro MIDI is beyond me...
#24897 - sgeos - Fri Aug 13, 2004 5:57 am
| Miked0801 wrote: |
| Of course we're given the info, but we don't like the info given and try our own things instead. Why Nintendo is so pro MIDI is beyond me... |
My guess is that they have huge archives full of MIDIs.
-Brendan
#24922 - tepples - Fri Aug 13, 2004 5:21 pm
Of course, MIDI is just as good as S3M or XM if you can install your own sound font.
It appears the F-Zero and WarioWare MIDIs are even halfway rippable, as I found "MTrk" (the signature for a MIDI chunk type) in those ROMs.
_________________
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#24934 - keldon - Fri Aug 13, 2004 6:24 pm
SoundFont is okay if the soundcard FULLY supports it (which even the SoundBlaster doesn't); including reverb and envelope filters; otherwise your engine sounds, etc will not be so dynamic
#25219 - Zero - Wed Aug 18, 2004 11:40 pm
maybe nintendo is just not telling anyone how to use the second processor and get direct control over wifi/sound because they want the first batch of games to use their already written libraries so they will be more complete on the ds release date. then after a bit they open up the arm7 and let the coding madness begin.
MAYBE, or they could just be screwing up again....... 8)
#25221 - Miked0801 - Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:02 am
You dream Zero. Nintendo has never relinquished control of anything after release. Heck they rarely change anything before release. It's feels like it's an honor thing to them - "If someone needs to change my perfectly acceptable API, I must have made a mistake. But I never make mistakes so go jump off a bridge stupid Gaijin." At least on the GBA, we were able to get around their BIOS limitations by just not using them. We'll see if we can somehow bypass there limitations on DS as well. Nintendo = Closed Source.
#25225 - tepples - Thu Aug 19, 2004 1:31 am
| Zero wrote: |
| maybe nintendo is just not telling anyone how to use the second processor and get direct control over wifi/sound because they want the first batch of games to use their already written libraries so they will be more complete on the ds release date. then after a bit they open up the arm7 and let the coding madness begin. |
No, that's more Sony than anything else. Sony had everything go through the API for the first year or two of the PlayStation's existence.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#25230 - dagamer34 - Thu Aug 19, 2004 2:39 am
| tepples wrote: |
| Zero wrote: | | maybe nintendo is just not telling anyone how to use the second processor and get direct control over wifi/sound because they want the first batch of games to use their already written libraries so they will be more complete on the ds release date. then after a bit they open up the arm7 and let the coding madness begin. |
No, that's more Sony than anything else. Sony had everything go through the API for the first year or two of the PlayStation's existence. |
Well, the Playstation succeeded, and considering the alternative system at the time, I guess most developers would have rather used Sony's API than to have huge size constraints on the Nintendo 64.
But really though, this thread needs to die. No developer has publically complained about how Nintendo wants audio done (Miked0801 view's aren't exactly public) and seeing as how few of us are actually making a commercial game on the system, it shouldn't effect us either, at least not right now.
We have yet to even see the new DS play a game, yet alone run homebrew code. And the DS doesn't come out for another 3 months at least! Besides, the GBA has served us well... :)
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