Music during loading. Is it possible?

Expert (127)

25-10-2021, 01:55

Hi!

I know that on the Commodore 64, during the loading of games, both cassette and disc, music was often inserted, in some cases even small video games such as Space Invaders or Pacman.

Is the same thing possible on MSX-1 ?

Thanks!

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Van Wlcracks

Hero (566)

25-10-2021, 06:05

Fun question.

With opl4 or musicmodule you could play looping samples, because the unit is standalone

With a basic msx, maybe cassette if you write your own cassette loaders. The psg can produce sound while loading, the interrupts are disabled. Disk loading the interrupts are sometimes disabled, so the timing would be bad.
In theory it would be possible.
I think msx can do a lot if you really want. Coding your custom loaders it could be done.

Van Randam

Paragon (1431)

25-10-2021, 07:27

There at least is a big demo (i don't remember which) that has samples in the MSX Audio that are played while loading.

Van TheKid

Paragon (1238)

25-10-2021, 07:31

I can confirm that with the philips music module with samples you can, we used that a lot in our 4 mega demo’s. Playing a song is a different matter.

Van Metalion

Paragon (1625)

25-10-2021, 07:48

If you write your own loader, everything is possible.

Van tfh

Prophet (3347)

25-10-2021, 08:19

Randam wrote:

There at least is a big demo (i don't remember which) that has samples in the MSX Audio that are played while loading.

That is probably Fony DemoDisk #2

Van [D-Tail]

Ascended (8263)

25-10-2021, 08:51

Randam wrote:

There at least is a big demo (i don't remember which) that has samples in the MSX Audio that are played while loading.

And NOP's Unknown Reality.

Van SjaaQ

Champion (375)

25-10-2021, 10:21

Music is not a real problem when you would be willing to sacrifice loading speed, music timing and load from SD/HD.

Whenever you load data, interrupts might be disabled which screws up timing. You need to load less bytes at the same time to allow for more interrupts (slower loading).

Disk loading using the BIOS disables a lot of interrupts and therefore it will have the most impact. Traxplayer or the screen 3 animations we did actually did the loading of data from disk directly from the hardware and we could interleave sample playing with loading data.

The project we are working on now does a lot of sample loading and cannot play music because of that. Everything is sample based and the OPL4 does not support playering and uploading data to sram at the same time.

Van DaikuMaryuGaiking

Expert (127)

25-10-2021, 13:47

Thanks for all the information, although I ask for something very basic, just like on the C64, that is, PSG music when loading a game on MSX1 base.
Considering that reading on floppy would have interrupt problems, at least with the cassette is it possible to have music and stable loading? ... or maybe a minigame?

Example:

C64 Tape Invaders loader

Van santiontanon

Paragon (1810)

25-10-2021, 16:50

It is definitively possible, since if I don't remember wrong, the "Mutant Zone" game for MSX1 id it! (I'm speaking from memory, so, I might be wrong), but I think it has a minigame while loading, with music.

Van Timmy

Master (200)

25-10-2021, 23:00

DaikuMaryuGaiking wrote:

Thanks for all the information, although I ask for something very basic, just like on the C64, that is, PSG music when loading a game on MSX1 base.

It is very basic on the C64, because loading games on the C64 is very S...L...O...W..., and they don't know better.

To be honest, the theory to do things during loading is the same as on the Spectrum, and is just as easy* as writing on the C64 or the Spectrum. But the MSX is just basically blessed with instant loading. And on the Spectrum, loaders are just better too.

*Note: writing specialised loaders on the C64 and the Spectrum is not easy, nor basic (but also not very hard if you know how).

PS. Didn't some MSX demos also play music and other stuff while loading? I wouldn't be surprised if this had already happened.