Re: [stella] New Music Effects

Subject: Re: [stella] New Music Effects
From: "Paul Slocum" <paul-stella@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 10:39:12 -0600

How much overhead does adding the music driver and a short sequence like this add to a game?

Very little except for ROM space. It varies a bit depending on which features are used, but my music driver generally uses 2-3 bytes of persistent RAM plus 3-4 temp RAM locations and I think a max of about 400 cycles (5 lines) per frame. You just call the driver once per frame in Vblank or Overscan.


Is it low enough to consider using for 4K games or is it really only useful for 8K+ games?

Well if you can leave enough free space it can be done. Combat Rock is 4k. :o) The driver and music data in the demo I posted are 700 bytes total, but it's an older version of the driver. The latest version of the driver which represents the music data in a more efficient form could probably do the same demo in about 400 bytes.


-Paul

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