SPC Studio/Ideas

Use this page for suggesting ideas and features for the incoming SPC Studio tool.

Etherpad ideas discussion page: https://etherpad.net/p/amx-amv-amt-idea -- everything from Etherpad will eventually get migrated here into formal ideas.

SPC Studio is split into four main cores

1. Internal

• Addmusic Controller (Game engine side) -> the middle program that is between the SMW/YI/F-zero/etc. core engine and the currently S-APU engine. The controller handles all music, SFX and special operations requests and does the proper calls or decisions to the currently running Addmusic Engine. Sound effects can be combined, parallelized, halt though a ring-buffer or discharged, depending on the user settings and song specifications. Full flexibility warranted with minimal hijacks in mind.
• DSP Driver (SPC engine side)

2. External

• Addmusic (music inserter)
• Digital Audio Workstation (music creator)

Ideas for Addmusic Controller

• Minimized impact: Minimize number of game hijacks for a less invasive tool and keep the original game behavior (for example, SFX and misc. songs) close as possible.
• Addmusic Accelerator: attempts reducing at maximum loading times when handling music, either by reducing the amount of samples uploads, regrouping songs whenever possible and being possible to change songs without pausing the game. It will work by the user specifying the songs that will be used before running SPC Studio, based on that SPC Studio will optimize the data structures on the ROM to they work together better knowing what songs may be loaded next.

(Add ideas here)

Ideas for SPC Engine

• Panpot LFO (Like what you can hear in Squaresoft's SNES VGM)
• Provide an option to looping each channel asynchronously
• BPM modifier: 5 ms base timer, tick until 250. Might warrant 250% speed up according initial studies and accurate beats-per-minute representation. Proof-of-concept needed.

(Add ideas here)

Ideas for Music Inserter

(Add ideas here)

Ideas for Music Creator

• Piano roll format
• Like most DAWs, the creator could have the option to show an panel for making articulations/keyframes; volume, expression, modulation/vibrato, pitch bend, and so on. The parameters/levels would be based on the capabilities of the engine you choose to make SPC music for. For example, if you're making something for a hack of Super Mario World, you'll be limited to what you can do in a Super Mario World SPC.
• Sample tuning by coarse and cent: This is good for making sure samples aren't off-tuned.
• SPC700 reverb/echo options based on capabilities
• ASDR paremters for samples
• Samples can be imported in WAV or BRR format, but you can import samples from SPC files of tracks as well.

Each of these ideas above are inserted by Carlo Nassar from YouTube.