I added a "CPU percentage" indicator to the synthesizer based on the BASS_GetCPU() function. With antialiasing, both oscillators, both sub-oscillators, LFO, filter, and volume envelope enabled, one voice uses around 2-3% CPU and all twelve use well over 20%. I may need to do a bit of performance optimization...

Separating the synthesizer "voices" from keyboard keys wasn't as terrible as I had thought it would be, so the synthesizer now responds to MIDI Note On, Note Off, and All Note Off events. The synthesizer saves the velocity (force) data from the note events but doesn't do anything with it yet.

Switching the oscillators, filters, and envelopes from ( Read more... )

I added MIDI input to my synthesizer program. It parses MIDI message bytes properly, though it only prints debug output messages right now. I have to change how note triggering works to make any further progress.

I've continued working on that synthesizer program for the past week. It now has a second oscillator; oscillator frequency displays; greatly-enhanced waveform display that shows live filter and volume effects; band-limited hard-sync effect for the sine, pulse, sawtooth, and triangle waveforms; an updated menu system; the ability to enable and ( Read more... )

The "ideal" sawtooth, pulse, and triangle waves have sharp discontinuities that produce infinite harmonics, which cause trouble when sampled. Harmonics above half the sampling frequency "fold back" on themselves, and any harmonics above the sampling "wrap around". This can produce some really awful sounds. After seeing how the harmonics fold ( Read more... )

My mini virtual analog synth now has a spectrum analyzer, and it's been very educational and surprisingly useful.

It shows logarithmic frequency along the X axis and logarithmic power along the Y axis. Each column represents one semitone, with note keys beneath the corresponding columns. Each row represents 6dB attenuation divided into two 3dB ( Read more... )

Over the Christmas and New Years vacation, I've been working on a small virtual analog synthesizer console app. It started life as a simple demo program included with the BASS sound library, but it's pretty much unrecognizable now ( Read more... )

I've been focusing on BZ1 user-generated missions lately, and got Instant Action, Deathmatch MP, and Strategy MP running Lua mission scripts over the weekend. I put together a (very) limited MPI scenario with a Soviet Tank and Recycler on Z Snowed In, which is how I discovered that the AIP is useful but not self-sufficient. BZ1 only supports a ( Read more... )

After a few more glitches and flubs, I think I have Battlezone working properly again. Instant action (Inst04XMission), deathmatch multiplayer (MultDMMission) and strategy multiplayer (MultSTMission) now support Lua scripting in addition to their normal "fixed-function" behavior.

To test out the new Lua scripting feature, I added a simple script ( Read more... )

Now that Battlezone is onboard the Lua 5.1 train, I have more options when it comes to Lua implementations. LuaJIT is a particularly attractive choice based on performance, running several times faster than the stock Lua implementation in interpreted mode and dozens to over a hundred times faster in just-in-time compiled mode. The downside is ( Read more... )