So, what happened to that sound engine?

Oops! yeah I kind of forgot to post anything here didn’t I!  My bad.  Well it certainly didn’t stop, in-fact several versions of it have been released and the current revision is well underway.  It has been adopted as the Sound Engine of a rapid game development engine (RAPTOR) written by the group Reboot (which for me is a great honor!), and their continued support and help with its development has pushed it along in leaps and bounds.

The core of the engine has been fully converted to the RISC based DSP on the Jaguar, with only support setup functions being called by the 68000.  Improved code has reduced it’s size and increased it’s accuracy, as well as removing the need for any look-up tables at this time (I have a suspicion I may not be able to maintain this for full module playback compatibility.. time will tell).

The latest release being worked on (0.18) has a completely rewritten sound rendering core, reducing code size whilst increasing performance and efficiency and also tolerance for bus latency!  Working in systems as ‘limited’ as these gives you a far greater appreciation for the finite capabilities of the machine.  Modern machines have so much slack available to them in terms of bus speed and memory buffers that these considerations just don’t enter in.  In the case of the Atari Jaguar the single memory bus shared between 5 processors running at 25MHz, you have to take into account that what you ask for from main memory may not arrive for quite awhile, adding buffering to absorb these delays is an absolute requirement, unless you want horrible distorted sound.  Of course these buffers are limited to only a few KB as you need this limited RAM for your program code and variables.

So, progressing and with plenty of ideas in the pipeline.

New year, get on that bike

Not a new years resolutions, more an organic desire driven by the number of cycling related friends I have and watching the Revolution highlights on Monday.  Revolution wasn’t as bad as I thought but still not my thing, to give an example of what is more appealing to me (I don’t typically do spectator sports) I found two YouTube links Street Descent in Brazil, and Street descent in Chillie  (the Chillie one is my fave).  Neither of these are my riding style or skill level I must add! 😀

But watching those clips stirred the long slumbering desire to ride my bike again!  As she has been unused so much since having my original bike stolen in 2006, which really killed my buzz, I have decided to give her a full service and shock maintenance.  Extra handy as Evans are only across the road and the ONLY authorized Scott shock maintainer in the UK (license to print money? at £95 a shock, I think so 🙁 ).

Last night I started the bike service of 2012 and have removed the shocks ready to take over to Evans tonight after work, during the 2 weeks that should take before I get them back I am hoping to have a good go at cleaning up the rest of the bike, ready for riding in 2012 :D  Going to be uploading pics to the gallery here for anyone interested in pictures of a bike being tinkered with and cleaned 😀

I am mostly pleased with my alternative solution to pad spreaders (which I forgot to buy when in Evans).. cone spanners & cable ties! 🙂