Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Sounding Off

I'm currently implementing sound in Cannonball (the name for the cross platform OutRun engine). Much like my approach to the video hardware, the sound hardware will be emulated, whilst the actual Z80 program code is converted to readable C++.

I've implemented the SDL sound layer to output the audio, hooked up emulation of the Sega PCM chip and created the interface between the main program code and sound code. I've successfully converted enough of the Z80 code to trigger basic PCM samples. The entire Z80 rom is decompiled and commented, so progress from here should be steady.

There will (eventually) be two approaches to audio in Cannonball. The first approach will purely use the original ROMs for music and sound as discussed above. The second approach will allow players to configure audio files as replacement music tracks. This will allow you to play the game with the various remixes that have been produced over the years.

Once sound is implemented, I'll open up the source code repository to public access. This will allow everyone to play with and port the source code to new platforms for non-commercial purposes.

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