Improved Music System

[jkotlinski]

This will likely not ever be done, BUT, e.g. Blazin' Forth seems to have a better music system in that:

• It is interrupt driven, so music can play while a graphic effect is rendered
• It uses Forth commands rather than MML strings, which has pros and cons...
  • Good: Using Forth commands instead of strings removes the need of supporting 16-bit string lengths
  • Good: It becomes somewhat easier to make algorithmic music
  • Bad: Using Forth commands removes MML compatibility, so it is not possible to reuse music made for other platforms

At least it seems like a very good thing to have an interrupt driven music player. Right now this is very LOW priority but can be bumped on request.

[jkotlinski]

For most practical cases like games and demos, music would likely be made using a separate music editor that has its own player, written in assembly. Having said that, this could still be interesting for creating algorithmically generated music in Forth.

[gitjeff2]

@jkotlinski on a related note, the FIMML implementation of MML is fully documented (Japanese, but Google Translate handles it just fine). I don't know if you're interested in extending Durex Forth's MML dialect or not but there are a lot of good features here like volume control, etc.

I think some NES development tools may use this dialect of MML as well.