BotB Advent Calendar 2020

131652

The battle is fixed, happy submitting everyone!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask!!

131653

battle of the bits

131657

i think until it is fixed, i will share the theme, rules & format here:

We will have 24 formats in this battle, one for each day! Every format will have a different bitpack and/or theme.
You can read more about this series here.

CHECK THE RULE PAGE FOR THE CURRENT FORMAT AND BITPACK

Don't think you have to use all 24 hours for every entry (which isn't possible anyway, if you have to sleep and eat from time to time (most people need to sleep and eat)). This is basically an XHB with timezone-support ;D
What I mean by this, is that the average time you should put into an entry is 1 to 4 hours. I can't stop you from working a lot longer on your track of course, but don't think you're forced to do this. The usual XHB-rule applies: Your entry should be done within the day, please don't submit tracks you finished earlier.

The voting categories for this battle are:
hot chocolate, decorativity, candlelight, surpriseness, advent pants

131664

What’s the format schedule

131665

the formats are secret and only one per day is revealed. this should always happen at midnight PST

131676

The fun of an advent calendar is that you don't know what you get until you open the door when that specific day comes. No peaking! you don't want to be on the bearded mans naughty list and wind up with an caolgear badge in your stalking xD

131685

Hot chocolate...hummmmm

131694

ok, folks, sorry about the messy roll out!

if i had put the advent calendar code one line lower it would have worked lol :shrug:

131698

Cool :o

131713

this is -excuse me- a damn fine batol idea

131714

Ooooh a SID. Will definitely participate.

131735

too bad my brain too tiny to do sid atm

131756

yes
should i update the entry period each day, so that it gets more clear?

edit: i will do this !

131764

it shouldnt work

because: in regular majors, the late submit works because even if the entry period is technically over, there is a timeframe where botb allows uploads to all the formats. the formats all exist.
in this case, the format token is replaced, which means the system is looking for it and blocks submission if it cant find the token!

131805

soo.. do i submit as mp3?
i mean, on the submit page it says "Music made for the Commodore Amiga. 4-channel .mod file!"
but it doesn't seem like deflemask can export it as that

131810

you have 6 hours left from now if you want to submit an amiga .mod file only, which isn''t supported by deflemask. there are a lot of trackers that support .mod but generally people use openmpt or milkytracker

131818

oh i am silly, i didn't notice the post above said "DAY 1" (in huge letters), thought it was commodore 64 2day. that clears stuff up lol

131823

A friendly reminder to all my fellow BotBr's and N00B's alike,

Make double sure you check the bottom of the info page. Right under the rules and questions and contact text. There will be a space for for the BITPACK TEXT or SAMPLE PACK of the day.

There will be new instructions or a sample pack for every day of the calendar, so make sure and check it before you get excited about the days format :)

I am sure its an honest mistake if you happened to have missed it (after al I have had to be reminded twice in two days)

All N00BZ!!4-L1F3!!!
--TristEndo

131824

Oh, I get it.

131829

just wanna say, you all already blow my expectations. 28 amigamod submissions holy shit :O

131847

Road to golden amigamod lives on :0

131852

even i submitted despite the suffering involved!

131936

interesting how the cover art preview can only show a random mixbattle_art entry as long as the token is added to the battle. dont worry about this, it will probably be fixed before voting starts! :3

132005

For Day 5 Wildchip, the theme is to write music for battleofthebits (see bitpack on the rules-page)
yuzu shared a cool list on discord, so if anyone here needs inspiration

1. Main Page
2. Forum Page
3. Browser Page
4. Lyceum Theme
5. The Arena
6. Charts
7. 404 Error Thames
8. Badge Theme
9. OHB Badgest
10. OHB Starting Countdown

youre totally free to come up with your own thing of course c:

edit: just to make clear. one song is enough! you can technically do more than one, but my idea was to choose one page and do one track for it!!

132026

Cool theme :p

132107

about sms on day 6, can we use ym2413 as well, from japanese sms?

132111

just to remind everyone: you can use sneventracker for SMS, which is a famitracker fork! that means its basically like doing nsf !!!!

nitrofurano: i dont think so. SN7 chip only (if thats wrong, someone else has to correct me)

132113

would that be sms+ ?

132173

well, day 7 format shouldve been mariopantse, not pcx801, but since its hardcoded, i cant fix it. since its just a txt-bitpack, its not the biggest problem i guess, but now you know why the pack is mario mario lol

132180

watch nobody sumbit anything today cause its pc98 lmao

132183

tbf, pcx is quiet accessable now due to bambootracker and the last ohb had 10 entries! i have full trust in botb community :3

132187

looks like i was wrong and im totally fine with that

132203

Bambootracker

132212

hello!
if you wanna do a sapx2 entry, make sure to download rmt here: http://raster.infos.cz/atari/rmt/rmt128.zip

and also get the dll files here: http://raster.infos.cz/atari/sa_libraries/sa_libraries.htm
put them in the rmt-dir

:D/

edit: heres a very simple step-by-step video on how to get sound out of rmt by loading a preset-instrument.
https://youtu.be/Jd_m_eYr4rg

132216

@kleeder i guess it's not that easy... :(

guest@ryzen3:~/Desktop/rmt2/rmt128$ wine Rmt.exe
0009:err:module:import_dll Loading library MFC42.DLL (which is needed by L"Z:\\home\\guest\\Desktop\\rmt2\\rmt128\\Rmt.exe") failed (error c000007b).
0009:err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Importing dlls for L"Z:\\home\\guest\\Desktop\\rmt2\\rmt128\\Rmt.exe" failed, status c0000135
0024:err:eventlog:ReportEventW L"Abnormal Termination: C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Borland\\InterBase\\bin\\ibserver.exe: terminated abnormally (-1)"
^C
guest@ryzen3:~/Desktop/rmt2/rmt128$

(perhaps i'm not using the correct dll versions? - i'm using Wine 5.0 on GNU/Linux Ubuntu 20.10 )

i'm afraid i'm only able to submit in vgm format (that actually supports dual-c03051 ) - i wanted to avoid to submit generative stuff this time, perhaps i can do something composing on hexdumps... :(

(and how many entries can we submit? only once per day?)

132223

i dont really know what to do about this errors, because i never had them and i use windows so ... uhh ... :(

yes, only one entry per format per battle is allowed on botb! and since we do one format per day, you can only submit one entry per day c:

132224

@nitrofurano I can't get RMT to work under wine (5.22 staging) either. you can try installing mfc42 using winetricks but even after doing that RMT crashed due to "unhandled page fault" when using the dlls. it will run without them but it still crashes when you try to open the project menu.

you might get lucky using different wine versions but I didn't feel like putting in the effort. your choices may be a VM or another machine running windows. I think there are other sap trackers but they're native to the Atari 8-bit computers, you could emulate those but it may be difficult to work with.

132227

@kleeder @argarak thanks!

@argarak sometimes i use 8bt home computer emulators, but i'm more comfortable with z80-based ones - 8bit atari and commodore (and even apple2) are still way out of my "comfort zone"...

132255

Re: this comment

Day 9 was originally planned as the pcx-day. because the format tokens got mixed up, we will now have mariopants extended instead (which was meant to appear on day 7).
todays bitpack was planned to be the pcx-bitpack, but i think it works pretty well for pants!

REMINDER: This is EXTENDED pants, not regular mariopaint. you can use F9 in mariopants to make your song LONG

132256

for people needing inspiration (not cover) for the day 9: https://somafm.com/player/#/now-playing/illstreet

132310

hello everyone!
in case you wanna try lgpt today, i made a short tutorial to explain the basics. i didnt use a script, so its probably confusing or hard to follow from time to time, but it should still give you an idea on how to use this tracker.
theres a samplepack provided, which should help you with getting started. its easy, you should try it c:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLcVO3Sly8

132320

sorry saying, lgpt seems terrible... :(

132424

Man I had something for day 11.... unfortunately I ran out of ideas before it was finished. And I didn't think of this until now, past deadline. Though I still had no ideas how to finish it

132493

day13: ignore the first sentence of the bitpack, if its confusing for you.
the idea is to compose 3 versions of the same track!

132503

Well, I don't know if it is confusing but it require explanation! Yes, you have to write 3 different mood for the same track, and procedural music is the fact a game "react" to the player action to make the music more energic, or add tension when you are close to enemies etc. It was used in Divinity OS2, Rainworld, No Man Sky, Sore, a Mickey game etc (A Monkey Island too, said Lumby!).

My advice is to create a simple theme, then switch it to minor, add some tension for the second track, then create the battle theme with more drums and using ideas from the 2 others tracks! But you are free to work as you want.

And have fun!

132504

reminder for everyone: you can have multiple tracks in one nsf

132514

i think the term for that is "dynamic scoring", where the music changes depending on your environment or circumstances? (some fairly early examples of this include Banjo-Kazooie and Mario 64 but iirc they weren't the first)

NMS soundtrack was "procedural" more or less though (to match with the game's procedurally generated universe i guess) because 65dos recorded TONS of different snippets, and variations upon them, in order to give the dynamic soundtrack as much of a feeling of being "generated" and "unique" as possible. it's cool 'cause even the official soundtrack is basically just one possible take of how the music could be.

(i also heard from chatting with Chimeratio that Myst III also does something like this? but i have not played Myst myself)

132517

I may be wrong, but for me dynamic/adaptative music are part of procedural music. For example, playing random notes could be called procedural too. Here, what I propose in the bitpack was more often called dynamic/adaptative music, the later seems more frequent. But the instructions after, doing 3 version of the track, are enough to get your NSF done^^
No idea what was the first video game with did that, some considered Space Invader did that hehe. Because the pitch etc changed depending of the time left...
(imo, adaptation musics reacting to yourr actions, situations or enemies are more interesting! and make great immersion experience)

132518

all i hope for is that noone is too confused by teh theme to make something.
@confusedPerson: dont worry, just do something. c:

132581

pxtone is another pain in the arse, just like lgpt... :(

132638

hey everyone, if you dislike beepola or cant use it at all, be reminded of this: https://github.com/utz82/ZX-Spectrum-1-Bit-Routines

a lot of these have working xm-converters

132639

In the same vein there’s bintracker by irrlicht project and 1tracker by shiru in case you’re jonesing for altenatives.

Beeper has so many ways, let’s be surprising and not all use tritone xm :D

132695

remember this isnt meant to be a "put as much time of the day as possible into your entry"-battle and i never expected masterpieces and extremly perfect, polished entries here, no matter if visual, music, code or maps.
the idea is to just play around with the tools available, learn something new about all the cool botb formats and submit whatever came out of your experimentation at the end.

132698

doombuilder has some very helpful tutorials you can find here, im currently watching them http://www.doombuilder.com/index.php?p=tutorials

132703

anyone running DoomBuilder2 successfully on GNU/Linux, on Wine? this is what i got:
guest@ryzen3:~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Doom Builder 2$ wine Builder.exe
0009:err:seh:setup_exception_record stack overflow 864 bytes in thread 0009 eip f7bfa99f esp 00230fd0 stack 0x230000-0x231000-0x330000
guest@ryzen3:~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Doom Builder 2$ 0024:err:eventlog:ReportEventW L"Abnormal Termination: C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Borland\\InterBase\\bin\\ibserver.exe: terminated abnormally (-1)"

also tried version 1.68 - runs, but crashes a lot...

can't we use Slade instead? http://slade.mancubus.net/index.php?page=downloads

132704

yeah you can use slade. I'm not sure if I ever got doom builder to run on wine but it's been a while since I tried...

132705

oh right, i wasnt implying that doombuilder is the only possible tool for this, it was just what i found first and thought was accessable and well documentated.
i used slade today as well, it seems like a very powerful tool with probably even more functionality :D/

132722

when I make maps on Linux, I end up using Eureka
I don't like it nearly as much as Doom Builder, but it works.

Slade is dead useful but I don't think I've ever tried to edit the actual map data in it, mostly just graphics importing.

132748

this battle is surprising me every day. never expected that many doom wads!
reminder for day 17: we have a BITPACK with SAMPLES for renoise, you have to use them to make your entry!

132778

If anybody is having troubles opening today's bitpack in an earlier version of renoise fear not! You are able to open the renoise file like a zip folder, extract the samples and begast a new file in the version you are using. Just please don't add any samples that are not provided in the bitpack already, thank you.

Tip Courtesy of Argarak

132832

listening Motorhead, Judas Priest and ZZ Top for the mood! :D (which more would you recommend?) - and compared with https://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/5574/complete-gameboy-trackers-sequencers-synths-list/ , isn't the tools list at https://battleofthebits.com/lyceum/View/gameboy%20(format) way incomplete? and which formats can we submit?

132833

the tools list is listing the most common tools and whatever people added there. if you have more cool tools, feel free to add some yourself.
usually, you should try to submit a file that can be played back on hardware, emulators or with gb-players.
the mp3 file format is added, because lsdj-users might not have an option to get a .sav or .lsdsng from their gameboy- but it should only be used if there are no other options.
the music should still be made for a gameboy, obviously.

i personally think mp3 shouldnt be allowed, but lsdjunkies will kill me for even saying this

132836

thanks @kleeder ! :) (and i'm in the oppinion that mp3 shouldn't be allowed even on allgear battles! :D )

132936

hello again!
vic20 music can be done by either using the native tracker vic-tracker 2 or by using the converter mod2vic.

the victracker version with note names was just reuploaded two days ago here.

the mod2vic script and a lot more information is in this thread.

if you need help or have problems with setting up something, im happy to help in the chats!

lyceum: https://battleofthebits.com/lyceum/View/vic20%20(format)

132947

guest@ryzen3:~/Desktop/vic20/mod2vic$ python mod2vic/converter.py horace.mod --output tune.s --title "humongous horace"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "mod2vic/converter.py", line 6, in <module>
from lib.modtag.modtag import load_module
File "/home/guest/Desktop/vic20/mod2vic/mod2vic/lib/modtag/modtag.py", line 36
print("\t|", note.pitch, hex(note.effect), hex(note.parameters), end="")
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
guest@ryzen3:~/Desktop/vic20/mod2vic$

132949

seems like its loading the script with python2, you should make sure its using python3 depending on which PATH you have for this version

132955

@kleeder yes, replacing "python" with "python3" on the command line was enough, thanks! :) - now my humble question is what should we use instead of win2c64 on gnu/linux, perhaps lin2c64 from https://www.aartbik.com/retro.php ? tried it and got this: https://pastebin.com/raw/gdFd7mH6

132957

ugh thats a good question and i dont know the answer here. maybe someone else here is able to help..?

132967

and how can we open .prg files? (i have mame ("mame vic20" from command-line) and xvic (vice) installed and running perfectly ) - and then, how can we record a wav/mp3/ogg/flac/etc from there?

132968

prg can be opened with vice for sure, thats what i use. i just record my system audio while i play back the thing

133011

catchy ringtones always reminds me j-horror movies

133049

over 375 entries, thats a new record!! :O

133052

please keep in mind, JS/Flash etc is NOT allowed for html/css. You should really only use html and css.

133053

oh right, and html is not a programming language. "i cant program" is NOT a vaild excuse. you can learn html in 5 minutes if you watch a tutorial on youtube

133054

^
i highly suggest using wysiwyg editors like bluegriffon and frontpage even, if you don't know html and/or css. however, if you already know how to write in html, i still suggest these -- just make sure you use code view. live previewing is a good thing to have sometimes :)

133077

@big_lumby you forgot mentioning alternativeto! ;) - https://alternativeto.net/software/bluegriffon/

and some questions: can we use css inside html? and can we use webfonts? and considering that we can use webfonts (just like as we can use pictures), i guess that the webfonts should also be created from us? (not a problem for me, i'm a fontforge "addict"! ;) ) - or can be used a webfont from a libre/ofl foundry (like http://osp.kitchen/ ) instead?

133079

yes, i would agree with that. if you create your own font, you're free to use it. and css inside html should be fine as well

133081

a (stupid) question: "Max Filesize:1,024kb" means 1mb the .zip file (for example)?

133082

yep

133274

438 entries.

...the synclisten is gonna be a long'un.

133342

Jesus Christ, that's probably the largest amount of entries I have seen so far.
Gonna take a while to look at everything and vote.

133344

i added two more weeks for voting.
if people are about to do a synclisten, it would be good to announce it soon (maybe in a new bulletin)

133345

thanks for this compo. the restriction of a day just took the pressure off and more fun was had (and tunes were made) as a result. compare that to feeling like you have to make your 'lifes work' on a month long major and you can see why so many entries were made here

reminded me of kf's nsf pitboss round where a similar timeframe was in place and that might be my fav compo

133361

That's so many entries it's like we need a separate advent calendar just for voting.

133362

you have 22 days, thats almost a day for every format (and the visual entries are always easy and quick to vote on c:)

134909

congrats to all

here's the results stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zE_IhIjvxA&feature=em-lsb-owner&ab_channel=BattleoftheBits

134910

im kinda tired rn, so no BIG post but another THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING! because this was by far the most exciting thing i ever did on botb so far and seeing so many participants was just awesome.

also special thanks to all voters who helped to create good results and our synclisten hosts as well. wow ow owwowowowowowo!!!!

and thanks for puke7 for giving me the opportunity!! i am very glad and happy about this!!!

Average Score: 24.204

134912

...the synclisten was indeed a long'un.

big dankeschoen to you, kleeder, for hosting this battle! lgpt zxbeep doom html and photomash were all my favorite days to work on, ton of fun with those days
happy 2021 to you and to the rest of botb!! :D/

138763

just in time for christmas! be sure to DL teh b**************

158704

i was just thinking, the 2020 advent calendar major was one of the most fun times in the past few years of my life because i didn't take any time off for work that year due to covid, so i had time off for the whole major and it was a new thing (excluding the previous ohb series) so it was very exciting to try it out. i made songs i liked, i collabed some, and i scored well on some things which is nice ego boost (even though i dont want to associate my ego to botb scores in general). it was also cool to see all the other entries. thanks kleeder for putting it together and puke for reworking the site to accomodate for the new battle format