SAP file divides into two parts. First part (in text format) describes player/music type and contains credits for the song. Second part (in binary format) contains player and music data formed into Atari Binary File format. First part - text info ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For identification of the format, it always starts with "SAP" string. After that the credits follow. However, this is not fixed order, just a recommendation. Each line should end with EOL string (0D 0A). Credits tags: AUTHOR "" - Name of composer. For ASMA purposes, the name should consist of real name and nickname (scene handle) in parentheses. No scene group allowed. If song was composed by more authors, use "&". Examples: AUTHOR "Dariusz Duma (Dhor)" AUTHOR "Lukasz Sychowicz (X-Ray) & Piotr Swierszcz (Samurai)" NAME "" - Song title. No restrictions, except for it shouldn't contain quotation marks. Use apostrophes instead. Example: NAME "Jocky Wilson's Darts Challenge" DATE "" - Copyright year or year of creation. If exact date is known, it can also be included in DD/MM/YYYY format. Examples: DATE "1986" DATE "1993-1994" DATE "28/08/1997" DATE "12/2001" After that the player info follows: TYPE - player type (see below) PLAYER - address of player part which will be executed in 1/50 sec intervals (or as defined with FASTPLAY) MUSIC - address with music data (for C type) INIT - address of player part which will init player (for all types except C) SONGS - number of songs. If SONGS tag not defined, the default value is 1. DEFSONG - first song which will be played when .sap is loaded (i.e. the main game theme). This value is counted from zero (if there are 5 songs in the file and the last is the default, the value will be DEFSONG 4). The default is 0 if DEFSONG not defined. FASTPLAY - number of lines between each call of playing routine (312 by default, which is one screen - 1/50 of sec.). For example for double-speed song put here the value 156 (312/2). 99% of songs are single-speed which means that you don't have to define the FASTPLAY variable for them. Works for player TYPE "B". Another values recommended: 104 (triple speed), 78 (quadruple speed) STEREO - song uses dual POKEY configuration. commands PLAYER, MUSIC, INIT contain addresses in hexadecimal format. Both lower- and uppercase characters are allowed for the number. PLAYER A000 MUSIC 1234 INIT f42e commands SONGS, DEFSONG contain decimal numbers: SONGS 10 DEFSONG 9 command TYPE contains single character which describes player type. The following player types are supported: TYPE C - player from CMC (Chaos Music Composer). In this case, also these commands must appear: PLAYER, MUSIC. Additionaly you can define SONGS and DEFSONG. Player will be initialized as follows: lda #$70 ldx #MUSIC jsr PLAYER+3 lda #$00 ldx #DEFSONG jsr PLAYER+3 in 1/50 intervals will be executed: jsr PLAYER+6 This is just internal structure already contained in SAP player, you don't have to add this code to the CMC player. TYPE B - any player. In this case, also these commands must appear: PLAYER, INIT. Additionaly you can define SONGS and DEFSONG. Player will be initialized as follows: lda #DEFSONG jsr INIT in 1/50 intervals will be executed: jsr PLAYER TYPE S - SoftSynth. Like type "C", this type is temporary, and is used only for special type of songs, that were composed using program SoftSynth. TYPE D - Digital. In SAP file with this type, there must be also defined commands "INIT" and "PLAYER". "PLAYER" (like in type B) sets address of procedure that will be called in 1/50s intervals and (like in type B) must end with RTS opcode. INIT this time is a bit different. It sets address of procedure that will be called (with number of song in register A) to initialize program, but it can't end with RTS. It should start playing digis in endless loop. In SAP player two ANTIC registers $D40A and $D40B are emulated. They help playing samples. D40B register increases its contents each two screen lines. D40A holds CPU till the end of actually drawn line. SAP emulates Atari in PAL with disabled screen. It means that we have 312 lines per screen, each taking 105 CPU cycles and 9 cycles of memory refresh (114 cycles per line). One more type is recognized by SAP player - TYPE M. Right now it's exactly the same as TYPE B but this differentiation is for future SAP releases. Planned features: TYPE R - Registers. In this type, binary part is not an Atari binary file. This part contains values that will be directly written to Pokey registers ($D200-$D208) in 1/50s intervals (or intervals defined with FASTPLAY tag). TIME xx:xx - Song duration. This is actually already supported by SAP WinAMP plug-in. It's still unclear how will subsongs be handled with TIME tag. Possibly it will also support tenths or hundredths of second (xx:xx.x or xx:xx.xx). Example of the header: SAP AUTHOR "Jakub Husak" NAME "Inside" DATE "1990" SONGS 3 DEFSONG 0 TYPE B INIT 0F80 PLAYER 247F Second part - binary data ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This part contains player and music data represented in Atari binary file format. This format has two bytes header FF,FF. The following two bytes tell the loader where to load data, and next two bytes tell where the data end. Init data block ($02E2,$02E3) is not supported. A little example: FF FF 00 20 04 20 01 42 A3 04 D5 \___/ \_________/ \____________/ A B C A - Binary file header identification (always FF FF) B - Load addres (StartAddr, EndAddr in LO,HI order - $2000 to $2004) C - Data (that will be loaded from StartAddr) This example will load values 01,42,A3,04,D5 into memory from $2000 to $2004. How to create .SAP file ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ First of all we need to rip music from a game or a demo and save it in Atari binary file. Next we can create a text file with description (as described above), then we can make .sap file by linking these two files. We can do that using DOS command "copy", e.g.: copy /b music.txt+music.bin music.sap The file is made now! If you didn't find that song in ASMA, feel free to send it to pg@dspaudio.com with all needed information (see ASMA.TXT for details). The song should be then included in the nearest ASMA update.