Dominator (Matt Gray, 1989)

system-3's shoot-'em-up (1989) with a soundtrack by matt-gray — "By the time I did Dominator for System 3, a dance-track influence was increasingly creeping into my tracks" — and the tune whose subtune 6 became the only published source of a classic C64 composer's driver (sources: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview, s-matt-gray-dominator-source).

Facts#

• Written at System 3's then-new London office, though Gray "was still happy to work remotely from home" (source: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview).
• On 2014-11-26 Gray released "the original source code to one of my Dominator 6 subtunes under Creative Commons" (BY-NC 4.0, with the 64tass cross-assembler) — 1033 lines headed PLAYER V4.2 (C)1987, tune data included — and ran a competition for tunes composed in it, closing 2015-03-31 (source: s-matt-gray-dominator-source). What the file contains is on matt-gray-player.
• The Reformation Kickstarter's £40 000 stretch goal committed him to "six new SIDs in my old Dominator driver: imaginary sequels to my old SIDs, such as Dominator 2 and Last Ninja 2 – The Lost Level" (source: s-matt-gray-dominator-source).
• VGMPF's maniacs-of-noise gameography also lists Dominator (1989-07) among MoN's C64 credits (source: s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise); Gray places MoN's arrival at System 3 around his last game there, Vendetta, in March 1989 (source: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview).

• "I did several tracks for this & the dreaded SFX. But they left the best track off the game. It was used for a demo but taken out of the game. I don't think System 3 liked the music much, but I think it's ok overall" (source: s-retrogamesmaster-matt-gray-interview).

Composing in the driver: Tognon's guide (SIDin #14, 2015)#

• Build: 64tass.exe dom6-public.asm (Windows; the assembler is in the zip) or c64tass dom6-public.asm (Linux), then load a.out in vice; entries had to stay in 64tass format. Issue 14's addendum adds a fully commented copy of the source and an empty template, empty_public.asm — one tune, 32 blank instruments, 166 blank patterns T0 … T165, 32 blank drum tables DBT0 … DBT31, 16 blank plex tables (nine of three notes, four of four, three of two) — with seven steps: speed (TDATA .BYTE 0,5), instrument rows, drum tables (DBT2 .BYTE $81,$30,$11,$02,$FF), plex rows (P1 .BYTE $08,$03,$00), patterns (T0 .BYTE $FA,$01,$75,G1,$FF), tracks (TUNE1 .BYTE T0,T1,T1,T2,T12,$FF; $FE instead of $FF to stop), and readability constants (INSTR = $FA, FLUTE = $00, ARPEG = $FD, DUR5 = $75) (matt-gray-player, tracking-workflow; source: s-sidin14-dominator-player).
• What the released file holds: three songs (TUNE, OVER, FIN at speeds 5, 3, 4; TN starts at 3), 57 patterns T0 … T56, seven plex tables, two drum tables DT/BT, at least 14 instruments (Tognon decodes 0, 1, 4, 9 and 13); its note table tunes A4 to 424 Hz on PAL (source: s-sidin14-dominator-player).
• Outcome, in Gray's words (October 2015): "probably finished for entries by now … There haven't really been many entries so far, but what there has been has been good listening" (source: s-sidin15-matt-gray-interview).

The last of three engines#

Of matt-gray's drivers that Tognon has reverse-engineered, this one is the most developed: his stated reading order is Driller → Serpent Demo → Dominator, "as features maturated from one to another". The Serpent Demo build still uses the Driller command set (two-byte durations, arpeggio from the instrument, fixed pulse limits) and adds only the sample voice; everything the V4.2 tables do beyond that arrived here (matt-gray-player; source: s-sidin15-serpent-demo-player).

Related#

matt-gray · matt-gray-player · system-3 · last-ninja-2 · driller · maniacs-of-noise

Sources#

s-matt-gray-dominator-source · s-c64com-matt-gray-interview · s-vgmpf-matt-gray · s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise · s-retrogamesmaster-matt-gray-interview · s-sidin14-dominator-player · s-sidin15-matt-gray-interview · s-sidin15-serpent-demo-player