Oooh sweet, I didn't know about this. Admittedly I would have preferred a ripped format as opposed to logged, though I'm yet to see how these shape up. I'll look into these. Thanks for the heads-up.
Lunar: a ripped format is in the works, but don't hold your breath. Until then, VGMs sound fantastic :-)
Uhm, the filesizes by Knurek at 10:52 AM EST on November 9, 2005
Also, wouldn't it be feasible to recompress the sets as normal VGM, no VGZ? While the unpacked size would be much larger, the packed sets are much, much smaller (for example Alien Soldier goes down from 23 MB to 8 MB).
Yay for responding to a multitude of posts at once.
Knurek: Personally, I leave all the sets outside the RARs for easy listening, and it would be a complete pain to go through and recompress all the files after downloading them.
One possible advancement that's being considered for the VGM format (or so says Maxim of SMS Power) is sample banks, which would cut the size down to just above the level of an emulated rip. There's another format (Gens+ exclusive I believe) that has this implemented and the filesizes are great, but the accuracy in Gens' logging and this particular format are noticeably below VGM standards...
UNKNOWNFILE: I'm personally using Kega Fusion 3.4. There's a hacked version of Gens tha also logs it, but the files it makes tend to skip -- a very bad thing.
Josh W: So either rip it yourself, or wait for one of us to feel like it. ;)
Oh, I'm a dumbass. I do know what these are. I didn't realise people were ripping Genesis music with it though. See I knew they were used for Master System music and I knew they could also be used for FM synthesis, I just didn't make the connection that they supported Genesis music. Well... that rocks. :)
UNKNOWNFILE: Definitely Kega Fusion 3.4. The accuracy on it is about as close as one can get, though it still balks on certain things, like all emus do. (Compare, say, Shaq Fu on a console and then in Gens/Kega - you'll see what I mean.)
Knurek: Yes, the sets are RARed up basically for convenience - it's easier to stuff them all in a RAR for distribution rather then 50 seperate files. Once you get the RAR, unpack it - the size difference is pretty much nil (That and some players/plugins don't exactly like playing from the RAR...) as it would be opposed to unpacking it. Hard Drives are cheap, saw a 300 Gig HD on sale for about $120... I need to get myself some new ones... I got 110 Gigs of space between two drives and they're both nearly full. :p
R. Belmont: Good news to hear. :D
VERY cool. by SquareTex at 1:04 PM EST on November 9, 2005
I knew that VGM was expanding into Genesis territory...I just didn't know how far it had come! :D
Vague Rant: Actually, all but one of those sets was done by either me or Dark Pulse. That combined with us opening the site a scant two days ago means not too many have heard yet.
Spread the word! We need more rippers! @_@
by unknownfile at 6:41 AM EST on November 10, 2005
Are any modifications made to the ROM, or are they just logged as is?
Neo Geo ... anyone? by F3582 at 6:47 AM EST on November 10, 2005
Greetings.
Does anyone know if VGM will be expanded to NeoGeo games some day? I'd love to hear those good old Metal Slug tunes without having to risk crashing my whole computer using NeoJukebox...
DJSW: Actually, all but one of those sets was done by either me or Dark Pulse. That combined with us opening the site a scant two days ago means not too many have heard yet. Spread the word! We need more rippers! @_@
Might I suggest contacting VORC (www.vorc.org/en) staff? That should give you quite a boost of popularity. Also a contribution guidance on the site would be helpful. And an updated VGMTool tutorial or something (I recall something about it wrongly trimming the FM data).
F3582: I'd love to hear those good old Metal Slug tunes without having to risk crashing my whole computer using NeoJukebox...
You might want to use M1 for that. Plays music from all NeoGeo games and much more.
UNKNOWNFILE: If the game has a sound test, we use that. In a lot of cases, I use the debugger in MESS, and a hex editor on savestates to log games that don't have such facilities. And even if they do, I tend to use it to check if there's any tracks not in the sound test...
Kid Chameleon in particular required editing both a savestate (to kill the music on the title screen) and the ROM itself (to change which music played on the options screen).
F3582: The VGM format isn't really that well-suited for sample-heavy systems like the Neo. It's emulated just fine in M1, anyway, and it's far more stable than NeoJukebox... :)
UNKNOWNFILE: The ROMs aren't modified at all to make the rips possible, save for the case DJSW stated. (Kid Chameleon.) Occasionally he'll take a look at a game in the debugger if it doesn't have a sound test - this was needed for Shining Force II, for example - but usually if it has a sound test we log it right from there, and maybe take a look at it again later in the debugger if we're bored or something.
F3582: Use M1. R. Belmont makes it. And it kicks ass. :)
"...and maybe take a look at it again later in the debugger if we're bored or something."
Always a good practice IMO. I went back and checked ToeJam & Earl 2 in the debugger and found I'd forgotten to log the Panic Button tune, and found a strange jingle that seems to be unused. :)
Just to confirm ;) by PokeParadox at 10:10 AM EST on November 13, 2005
MarioMan - "Genesis = Megadrive/Mega Drive. Genesis is the US name, Megadrive is the EU (also JP?) name."
Megadrive was the PAL and Japanese name for the Genesis.
by Dark Pulse at 10:26 AM EST on November 13, 2005
PokeParadox is correct. That's why we try to put Megadrive/Genesis on the page, but with me and DJSW both Yanks, we're apt to call it the Genesis or Genny. :)
Hey, sorry to post off-topic, but I need to ask UNKNOWNFILE a question. Are you guys going to rip the Donkey Kong Country 3 port to .gsf? Dave Wise did it and it's incredible. I still can't believe they got him to rescore the entire soundtrack to that game. There's a rip of the mp3 going around, but it's a little inferior of course.
by unknownfile at 3:14 PM EST on November 15, 2005
Really? The general concensus I've heard is that the new soundtrack is terrible. Of course, I guess people are going to be influenced by nostalgia. I've also heard that the music doesn't fit well with the areas in which it's heard.
I don't see why they did this rescoring business. The soundtrack was fine, why did they feel the need to mess with it? Wise is great and all, but I don't understand why they felt this was necessary. Personally, I'd prefer a straight port, and that's why I haven't bothered with the DKC ports. If I desperately feel the need to play DKC games on the go, I'd rather just get SNES DS. The extra trouble is probably worth it.
>> It's impossible for me to do that. Ask Caitsith2.
Really? I thought that you were actively involved with GSF ripping. As a matter of fact, I thought that you were the webmaster of GSF Central. I guess I was wrong.
Anyway, good luck on getting in touch with CaitSith2, I have been trying to get a hold of him for weeks.
by unknownfile at 3:50 PM EST on November 15, 2005
I was involved in GSF ripping, but I didn't know ARM assembly so I can't really get the game to quit its video procedures. And I'm not the webmaster, I just maintain the thing whenever I hear of a tagged set or two.
OK, we've gotten the tools to shrink our sets and a RC of in_vgm 0.33. Assuming no bugs are found (None have been so far) the plugin will be released in a few hours, with the site updating its sets today and possibly tomorrow, depending on how long it takes me. :p
EDIT: I've been listening to the Super Mario World VGMs. I'm curious, does anyone know where they're from? "World 4: Toxic Dump" is a remix of the title screen from Donkey Kong Country (!), but I can't identify the others.
edited 11:29 PM EST November 20, 2005
EDIT2: Listening to it again, I figured I should point out that yes, I can tell that "World 1: Mario World" is the Mario theme. Just in case people thought I was a moron.
That's odd. I've been reading around on the Internet about it, and most resources I've come across have said the gameplay engine is largely adopted from Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers on the NES. It's confusing to think that it might be a hack of a Genesis game which itself stole its mechanic from a NES game.
I've tried out the VGM format using the winamp plugin and, while the sound quality is good, there is something that just doesn't seem right. I noticed certain sound channels are much louder than they should be when I listen to my old favorite Sega Genesis titles.
Anyway, I've found I get best results by simply recording the music played from Gens emulation. Its channel level reproduction sounds much closer to the real thing from all the formats I've tried.
Also, I do the same process for Neo Geo music by using FBA and the universal bios with built-in sound test function. I just record the sound output from the bios after I select the music address. Again, the end result is a more accurate sounding reproduction of the original tunes I remember hearing at the arcades.
Memories can be decieving - the MAME FM cores (which pretty much everyone *except* Gens uses) are proven to output the same exact digital samples as the real chips in all cases. Jarek's very serious about correctness :-)
Memories can also be correct. I have a real Genesis and compared the music playback today. In-VGM does play some of the sound channels too loud compared to the real hardware. I also found that the random spanning must be turned off and all notes centered for it to sound closer to the Genesis.
An option to adjust volume for each of the channels would help recreate more accuracy in the channel level reproduction.
I've tried out the VGM format using the winamp plugin and, while the sound quality is good, there is something that just doesn't seem right. Anyway, I've found I get best results by simply recording the music played from Gens emulation.
Which is kinda funny, because in_vgm uses the Gens soundcode of all things.
"all notes centered" does NOT affect the pre-programmed channel separation in the Genesis sound file. You're confusing notes with channels. So much for your smartass remark.
Now for Knurek:
Maybe it uses the Gens soundcode, but it doesn't EXECUTE it the same way Gens does. There's a very clear difference you can EASILY make note of when you compare the two side-by-side. So much for your smartass remark.
I'm not some dumb idiot who doesn't have a clue as to what he's talking about. Trust me when I say there's something not quite right with how Genesis music sounds using the winamp plugin. That's all I'm trying to get across, yet I get nothing but "you're a dumbass" posts from the peanut gallery...
Hey there. How about you stop being a punk and consider yourself lucky that you're getting any response at all. None of us is here to help you out, and we're especially not here to help you out when you have a problem with a format which has nothing at all to do with hcs or the USF format.
If you have a problem with the plugin, take it up with its creators, and don't have a teary when you don't get the answer you're after at a completely unrelated forum.
I'm fully willing to accept that the sound emulation for Genesis is not accurate, but that does nothing to help anyone. You got your point across, but apparently that wasn't enough--you didn't get to vent your inconvenient whining at anyone. My advice: tell someone who cares.
deletezorified by unknownfile at 4:43 AM EST on December 14, 2005
I'm not telling anyone what they can or can't do. But I'm sure you'll agree that he would probably get more useful answers elsewhere. I think that makes sense. No one's stopping him doing it here, but he's not necessarily going to get the best help here.
by unknownfile at 3:48 PM EST on December 14, 2005
For those that require an example of what I'm talking about, I've made a combo wave file of a Gaiares music track, with the first ten seconds being output from Gens and the last ten seconds being in_vgm output.Take note of the fact that in_vgm settings have random spanning turned off and all notes centered (which have nothing to do with Genesis pre-programmed stereo channel output).
What you want to listen for is the center channel organ bass notes. In the Gens output, they are at the proper volume level when compared to real hardware. In the vgm output from winamp, the same organ bass notes are very clearly too loud. This is exactly what bothers me about the winamp version, and why I prefer Gens output. But gee, aren't both programs using the same sound core? Shouldn't I be checking my mono TV? (that's sarcasm, btw)
I recognize that I wasn't exactly civil earlier, but here you're plainly trying to cause problems. I'm happy to leave this behind us if you are.
by unknownfile at 3:54 AM EST on December 15, 2005
@the idiot: Look, you just try writing a sound format yourself. These people try so hard to create a sound format and you just turn them down saying that the volume sounds incorrect. Well, that's the trouble of emulated/logged sound formats; they can't sound 100% correct. So quit complaining.
UF, relax. He's got every right to prefer more accurate sound to what's currently offered. I'm sure he knows a lot of work went into the plugin, but it obviously has its flaws, and I'm sure the developers want to achieve the highest accuracy possible. As is, I believe Maxim is aware of the problem, anyway.
by unknownfile at 4:30 PM EST on December 15, 2005