USF Rip Requests by hcs at 9:59 AM EDT on May 24, 2005
Ok, let's get all the requests in one place, even if you'd mentioned it before feel free to do so again. Also feel free to second other people's suggestions.
I really don't know all that many of the hundreds of N64 games and so most of my ideas of what to rip come from requests.
Banjo Tooie - I have done some research on this one. According to the RWP the (U VERSION) offsets are something like this
8007A481 00## 8007A483 00##
Whoever is going to hack this game should add in a value that writes the track number to both of these offsets, or get the game to read only one of the two.
Rogue Squadron, Yohsi's Story, Ridge Racer 64, Turok 2, Bomberman 64, Bomberman 64 2, Cruisn' World, Mischief Makers, Mario Tennis... That's just a few I can think of off the top of my head...
Hmmm...no mention of either Mario Golf or Mario Tennis. So I'll make those requests now. And I'll be happy to help with timing and tagging if they ever surface.
Am I a Sakuraba fanboy? Why yes I am. :)
Body Harvest by hcs at 2:36 PM EDT on May 24, 2005
To get a handle on the game I pulled out VGMTrans, here's some MIDIs to keep ye company 'till I decide to rip it:
On the bandwagon I go by Lunar at 3:01 PM EDT on May 24, 2005
Luck has it that a good amount of the soundtracks I wanted ripped have been [Blast Corps, Starfox 64, Mario 64, Mario Kart, Waverace 64, Super Smash Bros, Tetrisphere, MN64, F-Zero X, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask .. lots], so I've been real lucky in that regard. Some of the others I'd like to see ripped:
Bomberman 64 Bomberman 64/2nd Attack! Killer Instinct Gold Mischief Makers Yoshi's Story Diddy Kong Racing Snowboard Kids Vigilante 8 Vigilante 8 2nd offense
I highly doubt my rip request will be heeded (as there's plenty out there to work with that has a larger fan base) but the game I'd like to hear from is Megaman 64! I can provide a ROM, if need be (though, for all I know, the Japanese ROM may contain more, or different, music than the US version does. Personaly, I doubt it does, but it could). However, call me crazy, though I obviously request the music, having the in-game spoken pieces would be a bonus (it should be do-able, as they are in the game. The problem would be if they use a different driver...)
The problem I see with ripping this game is that it's compressed (shouldn't be that big of a deal, from what I understand) and that it's a PSX port to the N64 (that could prove difficult...)
Okay, as I have a few more, I'll list it:
Megaman 64 Custom Robo 1 & 2 Mario Golf Mario Tennis Banjo Tooie Jet Force Gemini Bomberman (anything/everything) Mischief Makers Paper Mario Star Wars: Podracer Yoshi's Island
Okay, so I'm requesting more than my fair share... But at least it provides plenty of options to choose from! :) Anyway, there's my requests (with Megaman 64 being the one I want the most. The rest is in random order). I guess that's it. Mouser X over and out.
Also, is it possible to rip soundtracks from 64DD games? I'd like the extra tracks from the F-Zero X Expansion Kit, but I don't know how plausible it is that that might happen.
64DD... pretty difficult. I know of someone with access to dumps, but no emulator runs them. I suppose I might be able to locate the data in the dump and patch it into the normal game (for F-Zero X it's streamed anyway).
- Banjo-Tooie (!) - Bomberman - Harvest Moon - Hybrid Heaven (!) - Gauntlet Legends - Mario Party (!) - Paper Mario - Resident Evil - Shadowman (!) - South Park - Star Wars
With Banjo-Tooie, I'd assume the same problem of Banjo Kazooie would occur, where all variations of the level themes are meshed into one? Tis a bugger, that. Great music. Probably the same with Conker's BFD too.
First of all, thank you hcs for making USF. I really hope that I can listen to these really soon!
- Bust-a-Move 2 Arcade Edition - Hydro Thunder - Cruis'n USA - Earthworm Jim 3D - Mario Party - Rampage 1: World Tour - Rampage 2: Universal Tour - South Park - Waialae Country Club - True Golf Classics - Yoshi's Story
Another feature I want involves the speed at which USFs are played. Sometimes the music is slower than what I remember hearing it as, giving hint to being PAL-ripped. I would like to request a speed mod that either increases the speed, or has a "PAL" radio button or "NTSC" radio button which will switch the speed of the music between them. Current Winamp plugins specifically designed for changing the tempo/speed/pitch of WAVs, MP3s and others freeze and crash Winamp when you try to use them on USFs.
So my first request would no doubt be Donkey Kong 64
Banjo & kazooie Diddy Kong Racing Conker's Bad Fur Day (never played it but I heard the game Is a must have, so I guesed the music must be good to, no?)
My favorite song in Conker has to be the Haybot boss.
Other than that, my favorite moment in the game is "Warning. Warning. Airlock open. Air pressure compromised. Throw the 'a' in 'aout' and shut the bloddy door."
I would say Cruis'n World has some interesting music... has a music select function (in game, and I think I remember a "jukebox" menu too) so it shouln't be too hard to identify those music load funtions (I'm no expert in any way, so maybe I'm wrong)
Here's my list:
1080? Snowboarding Banjo Tooie Bomberman 64 (hehehe, yes, I like that music :$) Buck Bumble (Only the introduction music, really, the rest is not really good) Carmageddon Choro Q (Penny Racers) ClayFighter Conker's Bad Fur Day (OF COURSE) Cruis'n World F1 World Grand Prix (the first one, I don't like the second very much) Paper Mario Pokemon series Turok 1 and 2 (the others don't have any worthy music that I remember... or maybe I didn't went to the bore of playing through the games to find out :D) Vigilante 8 1 and 2 (I don't exactly remember if the music was good, but I remember the awesome multiplayer it had :D) Wave Race 64 (I appreciate two differences from that rumble pack version from japan and the PAL version I played... Port Pirates is different, also Sandy Beach, and they had different names too... also the music seems to be the speeded up version for the last lap in the USFs you have here :S)
That would be unlikely, the addresses of the data in ROM at least would have to be identical. Unless, that is, I decide to try to fiddle with the sequences (pull them out of the non-special edition).
Is it possible to rip sound effects? I've been looking for a clean copy of Navi's "hey listen" sound effect from OoT forever. I'm on a mac and have been trying various things through virtual pc with little luck. If anyone could get this for me I would be eternally grateful.
Ominous... the man whose name is silence and whose IP is 70.65.152.50. The blank user name/blank password combination is now occupied. It was probably a mistake but blah.
Yeah, apparently someone signed up with the blank user name and password and then proceeded to use it. I set a password on the blank user name so it can't be used. Weird stuff.
Ah, I see. :( Come to think of it, I think I DID register that username/password when the forum first opened, as I was hoping I didn't have to register. And I suppose someone then discovered my super secret password. ;-)
Pity. I would have liked to have kept that username.
I had started on Chopper Attack a while ago and for whatever reason never finished, it turned out to be quite easy. It's got some interesting tunes, and it's fairly high-quality, I can understand how JPG thought it was streamed. It sounds like they could have done F-Zero X with this instrument set. You can see why they didn't, though, because this eats up more CPU than any set I've ever seen.
Good stuff, nonetheless, now can someone with any clue about this game give it a tagging?
Chopper Attack, a.k.a. Wild Choppers, a.k.a. ワイルドチョッパーズ was composed by 石田傑 (いしだ すぐる). Ishida Suguru (family name first, I presume), if my rote use of this romaji coversion table is correct. I'm going to look further through that Japanese list of composers to see if possibly another was credited.
Oh, man, I just got around to listening to all of Chopper Attack, you simply must hear sparse0d. It's a good track once it gets going, but there's a bunch of vocal samples at the beginning that are hilarious. sparse06 reminds me of Tee Hee Valley in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for some reason, which is a good thing.
I only have one wish, please Rip Animal Forest (Dobutsi no Mori) if it is possible :) i know its a lot of work cause there are many many tracks in this game.. but please :D
Is there anything like a sound test in Animal Forest? I'm a bit lost in the code at the moment.
In other news I'm just done with a Mischief Makers rip. It was a lot of work, the audio and graphics are intertwined and the game used almost none of the standard library functions (forget the audio library, I had to guess at osCreateThread!), but I finished a very clean rip after about three hours. It plays in PJ64 USF but not in 64th Note for reasons which are unclear. DRAT!
sound test by Emil007 at 1:38 PM EDT on July 21, 2005
no, i dont think that there is a sound test.. but there are things like radios where you can choose and play titles... hmm, as i tried to rip the game myself (i dont understood anything :() i looked into the gamecube-iso of the game (animal crossing) you know its just a port from the n64 to the cube, and there is a audiorom.img-file in there, may this file can help you? i can send it to you if you want to try (its about 8MB :D)
@HCS: Geez. When osCreateThread doesn't show up, what do you do then? Like you said, you guessed on it. Was it an educated guess? Did it look familiar? Could you tell what some of the functions were? I'm just curious as to how you narrowed it down. From what I've gathered, osCreateThread is a rather important function. In fact, it would seem that, generally, without it, a rip can't be done (or is very hard to do).
Another thing I wanted to ask was about it not playing in 64th Note. If I recall, early on there were a few other sets that didn't play in 64th Note. However, after hacking (either the USF set, or the player code) you were able to get most of them to run. The one that doesn't so far is actually a problem with the audio plugin itself. PJ64 can play the hacked ROM, but to do so it requires the use of an audio plugin other than Azimer's, which is what 64th Not is based on. Basically, what I'm asking is, do you think you've removed to much code from the hacked ROM, or is there some mysterious feature that PJ64 has that has been disabled/broken in 64th Note? Just curious, myself. I'm sure you've already thought of both of those ideas.
Anyway, thanks again for your help. That's great news hearing all the awesome stuff going on for USF development. Keep it up! Mouser X over and out.
Request/Recommendation by marioman at 3:07 PM EDT on July 21, 2005
OK, here is my request:
Mario Party Mario Party 2 Mario Party 3 San Francisco Rush 2049 Yoshi's Story
The Mario Party series has very nice music. I am surprised that they haven't been ripped yet. I am also surprised that Yoshi's Story has not been ripped; it has had many requests.
Also, it would be nice if hcs added a "request leaderboard" of sorts at the top of this page so requests do not get lost in the other posts on this thread. Hcs could use a table similar to the table that is used for the USF download page, and have fields for game name, # of requests, etc. It seems like that would make the request page a little easier to read because one could look at the table and sort the list the way that he wants. Anyway, that is my recommendation.
Thanks for the time and effort that you guys have put into ripping this music.
@Emil007: Thanks, but I doubt the GC audio ROM will help much, at most I expect it to be a near copy of bits of the N64 ROM. I'll keep your offer in mind, though.
@MouserX: osCreateThread is fairly easy to recognize, you look at the very beginning of the code (0x80000400 or whereever the entrypoint happens to be), trace it a bit, and look for a point where execution seems to stop. Somewhere before that there'll be a function called with four parameters/arguments, a2 is the thread, as usual. If a2 doesn't point you to a function you're looking at the wrong function.
Regarding the non-working sets I truly don't know, but Mischeif Makers actually crashes (not the emulator, but the program itself) in 64th Note. I don't think any unusual feature of the audio plugin is responsible for this. I hadn't actually considered the possibility, though, that the problem might be with the rip rather than the player. If I feel like looking at the game again I'll see if that is indeed the issue. It's either that or the nearly impossible task of tracking down when the execution path differs between PJ64 and 64th Note.
@marioman: I was thinking of the leaderboard myself just a few minutes ago. Does about 5 requests per IP sound reasonable?
Leaderboard by marioman at 4:47 PM EDT on July 21, 2005
Yes, 5 requests sounds reasonable. (That is about as many requests as one person posts at a time anyway.) Of course, if one of a person's requests is granted, the person should be allowed to make another (one) request in it's place. (ex. If someone rips Yoshi's Story, I should be able to add another game to my request list.)
It might also be a good idea to consider allowing people to change their request list in situations such as: the music is ripped, but does not work (Bust a Move, Mischief Makers, etc.); the person no longer wants the game on their request list (no one should be tied down to the same five games forever); etc.
I will look forward to seeing the finished product.
I think something as simple as a form with 5 entries that you fill out, which is updated from the database when you load it, and any changes are written back, will be sufficient.
By the way, I have a tagged Chopper Attack set up, missing only track names (I just used Track %d for the time being). The problem (and it's really more of a personal thing than a real problem) is that I remember listening to the timed set and thinking that track should have faded out a half-second earlier, as it sort of started up again right at the end, but I can't find it again. If anyone listening can find what I mean it'll be really helpful for my peace of mind.
On second thought, doing this by IP won't work too well, especially if we want users to have persistant access to their selections (what with dynamic IPs and all).
Mmmmm... Can I have mine with peanut butter chips?
I don't know how to do any of the stuff you're talking about with the request list, but I'll offer my ideas. I was thinking something more like, have a database that anyone can add an entry to. The entries would be the game names. Then, the database would go through and find the games that have multiple instances. Those would be tallied, and that number would be the number of times that game was requested.
Now, something that will have to be implemented for this would be that it requires people to login and use their "forum" name. Then, if they add the same game twice, the database would be able to tell that "UserNN" has requested the same game twice, and it would cancel out the second request.
Like I said, I really don't know how feasable such an idea is, but I thought something like that would be most efficient. That way, not only is it listed what games people have requested, but also the times those requests came up. And, because it's done by username, you could track who requested what. And you wouldn't have to worry about duplicate requests from the same person either (not that you'd have to with the idea you've posted). One problem is, though, is people creating multiple accounts just to increase the request count of some game they want. Of course, that's going to be a problem with almost anything you make (except that you'll be using cookies, apparently. As such, it will be able to track the cookie, and tell who's who, and whether they have an account or not).
OC Remix tried to set up a request list a long time ago (late 2001). Meridian (you can see his site at http://meridian.overclocked.org) set it up. I thought it was pretty neat, but it allowed people to put in a vote for a game multiple times. In other words, it wasn't to reliable because people would keep dumping in a vote for a specific song for 5 minutes. In fact, there were people who bragged about it on the forums. Eventually, the system crashed. And the guy who did it bragged on the forums. He was, somehow, able to dump like, 1000 votes a sec. or something into it, and it couldn't handle the strain (I don't really remember what happened. It was years ago, and I didn't really understand what they were saying either. My brain re-interpreted it into something that made sense to me, but that wasn't necessarily correct).
Anyway, there's the input I have to offer. And no, I don't think the system you have in mind would crash. I don't remember how Meridian's was set up, but I do remember thinking it was pretty neat, for it's time. Oh well. Good luck. Mouser X over and out.
I considered tying it into the forum, and in fact I still might decide to do that, but the fact remains that if someone wants to screw with the system there isn't much I can do to stop them. With the cookies you can simply clear it out and be assigned a new one for more fun. With the forum, as you said, you can sign up multiple accounts. If I required you to verify an email address and type in words from an obfuscated image in order to sign up it'd still be exploitable. About all you can do to prevent that sort of thing is to charge for access (even if it's a nominal $1 fee like SDF charges), since for most people it isn't worth the money. The cookie system seems to be the best way to go at the moment, it's easy (the user doesn't have to do anything special to sign up, just visit the page and an id is automagically assigned). The only reason I'll change it is if people who aren't trying anything evil start having problems with it. When/if I eventually implement cookies for the forums I may move the authentication over to that.
By the way, the system is up and (seemingly) running here.
There's nothing there to prevent you from putting in the same game 5 times if that's how you want to spend your 5 votes, of course you can always change that later. Use it wisely.
So you take requests! by Yoshinkeru at 9:44 PM EDT on July 21, 2005
Splendid! I'll add my own:
Banjo-Kazooie Banjo-Tooie Donkey Kong 64 Duck Dodgers (in the 24 1/2 Century) Excitebike 64 Mario Tennis Mario Party (just the first one; we never got the others) San Francisco Rush (first and 2049)
I only created this account to post this; I'm not sure if I'll be back. Actually, I frequent the VGMusic boards, so if you wish, look for me there. Until then, I'm out!
I added my 5. Looks like it works pretty good. Just for kicks, I altered my list a few times. I'm sure you'll also notice that there's 2 requests for MM 64. Yah, that's me. I want it pretty bad, and, I figure, hey, it's only 1 extra space that I didn't have a game for. Might as well use it.
By the way, once you fill a line, you can't delete it. Meaning, you can't leave it blank if you wanted to. I added Custome Robo 1 (I want both 1 & 2, but I figured I should probably split them up, since they are 2 different games) and then tried to remove it by leaving the space empty. I clicked submit, and it filled in the empty line with my old Custom Robo 1 entry. Though it's not a big deal, I did think you might want to know about it.
Anyway, looks nice, and especially functional (that's a good description for this whole site. Who needs fancy smancy pictures? It's an emulation site, with this section dedicated to music!). Good work. And, it was pretty fast.
Last question. Where's my peanut butter chip cookie? Or do I get the bland ones everyone else gets as well? Thanks again. Mouser X over and out.
Empty field handling was kept very basic, just to the point of not breaking the database. Feel free to fill up unused spots with the same game. Five votes to distribute as you will.
I stuck mine in. Mario Party 2 doesn't have good music or anything like that, it just struck me as one of the more interesting games in my collection. I mean, Rampage: World Tour would make a boring USF set.
Fixed a bug wherein new users would be shown someone else's selections upon starting. It isn't really a problem, but I'd prefer you to start with a blank slate.
I added my 5 to that list too. I really want to see the two Fighter's Destiny games ripped one day. The first FD has great synth melodies and even though I haven't played the sequel, I still added it to the list as I assume it also has a good soundtrack.
Here's something I'd like to see. Listing by name. Of course, it should list by request counts 1st, but after that, it should list it alphebeticaly. There's a lot of single requests in there, and it gets a little confusing trying to find a specific game since there doesn't seem to be any order beyond request count.
I realize it's not a big deal, especially since there's not A LOT of single requests, but it would help clean it up a bit. On top of that, it is a request list. It's not like whatever is on there is going to hold a huge sway over what gets done and what doesn't. It only influences it. Anyway, thanks again. Mouser X over and out.
yahoo, animal forest is on the first place with 9 votes actually :) i dont know if you'll rip it now or not, but i hope so ;) and i only wanted to say that i dont cheat that votes, if you dont believe me look at the IP-Ranges or whatever, there is only one vote from my IP ;)
Several times now I've looked at Animal Forest. Nothing has jumped out at me, and the systematic approach isn't much use. I'll give it another look tonight.
You may have heard of the English Game Cube version, Animal Crossing.
Anyway, I'm still working on it, it seems to use a whole lot of Yaz0 compression. What do you want to bet the sequences are compressed, too?
Request Page by marioman at 11:16 AM EDT on July 24, 2005
The request page is looking good. However, there are a few things that I would like to ask about:
Firstly, could it be possible to use your forum login to view/change your list? I have a few computers that I use, and I can only edit my list on one of them.
Secondly, I may be completely missing this, but how do you sort the list by name?
Lastly, do you have a system in place where when a USF set is finished, all of the requests for that game are removed? Just checking.
Thanks for setting this request page up. It looks great.
Firstly, could it be possible to use your forum login to view/change your list? I have a few computers that I use, and I can only edit my list on one of them.
I s'pose so. Haven't gotten around to it, yet. Maybe whenever I cookie-ize the forum.
Secondly, I may be completely missing this, but how do you sort the list by name?
You can't. It sorts by votes, then by game among equal votes.
Lastly, do you have a system in place where when a USF set is finished, all of the requests for that game are removed? Just checking.
I'll go in and remove them manually, and you'll have a new empty slot in your list. I've already corrected some people's misspellings so that the totals add up right.
Hmmmmm....... by marioman at 6:34 PM EDT on July 24, 2005
I thought that you told Mouser X that there was a secondary sort-by-game option that was added. Oh well.
Interesting indeed... If you look at the page source you can see that the second one has a newline at the beginning, I've no idea how someone got that into a single-line text box. I'll fix it in the db.
Working on Mario Party. I won't say it's easy, but the hardest part was some odd arrangements... For one thing, the game has two different sequence banks, one with 7 seqs that's used in the intro, and one with 0x51 seqs used ingame. That and it uses Nintendo Sequence Format 2, which I've never before encountered (the standard S1 header is replaced by S2). Should be a possible rip, but with the two banks I'm going to have to make two rips and combine 'em.
BTW, theoretical Q, I was wondering about: does fiddling with the ROM to kill more functions and threads eventually help the end sparse image come out smaller, as well as the plugin (and Winamp) drain the CPU even less during playback?
The usflib shouldn't be abnormally large (but I haven't finished compiling everything yet so who knows), there will probably be two usflibs, though.
And yes, the more you will, the less there is in the USF, both running and in memory. My goal is to kill the major sources of slowdown, not pick through absolutely everything.
Mario Party prleiminary set is uploading now. It works fine under the interpreter CPU, but only occasionally with the recompiler so you should disable that if you intend to try it out (and of course note that it'll use quite a bit more CPU that way). This includes not one, not two, but three usflibs. One contains the ROM, one contains the shared RAM for the first sequence bank, the other contains the shared RAM for the second bank. I'm sure I could have done this more efficiently but screw you guys, I've got a CPU to debug.
As USF Central says I'm now working on Conker's Bad Fur Day. The good news is that the song select function was easy to find, and I eventually found a workable method for eliminating graphics. The bad news is that PJ64 USF doesn't like a) the size of the ROM b) the use of the TLB so it might be a while before I can actually finish the rip. I currently have a save state that will cause the first verse of the Great Mighty Poo song to play.