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View topic - VGM Logging with other Emulators

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  • Joined: 23 Oct 2011
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 10:20 am
hello!
I'm a long-time admirer of the hard work being done here, and I wanted to contribute, although I rarely get things done and don't really understand any of the technical stuff going on here. I was disappointed to realize that I wouldn't be able to make very good sets, since the area of my interest is the Neo Geo Pocket (+Color) and NeoPop/MESS don't have any ways to help log music without getting sound effects and having to deal with things like the music being muted when you pause during a boss battle and so on.

It was only when I reread this thread and noticed the link in post #58715 leading to thor.pdroms.de that I began to piece together a method of doing a thorough log of the audio:

1. Use MusicDump to dump the music files from a game to .bin files, ex:
musicdump biomotor.ngc biomotor b


2. Use NGPConv ("Convertion tools") to stick the music into a homebrew rom, usually with a command line such as:
java -classpath ngpconv.jar GIF2NGP whatever gif 1 bin biomotor0.bin


3. Open resulting mymovie.ngp in NeoPOP and voila! That song, ready for logging, no interference.

However, I noticed that both the Sonic Pocket Adventure and MOTM packs were logged with the modified version of MESS available here (well, an older one). Normally MESS rejects a homebrew rom, but in this particular case, all you have to do is use a hex editor to pad the size of mymovie.ngp. WindHex has an option (Ctrl+N) to do just this, and simply inflating it to 2097152 bytes will make MESS treat it normally, at which point it can be used to log the music.

It's a pretty convoluted method, sure, but it looks to solve some of the problems that can normally make VGM logging a pain, and you guys might be able to improve the process by figuring out something I overlooked. There is an additional problem in that the largest rom size doesn't seem to be supported, but very few games use that (only ones I know of are Metal Slug 2nd Mission and MOTM). I also imagine someone here might be able to fix this shortcoming in musicdump should they feel so inclined.

Speaking of MESS, it seems to play game audio better than NeoPOP does in at least some situations - but I might be imagining it, because I'm very bad at listening to music (I can hear it just fine, but I have no ability to critically examine or contrast it).

MESS also has some audio options that can be set overall or per emulator, and I'd appreciate it if you guys could tell me if there is some ideal setting for them to be at or if I should just leave them as they are in MESS VGM. I'd also be grateful if someone could tell me a way to skip setting the BIOS each time (I'm not very good at sniffing out options like that).

Besides the requests for clarification, I'd also like to apologize if this was all already discussed/obvious. My eyes tend to glaze over easily when it comes to audio discussion. But hopefully this will make people a bit more interested in logging NGPC games (Neo Turf Masters being one example of a game people might like done, as noted on the previous page).
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 9:28 pm
I finally worked on the ADPCM B tool and added the option for sample rate selection.
It's now possible to set the sample rate in Hz and with DeltaT register value and chip clock.
The archive now also includes a makefile, which I only wrote because FRONT requested it, btw. (I'm using Visual C++, so I don't need makefiles.)
btw: 44.1 Hz was exactly right for the Neo Turf Masters ROM I used to test it.


@7HeroesForceBattle:
Wow - that method works ... simply wonderful. Thanks. I'll rip Neo Turf Masters after I'm finished with Lemmings 3D.

I already tried musicdump some months ago and I noticed too, that some games (like MoTM and SPA) don't work. I also fixed it to work with these games and managed to extract music from MoTM, but had no use for the extracted files.
Now I can try it again and this time I'll hopefully be able to rip the missing songs. (I tried to hack/debug the game multiple times to make the songs play, but I failed.)

About MESS: Yes, it plays the audio a lot better than NeoPop. (Due to timing problems, the music NeoPop is too slow and gets faster and slower randomly.)
MESS does all things perfectly. (Aside from a small sound emulator bug that mutes all right-channel-only tones. But that doesn't affect the VGM rips.)

The audio options in MESS don't affect the VGM rips in any way, so you can play with them or leave them - it doesn't matter.

Skipping the BIOS screen is easy but annoying and you'll need to redo it for every game.
At first you set all the options until the BIOS screen appears. Now make a save state with Shift + F7.
The next time you open the game in MESS, just press Q to turn the console on and then load the save state with F7. (The BIOS' palette will be wrong, but after that it's all right.)
ADPCM_Encode.zip (24.89 KB)
ADPCM B En-/Decoder

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  • Joined: 14 Jun 2011
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 4:50 pm
Hi to everybody

thank you once again, valleyBell for this new version
I test this new version as soon as I can ... and I say if it's ok

what tests you have done with NeoTurf Master, what precisely BGM ?

who knows here the famous Japanese multi Sound player 'HOOT' ?
-> MIC may be ???

it's in open source, I believe ...
-> ValleyBell : a version with VGM log is possible?

I tried to find informations concerning the Data Format : the Driver work in fact
I work on it, but I need more informations

Bye
Fred/FRONT
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 8:46 am
Quote
who knows here the famous Japanese multi Sound player 'HOOT' ?
-> MIC may be ???


Afraid not.
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 6:20 pm
Hoot player:

http://dmpsoft.s17.xrea.com/hoot/

VGM support would be neat, but source code is very old though (goes back to 2001).
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Post Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2011 4:09 pm
Hi

>Kaminari :
''but source code is very old though (goes back to 2001).''

You' re right : hootsrc20011006.cab !!!

Mic : take a look at the attachement file !

Bye
Fred/FRONT
Front_Hoot URL.zip (166.66 KB)

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Post Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:00 am
Three days ago MAME 0144 got released (MESS was released yesterday), so it's time for a new version of my MAME/MESS VGM mod.
To make the packages smaller, I made some extra rars (called "AdditionalFiles") with folders like "artwork" and "hash" that can be large and it would just increase upload and download times, if they're included in every update.

Direct links:
MAME 32-bit (15.1 MB) / 64-bit (15.7 MB), additional files (150 KB)
MESS 32-bit (6.55 MB) / 64-bit (7.16 MB), additional files (13.9 MB) - note: MESSUI only
MAME/MESS source diff (15 KB)


Notes:
All in al it it took me ~4 hours to compile all that stuff - 1 h for plain MAME, 1 h for plain MESS, 1 h applying the 0140-diff to the 0144 source (they changed their internal interface a lot, so patch.exe failed to apply at least one change per file), and finally 1 h to make MESSUI compile (they removed it with 0143u4 or so, but I like it very much)
I haven't tested it very much, but the few vgm logs I made were okay.

btw: To save space on my harddrive, I now store MAME and MESS in the same folder. But they still take too much space. (130 MB source code, 558 MB obj-files for MAME 32+64, 317 MB for MESSUI 32+64)
That also saves me the trouble of synchronizing the code between each of them.


And: there's now support for the SCC1 / K051649. Use the attached VGMPlay.exe for playing.
I decided to remove the OKIM6376 for now. I think the emulation was incomplete anyway.

Enjoy!

P.S.: Hoot's 2001 source is really too old, so I won't do any vgm mod of it.
VGMPlay.zip (164.68 KB)
VGMPlay WIP build

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Post Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:14 pm
Last edited by Wraithverge on Thu Nov 17, 2011 6:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
...
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 2:05 pm
If Salamander has a Sound Test, I can rip. But if don't, I cannot rip (since the MSX savestate support on MESS is low, much like SMS/GG savestates).
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 2:33 pm
If Salamander cannot has a Sound Test, I can rip a simple game like Title Memory, the 2 Ruce games or Go Othello, or a demo like Fony Demo.
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 5:08 pm
BUG REPORT: VGMPlay with SCC support don't reproduce AY's data of VGM file if SCC is present! Tested with A1 Spirit, Parodius and Nemesis 3 (machines are Expert Plus and MSX2+).

MESS seems to be have the Speaker on all machines. Why?
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2011 8:31 am
It does, but the SCC is too loud. I lowered its volume to ~60 %, so it should work now.

Sonic of 8! wrote
MESS seems to be have the Speaker on all machines. Why?
I don't know - the MSX maybe has some way to play speech/digital SFX via software-controlled streaming.

@Wraithverge:
I've compiled MAME 2 times before (v0.136 and 0.140) and I knew it would take long.
Also my laptop is DualCore with HT, so I always compile the 32- and 64-bit versions simultaneously and still have some free resources to do something else.
Once its completely compiled it takes only a few seconds to recompile it with small changes.

btw: Compiling openMSX the first time took much longer, because it uses tons of 3rd-party libs.
VGMPlay.zip (164.76 KB)

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Post Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2011 3:07 pm
...
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Post Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 4:11 pm
Can we still post bug reports for the old in_vgm (pre 0.40)?\
If so, there's a bug with looping jingles - if the song's loop length is shorter than the set fadeout time, the plugin will keep playing the song infinitely.

Easily checked with Fatal Fury VGM log, song The Suspicious Guy (Midway Demo) and fade-out time longer than or equal to 7000 ms.
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Post Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 4:44 pm
Wow :) I guess I never found any looping VGM shorter than the standard 5s fadeout time. I think it's worth seeing if it is a bug in the current version, as old ones aren't maintained.
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Post Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 10:27 pm
Sorry, bug reports for my version of in_vgm 0.35 beta aren't of any use.
With version 0.40 I completely recoded in_vgm, so all bugs not present in VGMPlay should be gone.
This bug was already reported a few times so I know about it. (This bug is only present in my updated 0.35 beta - not in Maxim's in_vgm and not in in_vgm 0.40.)

btw: Pier Solar - 01 - Loading is 3.5 s long and has a 3.2 s loop.
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2011 5:49 pm
Oh, and one more thing - you can always try contacting the Hoot developers for the source - they did share it with RBelmont from M1 for instance.
It can already log S98 data, so if you volunteer to add proper VGM logs, I guess they would share it with you - they do seem like a really nice bunch.

Would be nice to have that there too, since Hoot plays pretty much every arcade game M1 does, loads (in the range of thousands) of games from Japanese PCs and at least few dozen Genesis games.
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2011 12:19 pm
Knurek wrote
ValleyBell, would it be possible to add MSM-6295 logging to your M1 mod - I'd love to tackle Manabu Namiki's sublime Battle Garrega score, and so far all that's logged is YM2151.

OKIM6295 support for M1 is finished, but I have difficulties to get proper logs of Battle Garrega.
That's because the game uses a non-standard method to do advanced bank-switching (to play more different sample at the same time) and I still have to find a way to make proper vgm logs.

According to the MAME source, affected games are bgaregga, batrider, pwrinst2, raphero, macross2, powerins. (and maybe some games with the same hardware)
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Post Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:40 pm
I think that ValleyBell needs to update M1 to add support to some other chips (i.e. uPD7759).

Also, when I read the .h of Konami soundchips, all of them (with exception of K056800) is a 8-bit soundchips. K056800 needs 16-bit and some 32-bit tasks...
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Post Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 5:45 pm
I may post here a update with MAME/MESS VGM Mods (ValleyBell seens to forget to announce here).

The most important adittion was HuC6280 PSG and Konami chip that is used in System GX (i forget). And now was added support of dual-chip in chips that is implemented in v1.61. Go to vgm.mdscene.net/forums to check more updates!
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Post Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 7:30 pm
I don't think he forgot... I assumed that the whole point of creating a separate website was to remove the non-Sega 8-bit discussion from here, as it is off-topic.
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Post Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 8:55 pm
You're 100% right.

All future discussion of non Sega 8-bit VGMs (ripping, emulation, etc.) should go to http://vgm.mdscene.net.
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:49 pm
hello guys !

for the new year, I offer my best wishes to all the people who come here...

ValleyBell, I just wanted to tell you that the encoder( ADPCM-B) worked great on neogeo Hard (AES system) ... thank you very much for all, man !

On Youtube, you can find a video : just search for : xcelfr / and select -> 'son neogeo' ... that all (CeL is a friend of mine)

2012 start very well , I think ...

Bye, Fred/FRONT!
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 4:16 pm
Somewhat off-topic but is there decent PC98 emulator with VGM logging? I use dev builds of Neko Project now but they only support S98.
P.S. Or there is tool for S98->VGM conversion?
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 7:02 pm
PC98 emulator with VGM logging? There's none I know of. And I think should know if there is one.
About S98->VGM: I don't know of a tool either.
I may look at it when I have more time. (read: later this month)

btw: Actually this should (now) go to http://vgm.mdscene.net.
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 2:07 am
ValleyBell
Forum seems to be offline, is that normal?
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 9:53 am
No, it's not normal. It went offline just a few minutes before I posted.
I hope Oerg866 soon gets his server running again.

EDIT: It works now.
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