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update 01/22 packs updated

Actually found a memory trigger that worked. I had already ripped most of the tracks, but some were impossible to get effect free without it. Some in game logs had defects in them when reviewing afterward. Music by Matt Furniss. First time working on a game like this. One unused theme, hacking required. One theme must be ripped in game (the Tomb) unless you hack into the song pointer list..Not sure there is one, but something has to tell the game to loop the pattern. Or it could be that info is actually part of the music track. Just a guess.

C0C9:Timer, C0CB :Tempo
C0CA gets you access to everything, but fiddling was a bit tricky. You need to set the value to one below the starting value to get it started and playing at the right tempo. For that reason, the Tomb cannot be logged using the trigger since its starting value is 01 and 00 triggers nothing at all. Or rather, you'll be missing the snippet that 01 is supposed to play.

The one unused song seems to be a version of the character selection theme for the MD.

Here are the values: use 1 less to start

01 Title Screen 0x43
02 Player Select 0x16 - 0x19
03 Ladder Match 0x0B - 0x0F
04 Kombat Tomb 0x01-0x09
05 Victory I 0x0A
06 The Pit II 0x11 - 0x14
07 Victory II 0x15
08 Continue / Credits 0x1A - 0x1E
09 Unused Song 0x21 - 0x24
10 Flawless Victory 0x1F
11 Fatality 0x20
12 Unknown 0x10

In the rom I used 0x007ED25-27 can be used to load (1 block).
change to 3E (block) it will spam that value,not the song, so not very useful. update I used Emulicious for this. It has a great debugger and lets you edit the rom in the emulator (no need for extra floating hex copies)

I was not able to find out how the rom found its way to this area, nothing obvious. I mainly used this to help isolate the single value items I was having problems with and to confirm nothing else was there. In memory, anything above 0x5x gets raised to 0x70, but here you can play with values. It's not reliable. A melody in value 0x53 ended up being a drum pattern, or what sounded like combinations of the patters above. I quickly moved on to sorting and comparing, which took along time. There weren't too many tracks to loop, and they were relatively easy. I didn't have to use any of my usual tools.

The Pause button was invaluable, for helping me log. The music doesn't stop but in game movement and sfx do. I just left it paused 90% of the time. So, will probably not attempt GG since this is not an option. It would have to be hacked.

Spent some time trying to find the hidden characters, thinking the unused theme was related. It wasn't. A mystery remains.

So, here it is, tagged and ready.

http://www.smspower.org/Music/MortalKombatII-SMS

Awesome, I love this soundtrack, thanks so much for doing it sherpa.

Some notes: I believe the track you have titled "Victory I" is intended as the ending part to the Kombat Tomb theme, and the track you have titled "Victory II" is the ending part to the Pit 2 theme. This matches the music structure of the arcade version, where the endings to the stage themes are also stored as separate tracks.

Also I'm pretty sure track 12 in this pack occurs when a second player joins the game.

What I find odd about the SMS soundtrack here, is that some of the tracks sound very similar to tracks in the arcade version, but they are attributed to different stages. For example, the SMS Kombat Tomb theme sounds like the Arcade Pit 2 theme, the SMS Pit 2 theme sounds like the arcade Armory theme, and the SMS unused song (#9 in this pack) sounds like the arcade Kombat Tomb theme. Also, all the tracks in the arcade version were composed by Dan Forden, yet his name is curiously missing from the SMS version, where the soundtrack is attributed only to Matt Furniss. Weird that the tracks would be used for different stages, when surely it would have been logical to keep them the same.

And sherpa you are also correct that the character select on Genesis sounds like the unused SMS track (and in turn, the arcade Kombat Tomb theme).

You'd think it would be logical that the hidden stage (Goro's Lair, where you face Smoke and Jade) would use the unused track. But nope, it just uses the Pit 2 theme again. A programming oversight, perhaps?

It's not unusual for games to get the tracks mixed up after the music developer has delivered his work. It's also not unusual to credit the arranger and not the composer - but we should do that here. I suggest naming the tracks as they are used in the SMS game, and add notes where they don't match the original.

Yes that's what I did (went with sms use). TheAssassin is right, the Victory I and Victory II themes correspond to those stages, that's why I placed them in the order they appear. Also, Victory could also be Defeat. It could also be called Kombat Stage Coda/The Pit II Coda-that's probably closer to the truth. Flawless victory could just as easily have been Game Over. The sounds are the same. So are continue and the game credits tune..I labeled that one explicitly since gamers are likely to be aquainted with both.

I tested and yes that is player 2 joins. Forgot that was an option. I guessed that's what it was but didn't add it since I hadn't come across it. Will fix in next version.

The stage names were taken by comparing to an mp3 version i was given, the genesis soundtrack and several other games. Ultimately, a wiki showing the tomb stage and the pit II were the deciding factor. Originally, I was going to mirror the MD name Wasteland - The pit II (both by Furniss). Also, comparing these stages to other tunes in other games with different composers in some cases. Some elements might differ, but songs I found that had the same whoo oo whoo oo melody from both tracks had the same title.

I called it Kombat Tomb rather than "The Tomb I" believe because that's what the wiki calls it. I'm not a fan of the series, so I'm not familiar with much of the background, stage, or character history. The faq called the Tomb. I would have been happy to call them Blue Stage, Red Stage..since that's pretty much what they look like.

Hacking the game did reveal two sprites, mentioned in some places of supposedly hidden characters, one of them later recognized and released as Blaze in the 2011 version. (kinda like shen long being created after fans misunderstood the translation -dragon fist- in SFII)
So a sprite of Blaze and the other guy seems to be in this game. It crashes the game, if you set it as the oponent. Also, Jade has two sprites..the green one in game and one in Black. Characters in the ladder are set up in a short array of bytes (0-~13).

So I would be happy to take some suggestions for renaming in consideration, especially from fans.

Maxim: I have no idea who the original composer is, generally I hunt, but this time I just used SMS power, especially as the tunes varied between games, so at least on the genesis, some tunes seem to be semi original..

Would I add the original composer to the tags? Or only those tracks that closely resemble his work?

Neil baldwin did a regae version of "The Bare necessities" I listed the original composer on the version of his remix/rearrangement that resembled the original, and was in the text, but reggae version was just Neil. That's how I thought of it, that's how I tagged it. The composers name is already listed severally in other places, and I don't like a lot of text litter.

What's your suggestion?

TheAssassin above seems to have some knowledge of the original. Matt Furniss often did significant adaptation rather than simple arrangement. Where the tune is there, credit the composer and arranger (semicolons for separation). The notes field can be used to clarify.

Yeh don't worry guys, I know virtually everything there is to know about the early MK games, I barely even need to look anything up lol.

I would suggest "Victory I" and "Victory II" should be retitled "Kombat Tomb - Round Over" and "The Pit II - Round Over", respectively. Although coda may be the correct music term, I don't think a lot of the general population would be familiar with the term, and "Round Over" gives a clearer indication of where it is actually used in the game too.

When music is used more than one place, my personal opinion is that all those instances should be reflected in the track title, so I would go with "Flawless Victory & Game Over" for that track. And also that reminds me, The Pit II theme is also used for Goro's Lair (the secret stage) on the SMS, so I'd go with "The Pit II & Goro's Lair" for that track title.

In regard to the 2 main stage names, since they are not actually given in the SMS version I would go with the arcade stage names. But attributed to how they are used in the SMS version of course. "Kombat Tomb" and "The Pit II" are the arcade names for the 2 main stages used in the SMS version (and have since become the "official" names for those stages in later games too). And "Goro's Lair" is the arcade name for the secret stage, but this is actually mentioned in the SMS version anyway. By the way sherpa, "Wasteland" is just another stage in the arcade version which shares it's music with the (arcade) Pit II stage.

I also like the idea of mentioning how the tracks are used in the arcade version in the notes tag.

I've attached what I'd consider an improved tags version. I've renamed several tracks to better match on-screen labels and gameplay in the original arcade game, I've added credit to Dan Forden where the tracks seem obviously close to tracks in the original arcade game, and I've added note tags in some of the files so explain how they were used in the original arcade game. I didn't include the text file, m3u or images as I don't know how to do that and didn't want to mess up how the pack works, so perhaps sherpa you could redo that part?

Oh and the hidden characters you found sprites for, were originally dubbed Torch and Hornbuckle by fans. Although they're not playable and only appear in the background of the Pit II stage, so rumored characters would probably be a more appropriate way to describe them. Torch was later made into an official character, renamed Blaze due to copyright conflicts with Marvel's Human Torch character. Hornbuckle has not been used in any subsequent games, but was referred to (although not by name) in Blaze's bio text in another game.

The black jade is just leftovers from the hidden character Noob Saibot, who was removed from the SMS version. let me know if you guys have any other questions or any alternate ideas for the tags.

[Attachments removed]

Interesting info. You literally posted minutes after I resubmitted my updated version. I almost said no, but I like how not everything is tagged with the same composers and the tracks have notes. So out of respect for your work, here are the new versions based on your tags.

Having to change anything at all literally adds 15 minutes of work, which is longer than the running time of most of these packs. I have to do everything manually since vgm_tag doesn't seem to support *.vgm and I don't know batch scripts. There's a script on this site, but it doesn't match the way I work and I don't know how to adapt it.

So to wrap things up here they are.

Since you didn't seem to want to be credited in an earlier discussion, I didn't add you, but I this definitely earns you a place if you want it.

It's unfortunate that you don't know how to make the extras. That's what sucks the life out of me. I don't mind the images since it only takes a short bit, but figuring out all the fields isn't always fun. There's no difference to me between creating the text file and tagging. And it often takes longer than anticipated. Sometimes it's fun, but it starts to feel like work pretty quickly.

Well enough of the rant. But I'm staying away from licensed games. The music might be interesting, but tracking all the relevant info is a task equal to or greater than just trimming the files in the first place. I'm going to look for a nice obscure, japanese only game with composers who use aliases vgmpf can't track. With no more than 8 tracks, and an easy to find memory trigger.

That's it. All my posts are tagged. Updated with the latest corrections.
I was going to do Back to the Future III, but I think I'll pass. I'm don't want to look up info on Alan Silvestri, what pieces might be in use, or anything else.

Enjoy

[Attachments removed]

sherpa wrote

Interesting info. You literally posted minutes after I resubmitted my updated version. I almost said no, but I like how not everything is tagged with the same composers and the tracks have notes. So out of respect for your work, here are the new versions based on your tags.

Having to change anything at all literally adds 15 minutes of work, which is longer than the running time of most of these packs. I have to do everything manually since vgm_tag doesn't seem to support *.vgm and I don't know batch scripts. There's a script on this site, but it doesn't match the way I work and I don't know how to adapt it.

So to wrap things up here they are.

Since you didn't seem to want to be credited in an earlier discussion, I didn't add you, but I this definitely earns you a place if you want it.

It's unfortunate that you don't know how to make the extras. That's what sucks the life out of me. I don't mind the images since it only takes a short bit, but figuring out all the fields isn't always fun. There's no difference to me between creating the text file and tagging. And it often takes longer than anticipated. Sometimes it's fun, but it starts to feel like work pretty quickly.

Well enough of the rant. But I'm staying away from licensed games. The music might be interesting, but tracking all the relevant info is a task equal to or greater than just trimming the files in the first place. I'm going to look for a nice obscure, japanese only game with composers who use aliases vgmpf can't track. With no more than 8 tracks, and an easy to find memory trigger.

That's it. All my posts are tagged. Updated with the latest corrections.
I was going to do Back to the Future III, but I think I'll pass. I'm don't want to look up info on Alan Silvestri, what pieces might be in use, or anything else.

Enjoy

Thanks sherpa. Although I just noticed I forgot to add Goro's Lair to the titles of "The Pit II" and "The Pit II - Round Over". Really they should be called "The Pit II & Goro's Lair" and "The Pit II & Goro's Lair - Round Over". Darn. But I guess the Pit II is the more prominent place the track is used.

Nah don't worry about crediting me, as far as I'm concerned you did the bulk of the work and I just polished it a little lol.

I completely understand how you feel, it doesn't take long to get burnt out when you're doing stuff like this. It takes a lot of concentration and requires a lot of precision and a degree. Thanks again for all your hard work, it's a great help to both me personally and the SMSpower community too.

You're welcome :) Despite my rant, I always bounce back after a little bit of well deserved rest. I think I bit off a little more than I could chew. Thanks to that, I'm more familiar with the process here. My perception of sms having "simpler" music has changed. I used to think trimming sms was "easy" compare to other systems. That is still true, but before I started posting regularly here, I worked with systems that vgm2mid and lpfnd did not process well (Game Boy and PC-engine). So I had to learn about the format and how it worked to see why I was getting the results I was getting.

The tools and specifically the vgm format, got its start here. So this place is the father/mother of the format. It sometimes feels a bit silly to work on this when machine formats exist. I originally assumed SGC was common, but with these games often there is no alternative to running through the systems. There's also the element of creating a historical document. Standards here are more exacting, at least on the surface than its offshoot sites vgmrips and project2612. They are different communities, but closely linked.

I'm a very latecomer. If I had known about this 10 years ago, It would have helped the musical studies I was doing at the time. But I quit music a year before that. Only recently, have I come back a bit.

I think I paced too fast and did too many projects in between. It's actually thanks to your intervention any of these packs got done. Rampage would have been my last contribution if I had not gotten a response. It was accepted immediately, I imagine thanks to your response. Some of my earlier packs have still not been accepted.

My initial response to some of your requests was "no." Then I checked. Then decided I had no idea how to do this. Then noticed there were soundtests...then discovered more than half of my projects before then were improperly encoded. So on and so on...and now several packs I though were way above my register of ability are complete.

So thank you, and everyone who has responded. I don't actually mind tagging as much as stated, but licensed games often have 3rd party sources of information available, and many more interlocking links. Until then, all my dumps were by a composer, their original work. No arrangements, transcriptions, adaptations, or reworkings to consider.

But that said, I would be happy leaving the creation of extras to others. I know on average, it takes slightly over an hour for me, when there are no dangling strings to corroborate. But if nostalgia goggles are on, I don't mind that at all. Part of the fun and education is finding out who composed what. Figuring out who the alias belongs to (not always possible) and what other games they've worked on. I had no idea who Matt Furniss or Neil Baldwin were. Now I do, and it's easier to appreciate and respect their contributions when you are a little better informed (and older).

I think I'll be fine if I take a little break. See what feedback comes, and once some more packs are accepted, start working again, just a bit differently. If it feels like work, I probably need to change the way I'm working.

I think receiving requests can be nice. You learn a bit about something you never knew about in some cases. But I might require the individual to be able to create all the extras. It's been a while since I studied the vgm format, and I might want to go for a bit of that before mindlessly logging loops again (that's been the easy part!) or trying to rush a pack to completion before I forget where it came from (which has happened,)

So...thanks. Been a pleasure working with you.

Author	Message
sherpa Joined: 28 Nov 2014 Posts: 365	[VGM Pack] Mortal Kombat II (SMS) Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 4:55 pm Last edited by sherpa on Mon Feb 23, 2015 4:22 pm; edited 5 times in total
sherpa Joined: 28 Nov 2014 Posts: 365	update 01/22 packs updated Actually found a memory trigger that worked. I had already ripped most of the tracks, but some were impossible to get effect free without it. Some in game logs had defects in them when reviewing afterward. Music by Matt Furniss. First time working on a game like this. One unused theme, hacking required. One theme must be ripped in game (the Tomb) unless you hack into the song pointer list..Not sure there is one, but something has to tell the game to loop the pattern. Or it could be that info is actually part of the music track. Just a guess. C0C9:Timer, C0CB :Tempo C0CA gets you access to everything, but fiddling was a bit tricky. You need to set the value to one below the starting value to get it started and playing at the right tempo. For that reason, the Tomb cannot be logged using the trigger since its starting value is 01 and 00 triggers nothing at all. Or rather, you'll be missing the snippet that 01 is supposed to play. The one unused song seems to be a version of the character selection theme for the MD. Here are the values: use 1 less to start 01 Title Screen 0x43 02 Player Select 0x16 - 0x19 03 Ladder Match 0x0B - 0x0F 04 Kombat Tomb 0x01-0x09 05 Victory I 0x0A 06 The Pit II 0x11 - 0x14 07 Victory II 0x15 08 Continue / Credits 0x1A - 0x1E 09 Unused Song 0x21 - 0x24 10 Flawless Victory 0x1F 11 Fatality 0x20 12 Unknown 0x10 In the rom I used 0x007ED25-27 can be used to load (1 block). change to 3E (block) it will spam that value,not the song, so not very useful. update I used Emulicious for this. It has a great debugger and lets you edit the rom in the emulator (no need for extra floating hex copies) I was not able to find out how the rom found its way to this area, nothing obvious. I mainly used this to help isolate the single value items I was having problems with and to confirm nothing else was there. In memory, anything above 0x5x gets raised to 0x70, but here you can play with values. It's not reliable. A melody in value 0x53 ended up being a drum pattern, or what sounded like combinations of the patters above. I quickly moved on to sorting and comparing, which took along time. There weren't too many tracks to loop, and they were relatively easy. I didn't have to use any of my usual tools. The Pause button was invaluable, for helping me log. The music doesn't stop but in game movement and sfx do. I just left it paused 90% of the time. So, will probably not attempt GG since this is not an option. It would have to be hacked. Spent some time trying to find the hidden characters, thinking the unused theme was related. It wasn't. A mystery remains. So, here it is, tagged and ready. http://www.smspower.org/Music/MortalKombatII-SMS

TheAssassin Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 177	Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:32 pm
TheAssassin Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 177	Awesome, I love this soundtrack, thanks so much for doing it sherpa. Some notes: I believe the track you have titled "Victory I" is intended as the ending part to the Kombat Tomb theme, and the track you have titled "Victory II" is the ending part to the Pit 2 theme. This matches the music structure of the arcade version, where the endings to the stage themes are also stored as separate tracks. Also I'm pretty sure track 12 in this pack occurs when a second player joins the game. What I find odd about the SMS soundtrack here, is that some of the tracks sound very similar to tracks in the arcade version, but they are attributed to different stages. For example, the SMS Kombat Tomb theme sounds like the Arcade Pit 2 theme, the SMS Pit 2 theme sounds like the arcade Armory theme, and the SMS unused song (#9 in this pack) sounds like the arcade Kombat Tomb theme. Also, all the tracks in the arcade version were composed by Dan Forden, yet his name is curiously missing from the SMS version, where the soundtrack is attributed only to Matt Furniss. Weird that the tracks would be used for different stages, when surely it would have been logical to keep them the same. And sherpa you are also correct that the character select on Genesis sounds like the unused SMS track (and in turn, the arcade Kombat Tomb theme). You'd think it would be logical that the hidden stage (Goro's Lair, where you face Smoke and Jade) would use the unused track. But nope, it just uses the Pit 2 theme again. A programming oversight, perhaps?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14732 Location: London	Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 9:18 pm
	It's not unusual for games to get the tracks mixed up after the music developer has delivered his work. It's also not unusual to credit the arranger and not the composer - but we should do that here. I suggest naming the tracks as they are used in the SMS game, and add notes where they don't match the original.

sherpa Joined: 28 Nov 2014 Posts: 365	Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 7:47 am
sherpa Joined: 28 Nov 2014 Posts: 365	Yes that's what I did (went with sms use). TheAssassin is right, the Victory I and Victory II themes correspond to those stages, that's why I placed them in the order they appear. Also, Victory could also be Defeat. It could also be called Kombat Stage Coda/The Pit II Coda-that's probably closer to the truth. Flawless victory could just as easily have been Game Over. The sounds are the same. So are continue and the game credits tune..I labeled that one explicitly since gamers are likely to be aquainted with both. I tested and yes that is player 2 joins. Forgot that was an option. I guessed that's what it was but didn't add it since I hadn't come across it. Will fix in next version. The stage names were taken by comparing to an mp3 version i was given, the genesis soundtrack and several other games. Ultimately, a wiki showing the tomb stage and the pit II were the deciding factor. Originally, I was going to mirror the MD name Wasteland - The pit II (both by Furniss). Also, comparing these stages to other tunes in other games with different composers in some cases. Some elements might differ, but songs I found that had the same whoo oo whoo oo melody from both tracks had the same title. I called it Kombat Tomb rather than "The Tomb I" believe because that's what the wiki calls it. I'm not a fan of the series, so I'm not familiar with much of the background, stage, or character history. The faq called the Tomb. I would have been happy to call them Blue Stage, Red Stage..since that's pretty much what they look like. Hacking the game did reveal two sprites, mentioned in some places of supposedly hidden characters, one of them later recognized and released as Blaze in the 2011 version. (kinda like shen long being created after fans misunderstood the translation -dragon fist- in SFII) So a sprite of Blaze and the other guy seems to be in this game. It crashes the game, if you set it as the oponent. Also, Jade has two sprites..the green one in game and one in Black. Characters in the ladder are set up in a short array of bytes (0-~13). So I would be happy to take some suggestions for renaming in consideration, especially from fans. Maxim: I have no idea who the original composer is, generally I hunt, but this time I just used SMS power, especially as the tunes varied between games, so at least on the genesis, some tunes seem to be semi original.. Would I add the original composer to the tags? Or only those tracks that closely resemble his work? Neil baldwin did a regae version of "The Bare necessities" I listed the original composer on the version of his remix/rearrangement that resembled the original, and was in the text, but reggae version was just Neil. That's how I thought of it, that's how I tagged it. The composers name is already listed severally in other places, and I don't like a lot of text litter. What's your suggestion?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14732 Location: London	Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 8:22 am
	TheAssassin above seems to have some knowledge of the original. Matt Furniss often did significant adaptation rather than simple arrangement. Where the tune is there, credit the composer and arranger (semicolons for separation). The notes field can be used to clarify.

TheAssassin Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 177	Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 3:42 pm
TheAssassin Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 177	Yeh don't worry guys, I know virtually everything there is to know about the early MK games, I barely even need to look anything up lol. I would suggest "Victory I" and "Victory II" should be retitled "Kombat Tomb - Round Over" and "The Pit II - Round Over", respectively. Although coda may be the correct music term, I don't think a lot of the general population would be familiar with the term, and "Round Over" gives a clearer indication of where it is actually used in the game too. When music is used more than one place, my personal opinion is that all those instances should be reflected in the track title, so I would go with "Flawless Victory & Game Over" for that track. And also that reminds me, The Pit II theme is also used for Goro's Lair (the secret stage) on the SMS, so I'd go with "The Pit II & Goro's Lair" for that track title. In regard to the 2 main stage names, since they are not actually given in the SMS version I would go with the arcade stage names. But attributed to how they are used in the SMS version of course. "Kombat Tomb" and "The Pit II" are the arcade names for the 2 main stages used in the SMS version (and have since become the "official" names for those stages in later games too). And "Goro's Lair" is the arcade name for the secret stage, but this is actually mentioned in the SMS version anyway. By the way sherpa, "Wasteland" is just another stage in the arcade version which shares it's music with the (arcade) Pit II stage. I also like the idea of mentioning how the tracks are used in the arcade version in the notes tag. I've attached what I'd consider an improved tags version. I've renamed several tracks to better match on-screen labels and gameplay in the original arcade game, I've added credit to Dan Forden where the tracks seem obviously close to tracks in the original arcade game, and I've added note tags in some of the files so explain how they were used in the original arcade game. I didn't include the text file, m3u or images as I don't know how to do that and didn't want to mess up how the pack works, so perhaps sherpa you could redo that part? Oh and the hidden characters you found sprites for, were originally dubbed Torch and Hornbuckle by fans. Although they're not playable and only appear in the background of the Pit II stage, so rumored characters would probably be a more appropriate way to describe them. Torch was later made into an official character, renamed Blaze due to copyright conflicts with Marvel's Human Torch character. Hornbuckle has not been used in any subsequent games, but was referred to (although not by name) in Blaze's bio text in another game. The black jade is just leftovers from the hidden character Noob Saibot, who was removed from the SMS version. let me know if you guys have any other questions or any alternate ideas for the tags. [Attachments removed]

sherpa Joined: 28 Nov 2014 Posts: 365	Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 5:00 pm Last edited by sherpa on Mon Feb 23, 2015 4:24 pm; edited 1 time in total
sherpa Joined: 28 Nov 2014 Posts: 365	Interesting info. You literally posted minutes after I resubmitted my updated version. I almost said no, but I like how not everything is tagged with the same composers and the tracks have notes. So out of respect for your work, here are the new versions based on your tags. Having to change anything at all literally adds 15 minutes of work, which is longer than the running time of most of these packs. I have to do everything manually since vgm_tag doesn't seem to support *.vgm and I don't know batch scripts. There's a script on this site, but it doesn't match the way I work and I don't know how to adapt it. So to wrap things up here they are. Since you didn't seem to want to be credited in an earlier discussion, I didn't add you, but I this definitely earns you a place if you want it. It's unfortunate that you don't know how to make the extras. That's what sucks the life out of me. I don't mind the images since it only takes a short bit, but figuring out all the fields isn't always fun. There's no difference to me between creating the text file and tagging. And it often takes longer than anticipated. Sometimes it's fun, but it starts to feel like work pretty quickly. Well enough of the rant. But I'm staying away from licensed games. The music might be interesting, but tracking all the relevant info is a task equal to or greater than just trimming the files in the first place. I'm going to look for a nice obscure, japanese only game with composers who use aliases vgmpf can't track. With no more than 8 tracks, and an easy to find memory trigger. That's it. All my posts are tagged. Updated with the latest corrections. I was going to do Back to the Future III, but I think I'll pass. I'm don't want to look up info on Alan Silvestri, what pieces might be in use, or anything else. Enjoy [Attachments removed]

TheAssassin Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 177	Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 6:20 pm
TheAssassin Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 177	sherpa wrote Interesting info. You literally posted minutes after I resubmitted my updated version. I almost said no, but I like how not everything is tagged with the same composers and the tracks have notes. So out of respect for your work, here are the new versions based on your tags. Having to change anything at all literally adds 15 minutes of work, which is longer than the running time of most of these packs. I have to do everything manually since vgm_tag doesn't seem to support *.vgm and I don't know batch scripts. There's a script on this site, but it doesn't match the way I work and I don't know how to adapt it. So to wrap things up here they are. Since you didn't seem to want to be credited in an earlier discussion, I didn't add you, but I this definitely earns you a place if you want it. It's unfortunate that you don't know how to make the extras. That's what sucks the life out of me. I don't mind the images since it only takes a short bit, but figuring out all the fields isn't always fun. There's no difference to me between creating the text file and tagging. And it often takes longer than anticipated. Sometimes it's fun, but it starts to feel like work pretty quickly. Well enough of the rant. But I'm staying away from licensed games. The music might be interesting, but tracking all the relevant info is a task equal to or greater than just trimming the files in the first place. I'm going to look for a nice obscure, japanese only game with composers who use aliases vgmpf can't track. With no more than 8 tracks, and an easy to find memory trigger. That's it. All my posts are tagged. Updated with the latest corrections. I was going to do Back to the Future III, but I think I'll pass. I'm don't want to look up info on Alan Silvestri, what pieces might be in use, or anything else. Enjoy Thanks sherpa. Although I just noticed I forgot to add Goro's Lair to the titles of "The Pit II" and "The Pit II - Round Over". Really they should be called "The Pit II & Goro's Lair" and "The Pit II & Goro's Lair - Round Over". Darn. But I guess the Pit II is the more prominent place the track is used. Nah don't worry about crediting me, as far as I'm concerned you did the bulk of the work and I just polished it a little lol. I completely understand how you feel, it doesn't take long to get burnt out when you're doing stuff like this. It takes a lot of concentration and requires a lot of precision and a degree. Thanks again for all your hard work, it's a great help to both me personally and the SMSpower community too.

sherpa Joined: 28 Nov 2014 Posts: 365	Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 2:19 am
sherpa Joined: 28 Nov 2014 Posts: 365	You're welcome :) Despite my rant, I always bounce back after a little bit of well deserved rest. I think I bit off a little more than I could chew. Thanks to that, I'm more familiar with the process here. My perception of sms having "simpler" music has changed. I used to think trimming sms was "easy" compare to other systems. That is still true, but before I started posting regularly here, I worked with systems that vgm2mid and lpfnd did not process well (Game Boy and PC-engine). So I had to learn about the format and how it worked to see why I was getting the results I was getting. The tools and specifically the vgm format, got its start here. So this place is the father/mother of the format. It sometimes feels a bit silly to work on this when machine formats exist. I originally assumed SGC was common, but with these games often there is no alternative to running through the systems. There's also the element of creating a historical document. Standards here are more exacting, at least on the surface than its offshoot sites vgmrips and project2612. They are different communities, but closely linked. I'm a very latecomer. If I had known about this 10 years ago, It would have helped the musical studies I was doing at the time. But I quit music a year before that. Only recently, have I come back a bit. I think I paced too fast and did too many projects in between. It's actually thanks to your intervention any of these packs got done. Rampage would have been my last contribution if I had not gotten a response. It was accepted immediately, I imagine thanks to your response. Some of my earlier packs have still not been accepted. My initial response to some of your requests was "no." Then I checked. Then decided I had no idea how to do this. Then noticed there were soundtests...then discovered more than half of my projects before then were improperly encoded. So on and so on...and now several packs I though were way above my register of ability are complete. So thank you, and everyone who has responded. I don't actually mind tagging as much as stated, but licensed games often have 3rd party sources of information available, and many more interlocking links. Until then, all my dumps were by a composer, their original work. No arrangements, transcriptions, adaptations, or reworkings to consider. But that said, I would be happy leaving the creation of extras to others. I know on average, it takes slightly over an hour for me, when there are no dangling strings to corroborate. But if nostalgia goggles are on, I don't mind that at all. Part of the fun and education is finding out who composed what. Figuring out who the alias belongs to (not always possible) and what other games they've worked on. I had no idea who Matt Furniss or Neil Baldwin were. Now I do, and it's easier to appreciate and respect their contributions when you are a little better informed (and older). I think I'll be fine if I take a little break. See what feedback comes, and once some more packs are accepted, start working again, just a bit differently. If it feels like work, I probably need to change the way I'm working. I think receiving requests can be nice. You learn a bit about something you never knew about in some cases. But I might require the individual to be able to create all the extras. It's been a while since I studied the vgm format, and I might want to go for a bit of that before mindlessly logging loops again (that's been the easy part!) or trying to rush a pack to completion before I forget where it came from (which has happened,) So...thanks. Been a pleasure working with you.

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