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Pack here:

http://www.smspower.org/Music/PhantasyStarAdventure-GG

----

Sorry to have my first post be a request, BUT -

Has there been a package of Phantasy Star Adventure VGMs? Some of this music is very memorable to me, and the title seems like it would have incited somebody to package it up at some point... but I didn't see it around.

Is it available somewhere already?

Thanks for any help.

EDIT: Uh, I bet that name makes me totally look like a spammer! Ha ha. Ha. :C

It seems not. Maybe you could have a go at making a VGM pack?

Maxim wrote

It seems not. Maybe you could have a go at making a VGM pack?

Fair enough, I just thought with a series of that pedigree, somebody would have beaten me to the punch. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

Cool stuff, thanks for putting so much work into the site. It's great.

Trying my hand at this for the first time, and here's what I've noticed. Just talking to myself, really, feel free to ignore. Or, I've underlined the important parts for quick skimming.

There appear to be four locations in memory that hold the music that is currently playing, each one responsible for one part of the music that is playing. Those locations are $c160, $c1a0, $c1e0, and $c220. The next byte (so, $c161, $c1a0, etc.) also may be related?

When the music changes, all of these values change at the same time, and they usually remain constant during a tune (but not always, I noticed one changes exactly as the song enters a bridge). If you change one of these values, one part of the music will drop out or change, while the other parts continue. However, it also frequently causes the game to hang. I was unable to get the game to play other tracks simply by simply editing these (or other) values.

So, next step was to look at the ASM (uh, right?). The use of these four locations seems to be borne out by the presence of an instance in the ASM where four "ld a,XX; out ($7f),a" statements appear in a row, starting at 0095d. And sure enough, here 'XX' is $9f, $bf, $df, $ff, in that order.

It seems the relevant function I'm interested in is this:

ld a,$ff ; 00094F 3E FF
ld ($c15d),a ; 000951 32 5D C1
ld ($c19d),a ; 000954 32 9D C1
ld ($c1dd),a ; 000957 32 DD C1
ld ($c21d),a ; 00095A 32 1D C2
ld a,$9f ; 00095D 3E 9F
out ($7f),a ; 00095F D3 7F
ld a,$bf ; 000961 3E BF
out ($7f),a ; 000963 D3 7F
ld a,$df ; 000965 3E DF
out ($7f),a ; 000967 D3 7F
ld a,$ff ; 000969 3E FF
out ($7f),a ; 00096B D3 7F
ret ; 00096D C9

"call $094f" appears exactly once, at 0008DF.

This looks promising, but I don't know exactly how to proceed at this point, and it's very late, so perhaps I will return to this tomorrow.

fvbrkanbjcirl wrote

$9f, $bf, $df, $ff, in that order.

That's the sequence to mute the sound. It's of no use.

Did you go through this process:

http://www.smspower.org/music/Help/MusicEngineTriggers

Edit: Hmm, this game is a tricky one to hack. Its music engine seems quite non-standard. I may have a look later myself. Assembly hacking is the way to go, with a lot of use of Meka's debugger.

Edit 2: the trigger is at $c140. Write values starting at $00.

Oh, wow. Nice catch. I feel embarrassed.

Anyway, I won't let that go to waste, I'll see about getting a VGM pack out of this.

Thanks!

Update.

Okay, here's my attempt at a pack.

One awful thing about this little game - the fourth song, the attached "PSA-05.vgm" seems to be just barely out of sync with itself. The drums loop just slightly slower than the rest of the song. Correct me if I'm wrong, here. So if I try to trim it for looping, there's just a little bit of a hiccup.

I was wondering what I should do about this, and if this sort of thing had come up before.

I could consider this a non-looping song, and just take a short section of it. Say, three minutes. This would avoid hiccups, and still be of reasonable length, but the ending would be chopped off.
I could consider it a short looping song, and just ignore the small hiccup. The hiccup is annoying, and a technical mistake, but it would probably be the most convenient for listeners in other respects.
I could consider it an extremely long looping song, where the loop is probably ten minutes or more. This would be technically correct, but probably very annoying for people to listen to.

I went for the first option. I don't know. They're all bad.

I beat the game, there are no end credits.
I found the manual online here: http://tmp-box.hp.infoseek.co.jp/ps_adv.html
and it doesn't have any credits, either.

In the meantime, I have simply credited 'Sega' as the author. :C

Better to leave the author field blank.

For the weird track, is it really much longer than all the other tracks? Does it seem like the drum sync is on purpose?

Maxim wrote

Better to leave the author field blank.

For the weird track, is it really much longer than all the other tracks? Does it seem like the drum sync is on purpose?

Okay, I will correct the author field and reupload the archive.

The weird track is not much longer than all the other tracks. The drum sync does not appear to be on purpose, but it is fairly subtle. I will upload a version that 'loops' so that you guys can hear the hiccup it causes.

It would only be much longer than all the other tracks if I were to wait for the drum loop to come back in sync. This seems like the worst possible option.

EDIT: Uploaded. You can hear the break at around 0:50.

PSA-01 (trimmed).vgz (769 B)

Trimmed, looping with hiccup

PSA-01.vgz (1.27 KB)

Untrimmed

I think it is not very noticeable in the looped track. I suggest you use that one and put a note in the comment field about the glitch.

fvbrkanbjcirl wrote

EDIT: Uploaded. You can hear the break at around 0:50.

Could you please correct the file names ("Advenure") and the m3u and upload it again ?

Niloct wrote

Could you please correct the file names ("Advenure") and the m3u and upload it again ?

Okay.

Thanks, but one more thing:

The m3u lists '.vgm' files, while the pack contains '.vgz'

But I can easily correct that here.

How embarrassing! Ah, well, I hope you all enjoy the music.

Phantasy Star Adventure.zip (11.07 KB)

I listened to all tracks.

The lenghty one has an obtrusive ominous bass (in C ?) al the time.
IMHO, I didn't enjoy it.

But that drum issue you referred seems to me more like off-beat notes, since there are moments in which the solo notes indeed are on the beat.

But I didn't listened to the looped version yet (I'm using a browser player which doesn't allow me to load single vgms), will tell you later how I feel about it (if you care).

Right. Yes, the song with the looping issue is not my favorite to begin with. I played this game a long time ago, when my Japanese was not very good, so I never made it that far. As it turns out, the game, as a whole, is not so great. But I still really like the first couple tunes.

Anyway, the timing issue does seem to me to be real. The best way to tell is to get a very long sample of the music, and compare where the drum beats are in relation to the notes at the beginning, then five or so repetitions later. After only one repetition, it's easy to think that maybe you've just done the looping wrong. But after enough time, it becomes clear that there really is an issue. I can't imagine anybody wanting to listen to that music for that long, but there you have it.

GMCL says Kenji Yamazaki is responsible for this music.

http://ng-stg.hp.infoseek.co.jp/gm/name/ya.html

"ファンタシースターアドベンチャー"

Author	Message
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	[VGM Pack] Phantasy Star Adventure Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 7:41 am Last edited by fvbrkanbjcirl on Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:11 am; edited 2 times in total
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Pack here: http://www.smspower.org/Music/PhantasyStarAdventure-GG ---- Sorry to have my first post be a request, BUT - Has there been a package of Phantasy Star Adventure VGMs? Some of this music is very memorable to me, and the title seems like it would have incited somebody to package it up at some point... but I didn't see it around. Is it available somewhere already? Thanks for any help. EDIT: Uh, I bet that name makes me totally look like a spammer! Ha ha. Ha. :C

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14735 Location: London	Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 8:14 am
	It seems not. Maybe you could have a go at making a VGM pack?

fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 8:27 am
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Maxim wrote It seems not. Maybe you could have a go at making a VGM pack? Fair enough, I just thought with a series of that pedigree, somebody would have beaten me to the punch. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:14 am
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Cool stuff, thanks for putting so much work into the site. It's great. Trying my hand at this for the first time, and here's what I've noticed. Just talking to myself, really, feel free to ignore. Or, I've underlined the important parts for quick skimming. There appear to be four locations in memory that hold the music that is currently playing, each one responsible for one part of the music that is playing. Those locations are $c160, $c1a0, $c1e0, and $c220. The next byte (so, $c161, $c1a0, etc.) also may be related? When the music changes, all of these values change at the same time, and they usually remain constant during a tune (but not always, I noticed one changes exactly as the song enters a bridge). If you change one of these values, one part of the music will drop out or change, while the other parts continue. However, it also frequently causes the game to hang. I was unable to get the game to play other tracks simply by simply editing these (or other) values. So, next step was to look at the ASM (uh, right?). The use of these four locations seems to be borne out by the presence of an instance in the ASM where four "ld a,XX; out ($7f),a" statements appear in a row, starting at 0095d. And sure enough, here 'XX' is $9f, $bf, $df, $ff, in that order. It seems the relevant function I'm interested in is this: ld a,$ff ; 00094F 3E FF ld ($c15d),a ; 000951 32 5D C1 ld ($c19d),a ; 000954 32 9D C1 ld ($c1dd),a ; 000957 32 DD C1 ld ($c21d),a ; 00095A 32 1D C2 ld a,$9f ; 00095D 3E 9F out ($7f),a ; 00095F D3 7F ld a,$bf ; 000961 3E BF out ($7f),a ; 000963 D3 7F ld a,$df ; 000965 3E DF out ($7f),a ; 000967 D3 7F ld a,$ff ; 000969 3E FF out ($7f),a ; 00096B D3 7F ret ; 00096D C9 "call $094f" appears exactly once, at 0008DF. This looks promising, but I don't know exactly how to proceed at this point, and it's very late, so perhaps I will return to this tomorrow.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14735 Location: London	Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 12:36 pm
	fvbrkanbjcirl wrote $9f, $bf, $df, $ff, in that order. That's the sequence to mute the sound. It's of no use. Did you go through this process: http://www.smspower.org/music/Help/MusicEngineTriggers Edit: Hmm, this game is a tricky one to hack. Its music engine seems quite non-standard. I may have a look later myself. Assembly hacking is the way to go, with a lot of use of Meka's debugger. Edit 2: the trigger is at $c140. Write values starting at $00.

fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 9:46 pm
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Oh, wow. Nice catch. I feel embarrassed. Anyway, I won't let that go to waste, I'll see about getting a VGM pack out of this. Thanks!

fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 8:34 am Last edited by fvbrkanbjcirl on Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:28 am; edited 2 times in total
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Update. Okay, here's my attempt at a pack. One awful thing about this little game - the fourth song, the attached "PSA-05.vgm" seems to be just barely out of sync with itself. The drums loop just slightly slower than the rest of the song. Correct me if I'm wrong, here. So if I try to trim it for looping, there's just a little bit of a hiccup. I was wondering what I should do about this, and if this sort of thing had come up before. I could consider this a non-looping song, and just take a short section of it. Say, three minutes. This would avoid hiccups, and still be of reasonable length, but the ending would be chopped off. I could consider it a short looping song, and just ignore the small hiccup. The hiccup is annoying, and a technical mistake, but it would probably be the most convenient for listeners in other respects. I could consider it an extremely long looping song, where the loop is probably ten minutes or more. This would be technically correct, but probably very annoying for people to listen to. I went for the first option. I don't know. They're all bad. I beat the game, there are no end credits. I found the manual online here: http://tmp-box.hp.infoseek.co.jp/ps_adv.html and it doesn't have any credits, either. In the meantime, I have simply credited 'Sega' as the author. :C

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14735 Location: London	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:19 am
	Better to leave the author field blank. For the weird track, is it really much longer than all the other tracks? Does it seem like the drum sync is on purpose?

fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:25 am
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Maxim wrote Better to leave the author field blank. For the weird track, is it really much longer than all the other tracks? Does it seem like the drum sync is on purpose? Okay, I will correct the author field and reupload the archive. The weird track is not much longer than all the other tracks. The drum sync does not appear to be on purpose, but it is fairly subtle. I will upload a version that 'loops' so that you guys can hear the hiccup it causes. It would only be much longer than all the other tracks if I were to wait for the drum loop to come back in sync. This seems like the worst possible option. EDIT: Uploaded. You can hear the break at around 0:50. PSA-01 (trimmed).vgz (769 B) Trimmed, looping with hiccup PSA-01.vgz (1.27 KB) Untrimmed

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14735 Location: London	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 12:02 pm
	I think it is not very noticeable in the looped track. I suggest you use that one and put a note in the comment field about the glitch.

Niloct Joined: 25 Dec 2005 Posts: 607 Location: São Paulo - Brazil	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 12:18 pm
	fvbrkanbjcirl wrote EDIT: Uploaded. You can hear the break at around 0:50. Could you please correct the file names ("Advenure") and the m3u and upload it again ?

fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 12:22 pm Last edited by fvbrkanbjcirl on Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:10 pm; edited 1 time in total
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Niloct wrote Could you please correct the file names ("Advenure") and the m3u and upload it again ? Okay.

Niloct Joined: 25 Dec 2005 Posts: 607 Location: São Paulo - Brazil	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 12:54 pm
	Thanks, but one more thing: The m3u lists '.vgm' files, while the pack contains '.vgz' But I can easily correct that here.

fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:10 pm
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	How embarrassing! Ah, well, I hope you all enjoy the music. Phantasy Star Adventure.zip (11.07 KB)

Niloct Joined: 25 Dec 2005 Posts: 607 Location: São Paulo - Brazil	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:29 pm
	I listened to all tracks. The lenghty one has an obtrusive ominous bass (in C ?) al the time. IMHO, I didn't enjoy it. But that drum issue you referred seems to me more like off-beat notes, since there are moments in which the solo notes indeed are on the beat. But I didn't listened to the looped version yet (I'm using a browser player which doesn't allow me to load single vgms), will tell you later how I feel about it (if you care).

fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:40 pm
fvbrkanbjcirl Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 9	Right. Yes, the song with the looping issue is not my favorite to begin with. I played this game a long time ago, when my Japanese was not very good, so I never made it that far. As it turns out, the game, as a whole, is not so great. But I still really like the first couple tunes. Anyway, the timing issue does seem to me to be real. The best way to tell is to get a very long sample of the music, and compare where the drum beats are in relation to the notes at the beginning, then five or so repetitions later. After only one repetition, it's easy to think that maybe you've just done the looping wrong. But after enough time, it becomes clear that there really is an issue. I can't imagine anybody wanting to listen to that music for that long, but there you have it.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14735 Location: London	Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 1:53 am
	GMCL says Kenji Yamazaki is responsible for this music. http://ng-stg.hp.infoseek.co.jp/gm/name/ya.html "ファンタシースターアドベンチャー"

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