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Kimuji
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A-Team sound track, need compiling files
Post Posted: Thu May 27, 2010 2:54 pm
Hi, I have in my possession the original music files for the (seems to be) never released game The A-Team on Master System. I got them from Jeroen Tel but they are in a curious format:

0.PDS
1.PDS
2.PDS
3.PDS
4.PDS
6.PDS
7.PDS
CG.PDS
STATE.RST
TEXTCHRS.MUS

Does anyone knows how to deal with those files and work them into something playable?
 
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Post Posted: Thu May 27, 2010 3:18 pm
They're presumably player data plus (hopefully) a music engine to play them. Are they binary or textual? Would you mind sending them to someone who might help? (Perhaps me? I've built games from ancient floppy disk source dumps before.)
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Post Posted: Thu May 27, 2010 3:38 pm
These files promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can compile them, maybe you can boot... The A-Team

Is there any other information about this project anywhere? Ad scans or EGM blurbs or anything?
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Post Posted: Thu May 27, 2010 4:01 pm
Last edited by Kimuji on Thu May 27, 2010 5:14 pm; edited 2 times in total
I sent the files to Maxim.

Quote
Is there any other information about this project anywhere? Ad scans or EGM blurbs or anything?
Those files are the only thing I've got, Jeroen Tel doesn't know himself if the game was released or not. I couldn't find any videos or screenshot, I only heard of this game because I was looking for Jeoren Tel's works on Master System. The Flash and The A-Team are his only soundtracks on SMS (Edit: I forgot Bram Stoker Dracula), The Fash was released you can find videos, screeshots or even roms of it easily but with the A-Team it's another story.
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Post Posted: Thu May 27, 2010 4:19 pm
Good work. Maxim will be able to tell about the files. If there's no code, it could even be possible to use the music driver from The Flash to play them. Maybe Jeoren would knows more about the game or who developped it, though?
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Post Posted: Thu May 27, 2010 6:46 pm
Good news: they're source.
Better news: they include an "exerciser" to make them play (VBlank handler, etc, seems like it might have a sound test in there too?)
Bad news: it's a weird old assembler dialect so I'll need some trial and error to get it working.
Bad news: some of the files are only 2 bytes long,
Bad news: it looks like there were at some point samples in there, but there aren't any more
Weird news:
 ;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ;SEGA Master System Audio-player written for exclusive use by JEROEN TEL / THE SONIC CIRCLE
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ;
;Game/type      :TESTICLE ATTACK
 ;by      :JEROEN TEL
 ;Format      :SEGA MASTERSYSTEM/GAME_GEAR
;game by      :PROBE SOFTWARE LTD
;published by   :U.S. GOLD
 ;date      :31/08/91

Bad news: I have to go home now. More tomorrow.
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Post Posted: Thu May 27, 2010 6:56 pm
"TESTICLE ATTACK" some kind of private joke I guess.
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Post Posted: Fri May 28, 2010 6:47 am
Here's some progress... (it doesn't actually work yet)

Edit: got the sound test code working, but the music isn't playing yet. I need to debug the player routines now. There was a rather nasty bug in the code that was apparently (?) masked by the old assembler, but fixing that didn't help much.
output-02.png (6.69 KB)
output-02.png

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Post Posted: Fri May 28, 2010 1:19 pm
Good work, thanks for the news.
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Post Posted: Fri May 28, 2010 6:03 pm
Minor update: I had a bug in my logic that was causing me to truncate the numbers shown. Not that there are that many tracks... there seem to be 50 items in the relevant table, but they might be sequences rather than tracks.
output-03.png (294 B)
output-03.png

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Post Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 9:36 pm
Major update: it's done! Watch this space...
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Post Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 10:51 pm
Like I said, great job Maxim! I've just sent your work to Jeroen and asked him if he agrees with a public release in the smspower vgm database. If he is ok I'll also send them to exotica/modland and talk about them on the french grospixels forum on which I have some kind of blog (and of course I'll give you all the credits you deserve for getting the compilation properly done).

I don't know if his answer will take long or not, while waiting for it I think you (or Bock) can already make a clean pack of vgm files. If he is ok with the release, it will be ready, and if he isn't, you'll keep it for yourself. ^^
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Post Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2010 12:00 pm
I got an answer from Joeren Tel:

"Thanks for compiling the music. You can of course make these tracks
public on whatever site you please, just give proper credits"

We are ready to go! :)
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 2:30 pm
I realize that the unreleased game Lethal Weapon III, also has a soundtrack composed by Joeren Tel, I'll ask him if he still owns the original files. I hope I won't annoy him too much with my requests...
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 3:25 pm
Kimuji if you are ok we will organize a release of the A-Team sound test ROM here. Is anyone interested in preparing a VGM package for it?
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 8:41 pm
No problem go on.
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 10:01 pm
I'm up to create the vgm pack once the rom is public.
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Post Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 3:31 am
Tom wrote
I'm up to create the vgm pack once the rom is public.

Preferablly before, I'll mail you the ROM.
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Post Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 8:19 am
I've already started work on the VGM pack, but only as far as ripping via EmuKon to get them somewhat looped. I still need to sanity-check what it did, tag and re-trim the non-looping ones.
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Post Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 5:38 pm
Oh, this is very exciting! Really looking forward to the release!
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Post Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 7:29 pm
A 'sound test' ROM would be nice :)
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Post Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2010 8:16 am
It's worth mentioning that it's all original music, there's no arrangement of the TV show theme. On the other hand, it is original Jeroen Tel music.

We'll be releasing a sound test ROM and VGMs.
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Post Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2010 7:49 pm
Cool beans :)
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 8:34 pm
Released:

http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12364
http://www.smspower.org/Games/ATeam-SMS
http://www.smspower.org/Music/ATeam-SMS
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Post Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:40 pm
Good news!

By the way it seems we made a mistake, Jeoren Tel listened to the tunes and told me that they were playing too fast, they were made to run on a Pal system so for ripping them we must set the emulator on 50hz.

I have also some other news, Jeroen Tel just sent me his developpement files for the Letheal Weapon III sound track. Check your mail Maxim. ^^
I guess the musics from that game are meant to be played at 50hz too.
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Post Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 11:16 am
Ah, my mistake :S

If someone else can re-rip at 50Hz, do so, else I'll try to get it done this weekend.

Until then, you can use in_vgm's config screen to adjust the playback speed to 50Hz.
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Post Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 11:39 am
Update: I've been away for a week or so, but I hacked the VGMs into 50Hz mode (!) and they're on the site now.

Lethal Weapon 3 was causing me trouble until I realised I had configured Meka to not produce sound...

An interesting feature of the Lethal Weapon 3 code is that it has code to add a graphical sound test screen, but I'm pretty sure the underlying data is missing (unless Jeroen Tel has it somewhere). There's an opaque binary file that I am trying to figure out at the moment in case it's in there.
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Post Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 2:14 pm
I've quietly released the Lethal Weapon 3 music "proto" here:

http://www.smspower.org/Games/LethalWeapon3-SMS

I'll do an "official" release once the VGM pack is done, hopefully very soon.
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