|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
"Project 2612" is now open with 75 VGM rips and more are coming. For those who don't know the difference, VGM has more precise note timing than GYM and thus reproduces the sound much more faithfully. Depending on the game the differences can be dramatic. (AO supports both formats, of course). Check out the site at: http://project2612.bandwidthmonkey.net/ (Even though they only say to use AO on the Mac. Grr. Arrgh.) ETA: Doh. Their files don't work with current AO, at least on the PC. Looks like we maybe can't handle .vgz in a .rar or something.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
Beat me to it! Yeah, this site has a lot of great Genesis VGM files, and it looks like updates will be very frequent. Sure, it sucks that the file sizes are EXTREMELY large, even more so than GYMs, but for accuracy, it's worth it.
And just a quick bug to Belmont & Bannister: Their files don't work on the Mac either; it gives the standard "file format not yet supported" dialog box. It works if you unzip the rars and re-zip them, though.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 122
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 122 |
So for now it's only 'Okay news' :p I'll keep my eyes on this. 
Dear Mod/Admin, Please let me know why you had to delete this post. Thanks.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
Well, if you unrar the files manually they do play  But we'll sort out the problem too.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
While we're talking about VGMs, can I address a bug? On some extremely short VGMs (the ones that are only one second long), Audio Overload seems to not play them, and instead buffers for a really long time. Is that fixable?
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
Sure, point us to one that does it.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
Kid Chameleon on that website you linked to has a bunch of those. Just listen to most of the transformation snippets. Also Beavis & Butt-Head has a few tracks that don't play, such as the stage intros. That should be enough to get you started. Let me know if you need more. 
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Originally posted by R. Belmont: Their files don't work with current AO, at least on the PC. Looks like we maybe can't handle .vgz in a .rar or something. That is supported on the Mac via that godawful hack you've not implemented (ui_attempt_decompress, expanding to a tmp file).
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Originally posted by Speedy Boris: While we're talking about VGMs, can I address a bug? On some extremely short VGMs (the ones that are only one second long), Audio Overload seems to not play them, and instead buffers for a really long time. Is that fixable? Yes - it's already done; I caught that one a few weeks ago. The change will be in the next update.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Okay, it turns out that this was broken on the Mac too. I'm working on fixing it properly right now.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
And it's now fixed. I'll send you an update RB as soon as I've cleaned up the code a bit 
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
...and done! I'd guess we should aim for a release sooner rather than later, since that web page tells people to use a player that currently doesn't work 
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 122
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 122 |
Originally posted by Richard Bannister: ...and done! I'd guess we should aim for a release sooner rather than later, since that web page tells people to use a player that currently doesn't work He-he.  That sounds like a good strategy for getting Developers to release updates sooner. Veeery Sneaky. Cue the great news. 
Dear Mod/Admin, Please let me know why you had to delete this post. Thanks.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
On the topic of that webpage, I really hope they start making a list of "What's New" on the front page. It'd be slightly annoying to have to comb through the VGM list to see what was recently added.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
Yeah - they say they're already adding stuff, but damned if I can remember everything that was there before 
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154 |
I'm going to be updating my VGM library to handle this, and while I do that I'll probably add a way to transparently access gzipped files in RAR archives using my Rar_Extractor (which Audio Overload uses). The comment on the VGM file spec page about gzip being "trivial to support" doesn't take into account the lunacy of putting a gzipped file in an RAR archive.
... oh my, the files are huge. My modem will make these painful to acquire. I might have to work on a more efficient format that stores the samples separately.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Originally posted by blargg: I'm going to be updating my VGM library to handle this, and while I do that I'll probably add a way to transparently access gzipped files in RAR archives using my Rar_Extractor (which Audio Overload uses). The comment on the VGM file spec page about gzip being "trivial to support" doesn't take into account the lunacy of putting a gzipped file in an RAR archive. It's only about 20 lines of code to undo a gzip buffer in RAM. I'll send you the code by e-mail. For what it's worth, Audio Overload supports LZH and GZIP archives, which can be inside CAB, RAR, or ZIP; I don't think gzip functionality inside Rar_Extractor would be particularly useful to us as we'd need to duplicate it elsewhere anyway.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
Well shut my mouth, they started posting what's new on the front page. Outstanding.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
blargg: One of the emulators (Gens?) does support another format that stores samples seperately. We really need an emulated rip format - I'm told someone has one worked out complete with some rips, but they haven't released it yet.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
CGFM2 did so a good while back, I believe...
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 22
Junior Member
|
Junior Member
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 22 |
This is slightly off-topic, but any chance, Richard, of VGM logging being implemented in one of your Genesis emulators? I'd be intererested in logging a few games to submit to this site.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Neither has accurate enough sound support at this time to make good quality VGM rips.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
Yeah, even on the PC only Kega Fusion is considered accurate enough to make really good VGM rips.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154 |
Yesterday I looked into the VGM format and found that it has significant problems with PCM samples. Basically the format logs writes to the sound chips. So far so good. But then it rounds the times of the writes to 1/44100 second precision. In the console they occur at something like 1/4000000 second precision. This isn't such a big deal for writes to the FM and PSG chip, but for PCM samples this causes the spacing between them to be ragged, for example 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 3, etc.
I did a test of encoding a waveform with varying PCM rate and got a lot of aliasing when converting it to VGM. By simply increasing the precision of the VGM format 256 times what it normally is, all the aliasing went away. In my opinion, the format is broken and shouldn't be used for yet more sound chips. The fix is simple: record the time of writes in CPU clocks, thus no information is lost. That it's currently at the (common) output sampling rate is not proof of its accuracy; with sound chips you can arrange it so that a write one CPU clock later will cause a vastly different effect.
As for another format, I'm going to try making a simple convertor that takes a VGM/GYM and outputs one with each sample stored only once. It will be lossless; conversion from VGM to it and back should result in an identical file. Update: After twenty minutes of coding, using Sonic - Green Hill Zone as a test, I was able to reduce in-memory size from 2.4MB to 868K, and gzipped on-disk size from 590K to 28K. The next step is to eliminate the duplicate samples, which will affect in-memory size most.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154 |
I did a full size test using the Sonic 1 set as a test. First off, if they simply eliminated the gzip compression, they'd make the RAR archive 5.5 times smaller! I'll use this new sized archive as a more realistic baseline.
Using my new format, the set uses 1/3 the memory while playing, and an RAR archive of them is four times smaller. Merely gzipping the individual files (no RAR) makes them 2.5 times smaller than the baseline RAR, or 15 times smaller than the originals only gzipped. Here are the raw numbers:
* 5046 KB VGZ.RAR *23029 KB VGM (no compression) * 7855 KB MD (my new format) * 887 KB VGM.RAR (no gzip) * 247 KB MD.RAR * 338 KB MD.GZ (each file individually gzipped)
I didn't even bother removing the redundant samples in this test, since gzip and RAR do fine at that (this is all based on the quick algorithm I wrote). At best, completely eliminating the sample data would halve memory requirements, and barely affect the compressed size (gzip or RAR).
As for logging accurate Sega Genesis/Mega Drive music, this should be easy to add to an emulator (and do it right), since it just involves logging sound chip writes.
(Sorry for posting what might not be very interesting to others. I just hate bloated file formats, especially when they're replacing a previously bloated file format.)
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1
Junior Member
|
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1 |
Originally posted by blargg: Using my new format, the set uses 1/3 the memory while playing, and an RAR archive of them is four times smaller. Merely gzipping the individual files (no RAR) makes them 2.5 times smaller than the baseline RAR, or 15 times smaller than the originals only gzipped. Here are the raw numbers: Wow. Certainly would save us bandwidth, wouldn't that?  You should contact Maxim, the maintainer of the VGM format over at SMS Power . He's been meaning to add that kind of feature to the format for a while but never bothered since he's more into the 8-bit stuff. I'd love to see it added to the official spec. 
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
To be clear in my mind, this alteration you've made is completely lossless, i.e. you can convert back and forth between VGM and this?
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154 |
Correct, you can recover the original VGM from the optimized version. I've just successfully run the optimizer on each track from Sonic the Hedgehog, Ristar, Pulseman, and Langraisser II, and every one verified. The "unoptimizer" used for verification could also be used as a quick way to make a current VGM player work with the format.
The change is trivial: replace the extremely common PCM output sequence 52 2A XX 61 0Y 00, where XX is PCM data and Y is a short delay, with the new command 8Y, and add XX to a PCM area after the logged data. Gzip is then able to compress PCM data greatly.
The huge Pulseman set goes from 29.5MB to 2MB. Memory use while playing is more than halved. I'll be getting this in motion.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
OK. Let me know when you've got the changes into the official spec and I'll implement it.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
Can I assume that I can't access the VGM site at the moment because they're making the changes that blargg addressed? 
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
Looks like normal technical/connectivity problems actually.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
Yes, it was a little downtime, and regrettably not for the changes, though those might be coming soon. Everything's back to normal now.
Sorry to disappoint, people! :p
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
Sorry the site's been down the last few days, folks... had a hardware failure! It should be back up within a few hours of this post.
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
Looks like it's back up. So how is this going to work? Is Blargg going to send you replacement VGM files that are smaller, or is he going to have his own website for the smaller files?
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
Blargg will get the official guy to update the standard, send them a converter, and then Richard and I will post the only player that works with the new files. Profit! ;-)
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
Originally posted by R. Belmont: Blargg will get the official guy to update the standard, send them a converter, and then Richard and I will post the only player that works with the new files. Profit! ;-) RB hit it on the head. 
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
Another quick question about VGM: I know that in the current AO release, the only option is for the song to play to the looping point and stop. Is there a method to get these kinds of music files to loop like SPCs, NSFs, and GBSs do?
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Not at this time, though it is something I will look at in combination with the changes to VGM expected shortly.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
We might have something ready this weekend, guys. 
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
OK, I've gotten the tool to shrink our sets and a RC of in_vgm 0.33. Assuming no bugs are found, the plugin should be available in the next several hours, with the site updating itself through today and possibly tomorrow. New archives will come in Zip, by the way, as it's more cross-platform. Sure Richard will be happy to hear that. 
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
Apparently it sounds like the new, smaller format isn't yet supported by the current Audio Overload. Is that correct?
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 154 |
Correct, Audio Overload will need an update to support the smaller Sega Genesis/Mega Drive VGMs. The changes should be minor (I added support for the format to two other players and it was simple).
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Honestly, I'm not worried about ZIP or RAR; both formats work equally well in Audio Overload.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
I know, but some people brought it up and it's probably nicer. The plugin is out; The new versions of the sets will start going up tonight and possibly into early tomorrow, so RB and Richard, get crackin'. :p
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
Site is updated, so now it's up to RB and Richard. :p
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Your timing is flawless, landing first thing on a Monday morning! It'll be mid week at least before I get to this.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
Blame Maxim and Blargg, not me, sir. ;p
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 296 |
That's excellent news, R.B.! I eagerly look forward to the new version. I take it you don't compile Audio Overload with CodeWarrior then? I saw in that one topic how it crapped out on you.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
I do. I'm hoping it'll be fixed by then.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Okay, I've just sacrificed an hour of my sleep tonight to get this to work. Audio Overload didn't support VGM newer than 1.0, so it required a fair bit of hacking to get things going again. I'll clean it up tomorrow night 
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
1.0? How the heck did it play the old rips then? Those were 1.01...
In fact, Kega Fusion will still log to 1.01...
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Hmm, maybe it was 1.01. Whatever the case, it didn't support the more recent header values like the specific clock rate for YM2612.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Okay, I'm happy with my VGM implementation now. I've just sent the code to R. Belmont to test on the Windows and Linux ports.
I'd anticipate a release in the next few days.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
Sounds good! We'll let the public know AO is updated as soon as we get word.
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263
Very Senior Member
|
Very Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 17,239 Likes: 263 |
Windows, Linux, and Linux x86-64 binaries have been built, tested, and sent to Richard.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3
Senior Member
|
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 1969
Posts: 920 Likes: 3 |
Richard was about to go to the Advent Carols service at his local church , but elected to be a few minutes late in order to get a release out now. He has decided also to start a new thread in this forum; this one has gone on long enough! 
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30
Member
|
Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 30 |
Thanks a bunch, fellas, we'll update our site; users of AO will no doubt be pleased. BTW; thanks for the link, Arbee. 
The following statement is true. The above statement is false.
|
|
|
1 members (1 invisible),
57
guests, and
2
robots. |
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
Forums9
Topics9,331
Posts122,197
Members5,077
|
Most Online1,283 Dec 21st, 2022
|
|
These forums are sponsored by Superior Solitaire, an ad-free card game collection for macOS and iOS. Download it today!
|
|
|
|