Super Metroid/A Link to the Past Combo Randomizer Support

Hey guys!

I've had a Raspberry Pi for a few years now, and I'm finally taking the wonderful dive into MSU1 territory.  Thanks so much for being a great place for resources and support!

So here's my question:  I've got Super Metroid with MSU-1, and A Link to the Past with MSU-1, but is it possible yet to get MSU-1 support for the combined Super Metroid/A Link to the Past combo randomizer?

I searched the forums here for the term "randomizer," and it only turned up a post for the Link to the Past randomizer, so I think it's safe to assume no one's asked this yet.

Any info would be great!  Thanks, and keep up the amazing work!

— CB

Most probably it will not work. You'd need to use the ALTTP short ips since the other versions will expand the rom:
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/zelda3_msu.zip
Then folder short_NTSC_PAL, apply alttp_msu1_short.ips
(I am not the author of metroid, so I cannot say anything about how this patch works).

With luck it will combine both zelda and metroid msu1 versions and you are able to load it without crashing. Then you will have the problem that the track names may overlap means zelda-1.pcm is the same as metroid1.pcm.

As said I doubt it will work, but you are free to try.

I can give it a try later today, but as you said, it most likely won't work. If it doesn't work, is there a proper way to ask someone to consider creating a patch for the combined game? I just want to be sure I exhaust all my options before giving up.

Btw Conn — LOVE your avatar. I'm a huge Subaru fan.

— CB

Btw Conn — LOVE your avatar. I'm a huge Subaru fan.

Finally! ...somebody who knows the best anime ever (Clamp X 1999)!
I even dedicated "my room" in Conker High Rule Tail to this serie (even there's only a handful people who can understand this room because of knowing this anime, but ah well ):
https://youtu.be/Mxe2kIYteWg?t=269

Yapp, I think even if the combination would work, you have 2 different msu roms in one combined, and if track-1.pcm is requested, which one to play... zelda or metroid? A asm code to remap the themes of one of these two games is necessary at least.

If I were blind, I would still know that image. He's my favorite anime character of all time. And DEFINITELY the best anime ever. I'm still mad that the manga hasn't been picked back up again. It's been more than 15 years already!!

Re Conker: That's really amazing. I absolutely love Sadame! Always good to see X represented somewhere new! :-)

Back to the randomizer, I have a feeling it might simply be as easy as just remapping the music. I remember hearing that part of the reason the randomizer exists is that both games generally use opposite sections of the cartridge memory, so it was apparently fairly simple to overlap the two.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to remap the themes for the combination randomizer. Is there any way I can request that? Sorry if I'm missing something — I'm super new to these forums.

— CB

Yes... I would really have loved to see the manga finished. The ending there should be different from the TV show. Subaru killed Seiishiro and thus is head of the Sakurazuka. I also read somewhere that he got his lost eye back by taking Seishiro's and I think he thus eventually must become a dragon of earth. I think we never know how this alternate ending would have been

Rarely but sometimes I pick up single user requests (guess you'll be the only one who requests and maybe even play this combo in msu ever). Unfortunately for you I am on vacation from tomorrow until Friday and do not have my computer with me to check, only my smartphone to reply to stuff.

You can do the following, patch one zelda rom with that short msu hack, a metroid with its msu hack, and try if the combo of these two works and whether you hear (whichever) msu. In case this works, I can try to e.g., add a value of 60 to the zelda msu, so it would play e.g., track 61 if zelda track1 is requested and still track1 in metroid (means you only will have to rename the zelda tracks by adding 60 to the track number).

Here you can try with below patch. It was quite a work @_@

metroid should work, zelda I do not know, so far I didn't come yet to test it. If it works, zelda should have track+60, like alttp_msu1-1.pcm is alttp_msu1-61.pcm

Metroid as they are.

Create one combination patch, then apply below patch and cross fingers.
Don't forget to rename the *.msu file and all the pcm files to your rom name of course

Wow — Thanks!

You didn't have to do this on your vacation. I would've been happy to wait! I just more or less wanted to put it on someone's radar here to see if I could find someone interested in patching it.
I'll give it a try soon and let you know how it goes.

If this patch works, or if a working patch is created later, I'll be sure to spread it. People have regular races and competitions with the combo randomizer, so I'm sure they'd love to have some fresh music to go with it!

— CB

P.S. — I think Subaru was supposed to become a Dragon of Earth as well, but as you said, there's no way to know what the ending was supposed to be. CLAMP has claimed in several interviews that they know *exactly* how it is supposed to end, but they still haven't expressed any kind of desire to return to X. :-(

CONN, YOU ARE MY HERO.

I just played through some of the game (about 2 mins of Super Metroid and about 20 of Zelda) with the patch you just sent me and the sound worked PERFECTLY.

I really didn't mean to give you something to do on your vacation. I could've waited. But all the same......

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

— CB

Really, it works ?

I tinkered a lot on DS' metroid code (it's a bit weired in some way so I am not sure whether I could make everything correct), and didn't expect zelda to work on the run. That was completely blind since I never played even one level on metroid so I do not know what to do to access zelda. I'd suggest to make some deeper checks before spreading the patch (check loop/non-looping tracks and such).

I am flying in 2 hours and return on friday, so if you find anything I cannot fix it until then

It seems to work so far! I'll spend some time from now until Friday playtesting it to see what happens, but so far I haven't found any real issues.

The only thing is that the music volume is a bit loud for Zelda (if I get an item while the main theme is playing, I can't often hear the item fanfare over it), but I imagine that's probably only changeable by altering the volume of each PCM. It's something I can live with. (I'm using the TheRetromancer/qwertymodo soundtrack, and it's quite excellent.)

I'll try playing for a bit longer now and see if I can't find a point where the patch seems to fail. Thanks again though! It's really awesome to play this with MSU support.

And most importantly, travel safely. Good luck!

— CB

P.S. — I know you're not going to test it yourself this week, but *IF* you ever get the urge to try it out, here's how the transfer points work: https://maplequeensaku.weebly.com/news/super-metroid-a-link-to-the-past-randomizer-guide-transition-maps

Scroll past the giant maps and you'll see images of the four locations that transport you from one game to the other. It's really quite a great randomizer and a lot of fun.

Update: I just played through another hour or two. On the Metroid side, I made it through all of Crateria, 95% of Brinstar, and all of upper Norfair without any sound issues. Gonna be a bit before Wrecked Ship, Maridia, Lower Norfair, or Tourian.

On the Zelda side, I've heard around a dozen different tracks that all loop perfectly. I've checked ones that aren't supposed to loop as well (i.e. in the intro), and haven't found any issues.

Thanks again!

— CB

Incredible! If you look in the final fantasy 5 thread, it is version 18 already
It almost never is the case that a patch works with the first version.
And yes, you need to try another pcm set, adjust the pcm set yourself... Or try opening the rom in a hex editor, search for
A9 FF 8D 06 20
There should be 3 matches 2 for zelda, first block, 1 for Metroid.
If you change the FF to a lower value, maybe a0 in both cases, the music will be more silent. Also search for a c9 FB , close to above byte string (should be c9 FB 90 05), to adjust the fade up level as well. If you choose A0 for final volume, make this FB →98 maybe

I'm already in Istanbul, the travel was nice, thanks

Btw, do you have by chance a site which gives complete plot overview about what happened in book 1-18? (I'm not good in reading mantas so a description would be nice...)

Well, keep in mind you've done a few of these before.  And FF5 may have been through 18 versions, but it's the first time anyone has tried to add MSU support.  I'd imagine that a lot of the work done to provide initial support for a Link to the Past and Super Metroid as separate games came in useful for the combined randomizer.

I haven't played any more than I did earlier, but might get some time tomorrow.

As for X, I don't know of a site like that myself.  No one is really big on it anymore it seems.  But if I find one, I'll send it your way for sure.

— CB

So I've been through all of Metroid except lower Norfair and Tourian, and I've finished half of the dungeons in Zelda.  The patch still seems to be working near perfectly.  I've only noticed two kind of weird moments, but they don't seem to be "bugs" per se as the music keeps going.

1) The first is in Metroid, in the area beginning one door right of the ship, up to the "lake" with the item in the middle," as well as south up to the elevator to "Red Tower."  I came up the elevator from Red Tower into these rooms, and they still had the Red Brinstar music playing (rather than switching to Crateria) until I got either into the area with the ship, or into the area past the lake with the item in the middle, directly before the Wrecked Ship.  The music was still playing, and nothing glitched or overlapped, so I don't see this as a bug, per se.  More a fluke than anything else.

2)  The second is in Zelda. In the Tower of Hera, the music fades out and then restarts as you move from the 4th floor to the 5th floor.  This is in addition to fading out at the end of the 5th floor so that the boss theme can begin on the 6th floor.  So it seems like the fade-out command happens at the end staircase on both floors, when it only should happen on the 5th floor one.

Neither of these issues is distracting, as the music still continues to play in both instances.  But I just thought I'd let you know those were the closest things to "bugs" that I found thus far.  It's still more than playable.  Hope that helps!

Thanks again.  It's so fun playing this with the orchestral MSU tracks.

— CB

I created a Rename Script to combine both Super Metroid and A Link to the Past PCM Sets into one.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oc1rHAlXq7UNmDc0XtvOn_S0gUBSxOgV

Thanks! I did mine by hand already, but this will no doubt be useful for anyone else interested in the randomizer.

— CB

@Conn — 

Just beat the randomizer seed. At the end, there's a randomizer-specific song that begins during the credits. Since I beat Zelda and then Metroid, the end theme for Metroid is still playing when this theme begins in the randomizer. I suspect that if you beat the games in the opposite order, the Zelda theme will continue to play when this song begins. So I think it's just a matter of finding out when the randomizer credits theme plays and making sure the Zelda- or Metroid-specific music fades out first.

But yeah, the first version of the patch was damn near flawless. Congrats and thanks again!

— CB

So two things. Firstly I watched the first two episodes of Clamp X 1999, not sure how I feel about this anime so far, does not give much background information so it is hard to follow. Some good actions scenes and beautiful artwork and music. Just thought I would say because you guys mentioned it earlier and I got curious.

Secondly, is this actually going to be possible? I have not read every message in the forum yet but it sounds like we are having positive results so far and I freaking love the mix randomize so dang much. I have beaten 7 so far.

Right now, the patch Conn shared above worked with the only seed I've tried thus far.  

I played the whole seed all the way through, and found only three moments in the game where the sound didn't act as predicted.  Two were absolutely negligible.  The third has the ending music of whatever game you beat last overlapping with the randomizer's closing credits theme.  The only global issue I noticed is that the Zelda side of the music is noticeably louder than the Metroid side, but this can easily be fixed if Conn—or someone else—further updates the patch.

I'm not a programmer whatsoever, but if you ask me, it's not only perfectly playable, but absolutely enjoyable.  I wouldn't release it publicly without at the very least fixing the minor tweaks I listed above, but that's presumably up to Conn and the other developers at this forum.

Happy to have started something awesome, and happier still that it's of use to someone other than myself!

— CB

P.S. — Regarding X, it's hard because you get a lot of characters in the first couple of episodes.  Just follow Kamui, Fuuma, and Sorata in the beginning few episodes and everything will start falling into place as the characters all meet each other.

clockworkbutterfly wrote:The only global issue I noticed is that the Zelda side of the music is noticeably louder than the Metroid side, but this can easily be fixed if Conn—or someone else—further updates the patch.

Volume issues do not require any patching on our end. All patches created here have the volume set to maximum. We really do not like tweaking the volume on the patch side due to the issues and confusion it causes with other users (ie, the MegaMan-X low volume issue a while back as an example).

This is mind, the volume would have to be adjusted by editing the PCM files to suit the individuals volume preference. This requires no programming know-how, just a simple audio editor (for example, Audacity - since it is free). Also required is the msu2wav and wav2msu tools. Do not forget about the loop points.

Good to know. Conn had mentioned that a hex editor could fix it also, but that would presumably be problematic given the ultimately temporary nature of any given randomizer seed.

That being the case, I assumed that editing the PCMs or the patch were the only feasible options. Though, again not a programmer, I can't speak for how things are done here.

Thanks for the message.

— CB

@clockworkbutterfly Editing PCM audio does not require any programming skills of any sort. It does take some time to learn how to do it. Just need the time to do it.

I am assuming that the Zelda and Metroid patches are set to the maximum MSU-1 volume value of $FF. If not, then, it would require a hex editor to adjust the volume to maximum level.

Yes, the pcm tracks for Zelda should be well adjusted, but if it is too loud, there are 3 lda FF - sta 2006. The first two are for Zelda so cb can adjust these to his satisfaction.

I could fix the ending credits if you provide me a Geiger snesx savestate. It is without msu but I nevertheless can trace it with this emulator to debug
http://geigercount.net/crypt/gsd/snes9x1.51.ep10r2.7z

Just play to a point before the bug occurs and zip the .000 savestate and attach it.

You need the msu stop before the credit appear, right? Maybe I could also assign a new track to it.

@Jud6ment, in x there are 14 main characters, each is individually introduced while the episodes proceed, it's getting fantastic
If you like drama of course only

Wow, it is amazing that this is a thing that is happening. Im really excited, thanks for your hard work guys