Enable MSU streaming music for Alttp

Heey byuu.  Welcome ^^. That's what your feature made possible and I really like it ^^. This won't be the last game with msu now for sure. http://www.dkc-atlas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2073 here is the next and it's a evil one.

Hi Byuu and welcome on board Great that you like our new hack and I also hope other programmer will be able to make other games msu-compatible as well (I heard this hack is the only complete working one).

I see you read my critique ^^ first of all I find it really cool that you made your Emulator quite identical to real Hardware. Therefore, I was able to make my previous Projects, bszelda1 and AST, rh compatible as well. If you could do me along with all other programmers a favour wanting to hack msu, please release a new Debugger - I think the last were 0.65d and laevateinn. Geiger however is still the most advanced Debugger which, however unfortunately cannot trace msu and real Hardware issues (rh emulates e.g., joypad Register readings differently than zsnes/snes9x does).

A further issue is the Emulation policy that changes with every new release. I do realise that there's a trade-off between accurate rh Emulation and user-friendliness but as I listed before, read this from the user side:
- bsnes 0.65 emulates everything (sfc, smc, with or without Header), Plays wav
- bsnes 0.75 emulates only sfc without Header, Plays pcm
- leavateinn Needs a Folder "gamename.sfc"?!
- higan requires a bml and the required data Needs to be stored into a library that is really hard to find...

Most People want to Switch on the Emulator and simply load the cartridge... maybe it is possible to Change the game data Directory (where srm, screenshots, msu-1 files, etc...) are stored Close to the Rom Folder instead.
Qwertymode wrote this

the library folder used to reside in %APPDATA%\Emulation, but now it is located in %USERPROFILE%\Emulation.
Inside the library folder is a subfolder for each console, then inside each console folder is where the game folders go,
so %USERPROFILE%\Emulation\Super Famicom\Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past, The (NA) (1.0).sfc\gamefilesgohere

you almost Need to be a programmer to find this Folder without a tutorial. In my opinion best is you load alttp.sfc from whichever Folder, and it automatically creates a subfolder "alttp_bsnes_data" or whatever, where you find all the srm and stuff. Then you could store all the msu-1 files into this new subfolder.

Furthermore, please make it again more compatible, like playing smc as well as headered roms, maybe even wav next to pcm. As for XML-BML, maybe there's a priority check possible "look for XML (for msu), if not found use manifest.bml" or whatever. Also it might be wise in this case to rename manifest.bml to gamename.bml, program.rom to gamename.smc/sfc and save.ram to gamename.srm

But These are only my suggestions to make your next Version maybe more user-friendly. qwertymodeo proved it is possible to enjoy msu1 also with higan, so People who want to Play it on your latest Version surely can do - I also included his bml and tutorial to the patch file.

We could patch v075 to have the new MSU1 features very easily. The actual MSU1 code is only 4KB, and most of that is boilerplate.

That would be awesome! If you download my hack
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/zelda3_msu.zip
you find the bsnes 0.75 there. If possible, could you also make it Play smc as well? Most of the current zelda hacks which are developed here (PU, GoT, OoS) are in smc Format... (though it isn't a big deal to simply rename it to sfc as well)...

However, your msu-1 tool sounds quite promising as well as the possibility to Play mkv/mp3. Is Looping possibly with mp3 (as with pcm)?

Well, I still think that the SNES purify tool byuu once included is a great thing. I still use it to make my AST ROMs headerless. Headers are useless bloat and not in there in the original ROM. I have my ROMs all in SFC format and verified by no-intro to be sure of its validity. IMO the patches should be made for the real binary, not a headered thingie ^^ But thats just my opinion. So... back to Aa Megami Sama Season 2 ^^

Thank you everybody for making one of my dreams a reality! I often thought about how amazing it would be to replace A Link to the Past's music with higher quality versions. Now I've replaced a lot of the main themes with real orchestra and official soundtrack songs. Go here if you are interested and let me know what you think!:
http://www.videogamescrapbook.com/download/the_legend_of_zelda_a_link_to_the_past_msu.php

please release a new Debugger - I think the last were 0.65d and laevateinn

The newest debugger is loki. I wrote it between v094 and v094.08.

Unfortunately I got buried under a sea of library changes and it's going to be several months before I am even in a position to be able to compile higan again.

It does require game folders, and is console-based (it has its own built-in console.) But if you can overlook that, I think it's a lot more powerful than Geiger's.

Plays wav

There was a really important reason I moved from WAV to MSU1-PCM. WAV headers allow you to specify any bit-rate, any bit-depth, any channel-count, and even to specify various compression forms. And there was no official way to loop files (there are two competing unofficial ways.)

nocash was already kind of hinting that way, but it was pretty clear to me ... if other people implemented MSU1 + WAV, they'd likely support a bunch of formats. So a person would make an audio pack for [A-Z]SNES, and then the audio pack wouldn't work for people using bsnes/higan/sd2snes. Not good.

I know very well that the average user is not capable of converting an MP3 to a WAV file, and then stripping the 44-byte header, and then adding a new 8-byte header, and then finding an appropriate loop sample#.

But if MSU1 were to get fragmented so that each patch would be emulator-specific, that would be even worse.

My goal again is to have proper tooling to make this easier for people to do with a GUI (sans looping, you are just going to have to be skilled with an audio editor and very patient to do that yourself.)

maybe it is possible to Change the game data Directory (where srm, screenshots, msu-1 files, etc...) are stored Close to the Rom Folder instead.

You could technically craft a BML file that refers to files as "../saves/gamename.srm" (and do the same for the ROM), but that entirely defeats the purpose of game folders.

I also included his bml and tutorial to the patch file.

Now I just have to talk you into using BPS instead of IPS

(which I should at least get a patcher back on my site for that first, hah.)

Most of the current zelda hacks which are developed here (PU, GoT, OoS) are in smc Format

There isn't really an SFC and SMC format. You just change the extension. Most of the "SMC" files in ROM sets are headerless.

Is Looping possibly with mp3 (as with pcm)?

Yes, but you'd essentially have to find the correct loop point and specify it in some kind of configuration file inside the "msu-pack". It's not possible to do it automatically. But if the author of the pack does it manually, it can be done for users of the pack automatically.

Worst case ... it's not the end of the world to not loop. See pretty much every Sega CD game that used CD audio. It's really nice if you can do it, though.

...

Back to the UI as a whole ... I certainly know the UI was a lot friendlier before. I basically nearly made myself sick catering to any features anyone could ask for. The result was a codebase I could barely maintain, with constant bugs every single release due to the complexity, and people were still constantly complaining about it anyway as not being good enough.

I eventually gave up and just started doing things the way I wanted them done personally. It brought back a lot of my enjoyment and allowed me to continue working on the project instead of abandoning it. I would have quit by now trying to maintain the Qt port (up to v070 or so.)

I know a lot of people don't like change, and they especially don't like continuous improvement without backward compatibility. So I'm not outright blaming people for sticking to older versions. I get it. It's the same reason I run Firefox 28 and refuse to upgrade it: I find the new UI a disaster, and now they're adding advertisements to it ... ugh.

And this has been demonstrated. My peak on the v07x releases was 100,000 downloads a release. I'm now around 5,000 - 10,000 a release due to my changes. And ... I'm okay with that.

I've always said and continue to say ... I made the core of the emulator 100% modular, so that anyone can quickly and easily write their own GUI for it. And they have: BSNES (Richard Bannister), Mednafen, OpenEmu, lsnes, Bizhawk, Retroarch are all successful ones. There's been a few that never really took off as well.

But none of these have ever really focused on just making a nice bsnes UI. It seems that in almost all cases, once someone writes a bsnes frontend, they decide they want to write a frontend for dozens of emulators, and you end up with ... well ... a MESS.

I don't have the time, energy or passion to make the emulator you want to see, but I still hope that someone will take on the mantle of making such an emulator for you, using newer bsnes code, some time in the future.

Thank you for this Explanation, I think I can retrace why you changed the requirements of your Emulators. Maybe I am also getting too old to swap into new techniques (though they are advanced and better).

Also thanks for the Debugger, never heard from it, I'll check it out
Edit: can you give me a link? It says:

Download
loki is under development and has not been publicly released at this time.

For me, bsnes 0.75 is probably the best Emulator to Play msu-1 as it is most user-friendly and easiest. Higan at this time Comes with 3 Versions (accuracy, Balance, Performance). Perhaps one of These like Performance can be tinkered one time to Play the games like bsnes did - but I won't blame you if you won't... since
- we still can stick to bsnes 0.75
- my patch is higan compatible if anybody like qwertymodo want to Play it on this more advanced but more complicated Emulator

If it is easy for you to develop a patch for bsnes 0.75 to the advanced msu-1 Option (like spc fallback) and perhaps also Play smc (even if the game is a sfc) I'd be really grateful

Doing another full playthrough, and I've found 2 more issues, but I'm doing this playthrough on my version of the patch, so I need to go back to your final version to make sure it wasn't something I did, I just need to write them down here because I keep forgetting them.

First, when you collect a pendant in a light world dungeon, the text should not appear until after the fanfare is finished, similar to the way that in the dark world dungeons it allows the fanfare to finish before the crystal text starts (except in the light world there's no crystal audio track, it's just text).

Second, using the magic mirror in a dungeon to warp back to the beginning of the dungeon cuts the volume to half like entering a house in Kakariko Village.

I've found another bug while examining your findings after applying the decrease volume.ips
- when you enter a cave with Music Change the volume will increase first
This is due to the init value of F1 stored to 2006; when you decrease the volume to 60 this init value of course is way too high!
So here are all the changes in this patch:

Code:


1169CA: a9 60 8d 06 20 // Global volume (previously FF)
116A27: a9 30 8d 06 20 // Open map volume (previously 75)
116A57: a9 60 8d 06 20 // Close map volume (previously FF)
116A9E: a9 30 8d 06 20 // Enter house volume (previously 75)
116A8D: a9 60 8d 06 20 // Exit house volume (previously FF)
116B0B: a9 60 8d 06 20 // return from flute map to normal game
1169FD: a9 60 8f 04 e0 7e // fade-out start volume
116926: ea // prevent fade out too fast
116933: c9 05 // mute sound when volume is 05 (before it was 20)


the 3 bottom lines are new; 1169fd was formerly a9 f1 (too high init fade-out volume)
116926: ea was formerly 3a -> this is nopped out so that the fade out will not happen too fast.
116933 c9 05 (before it was c9 20). Mute Sound at the volume Level 05; since less volume has more effect in bsnes I needed to set the fade out-mute a bit later

Update decrease volume patch can be found in the main zip file
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/zelda3_msu.zip (decrease_volume.ips)

I can confirm the pendant text bug and fixed it:
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/zelda3_msu.zip (alttp_msu.ips)
it's a bit picky but I want to stick to how it is handled in the native Version.
hook:
04/43fd: ad 40 21 f0 05 -> 5c 50 ee 22 ea
11/6e50: new code to let the Fanfare Play out until the text starts

The mirror bug doesn't occur in my Version... sent you a pm

Thanks for the pendant fix, I'll get it added to my version of the patch. As for the mirror, if it doesn't happen in yours, it's almost certainly one of the hooks I removed. I'll grab an older revision of mine and start commenting out the hooks one at a time, I'm sure I'll find it in no time.

btw, if anybody is interested in AST, I also ported the msu1 code there. The goal is to have 1 hour game stream with voice acting (as it was originally); but some people who want to record their voice are missing. bszelda1 msu1 support will follow at a time.



For this reason I am also very interested in bsnes 0.75 playing smc with header. When I was hacking AST, all patches developed were for the headered version. So anybody who wants to play this on bsnes will have to patch everything, remove the header and play. However, if he wants to apply further patches, the header must be added again and afterwards removed again and such things.

> Edit: can you give me a link?

It's currently broken and won't compile. The older v094.08 release will, but only on GTK+/Linux, and has no docs yet. But if you still want to give it a go, here it is: https://gitorious.org/bsnes/bsnes/source/master:

Build with make target=loki

> For me, bsnes 0.75 is probably the best Emulator to Play msu-1 as it is most user-friendly and easiest

I figured v070 would be by far the friendliest. v071 was the first release to drop Qt, and most of the excess features.

> If it is easy for you to develop a patch for bsnes 0.75 to the advanced msu-1 Option (like spc fallback)

The patch is easy, the compilation not so much. If we can find a maintainer to build and host a v07x branch, I'll help that person patch the code.

At any rate, it may not be any time soon, but I do have a long-term goal to try and make something friendlier for people as a separate release. Especially now that it looks like Snes9X is just about dead as well (last release was April 2011.)

> So here are all the changes in this patch:

You ... really should use an assembler
Makes life a whole lot easier. (I used to write out hex patches by hand as well.)

> The goal is to have 1 hour game stream with voice acting (as it was originally)

Neat idea! If only someone had recorded the original broadcasts in their entirety ...

Wow, thank you! I updated above zip file with bsnes v70 as it Plays smc and does not mind whether the Rom has a Header or not. It further already plays pcm, so I regard it as the best Emulator to play msu1.
If you ever come along finding a maintainer to set the error bit if no pcm is found in this version and thus have the spc-fallback, this would really break everything!
The main zip file is now supplied with bsnes70 instead bsnes75:
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/zelda3_msu.zip

I unfortunately have Windows so I wait for a working Version of loki in case you'll ever find the time to release it

You ... really should use an assembler Razz

haha* yeah I know I should use asm files instead of directly writing in the hex Sheets, but I'm rather lazy :p

Neat idea! If only someone had recorded the original broadcasts in their entirety ...

Oh we have all original broadcasts (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCX8vfUDSWU) and all translations... even the original Music that lasts the one hour! The Problem in this Project is finding somebody who merges the voices with the bg Music - and (which is much more problematic) finding voice actors lend their voice. We Need 5 I think and have 2-3. Zelda is most problematic as there (obviously) a Girl is needed...

Well, check out Dolphin emulator. A GIRL fixed the speed problems in the dynarec. ^^ There must be a girl for Zelda voice acting. Maybe the one from our video?

I've done VG VA before. Don't know but I'll do a couple of voices if someone will shoot me a copy of the scripts. I have a Y chromosome, though, so no Zelda from me.

@Conn re MSU1 videos:

I might make more, but I have some new equipment that I'm trying to master - mainly video editing software and some recording devices.

Hej that's awesome. I Keep myself out of this Project (coding is enough I think) but there are others definitively interested in good-Quality va. And as I can tell when watching your Videos, you have a good voice + you have skills to maybe merge the voices with the bg Music?

I'd imagine a coordinator who collects all the samples from the va Crew (everybody gets a sheet with the sentences he shall read) and merges them all together with the Music at the correct time.

As for Zelda... maybe somebody has a Little sister or great mom how owes a favour :p
or probably the Girl who spoke Zelda at aeipathy industries is available?

If you (or anybody else) is interested, feel free to discuss here:
http://z9.invisionfree.com/bszelda/index.php?showtopic=1491

As said I Keep myself out of this.

As a further note, I think all the code and bg-Music, as well as text Sheets for AST are already done, so this Project can immediately start once the Crew is gathered (though check this up with Duke and Kiddo from that Forum).

Bszelda1 Needs some more time though. A guy named djemergency was a short time ago able to remaster a lost theme. I want to make a spc out of this theme, but Need it from wav/mp3 Format converted to midi first (which is not easy, so a professional is needed here - if anybody is capable or knows somebody, please contact me or at the bsz-hp; vgamusic Forum unfortunately is down). Once this Task is done and the spc ingamed I will make this game msu1-compatible as well. At this time the voice acting is required similar to the AST then.

The trouble with tying voice files to music is that you only have a single, practical way of doing it right, and as the MSU1 can only stream one audio file at a time, that means creating one huge audio file per scene...which at 44.1 kHz, is going to take s huge amount of HD space. Plus, there's got to be a reworked patch to account for the MANY more audio files required. Oh, G-d...I just thought about the timed events like the drowning man and the moles...

No worries, we are Aware that it takes 900MB Minimum.

And no, only 4 Audio files are required: Video, title Screen, game select and rungame.

The rungame is a single pcm Lasting one hour, that's it. It is the voice merged with the Background Music (wasn't different in the original broadcast, there was no extra Music for drowning man and such).

That's why I brought up the drowning man event. You could hear him on adjacent screens, but not from too many screens away, and the volume would change the closer you got. That's not possible with one audio stream.

Hell no! We stick on the original Thing and there's not such things happen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvkocUsLDjg
Video time 24:00, it's synced with the ingame time (the drowning man yelling).
Rescue time 50:45

Please, please, please...! Do not make it complicated! We stick how it is handled in the native broadcast and this is done how I described above with just 4 tracks with predetermined times when voices talk.

I made it just in my hack that the Music changes when approaching the drowning man, this is not original - it's really only 1 hour stream with predetermined Music and voice that cannot be influenced through playing Events (like ion ALTTP when going into a cave and such).

Okay, mea culpa. I have only read about this scene, so my source was either mistaken, or I misunderstood. That does simplify things by several orders of magnitude.

Jupp ^^ it's quite easy; 4 tracks and one Video... the voice acting Crew is the only challenge.
If yoou like feel free to post at the bszelda Forum

After much testing and headaches, I believe that I've confirmed that volume_decrease.ips does not have any effect when using the  bsnes_v070 included with the download mentioned in the first post:
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/zelda3_msu.zip

Instead, it seems you have to use higher versions of bsnes or higan (I've validated bsnes_v075-32bit and higan_v094-32bit) for the volume to be reduced properly. Could somebody else confirm that this is the case?

As has been mentioned, bsnes_v070 is more user friendly and has more features. I really would prefer to use this version with this hack, but I'm sure the lack of being able to reduce the volume of the music with the patch would be a dealbreaker for anybody who is aware of the issue.

Scratch that, I figured out why the volume patch for A Link to the Past was having no effect with bsnes v070. That version seems to automatically apply IPS files that have the same filename as the ROM. This feature would be great most of the time when just one patch is going to be used. I'd recommend renaming the main IPS file to a different name to avoid other people having the same confusion, or consolidate all three patches into one.

Your wish is my order:
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/zelda3_msu.zip

the patch is now alttp_msu1.ips while your rom file should be alttp_msu.sfc. Hope this helps to avoid this kind of problems

Thank you, hopefully that will help other people who may have also had the ips file in the same location.