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playing txt files from vgmplay seems simple to implement

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playing txt files from vgmplay seems simple to implement

Post by nitrofurano »

i'm just making a small test showing how neat and simple would it be having vgmplay playing text files

my suggestion is to have text lines from txt files from vgm2txt starting with hexdumps, having bytes exactly related to its vgm binary version

and the conversion log of the description related to flags, frequencies, address, registers and values, and etc., used, commented after these hexdumps in each text line

(the vgmtxt file i’m sending has not yet all log descriptions in the file, that was just for showing some idea)

in the attachment, i'm sending a vgmtxt example file, and a bash script that would convert it into a temporary binary vgm file and play it (i imagine non-unix users wouldn’t struggle to realize what is in the .sh file, and convert it to a different script code for doing the same - sorry everyone, i’m a gnu/linux-only user! :D )

the goal of it is being able to, for example, compose vgm files using a mere text editor and play it as simply and soon as we wish, being simpler to develop converters (from trackers to vgm and back, vgm to vgm using different sound chips, etc.), etc.

vgm2txt and vgmplay developers, just please let me know how soon can be this implemented, i believe would be really cool, neat and useful!
Attachments
vgmtxt_hexdump_playvgm_test_01.zip
(2.38 KiB) Downloaded 239 times

Post by nitrofurano »

optimizing a vgmtxt by hand, using a text editor
Attachments
vgmtxt_hexdump_playvgm_test_03.zip
(1.98 KiB) Downloaded 214 times
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Post by ValleyBell »

I'm afraid I won't put any effort into this by myself. (I have more important things to do - I'm not doing enough work on libvgm anyway.)

But since everything is open source, you are free to modify the existing tools and submit pull requests. (or submit your code as a Git patch if you insist on not using GitHub - but you'll have to pull/clone from GitHub anyway)
I'm looking forward for any concepts you can come up with regarding sample data blocks, because those can easily blow up the file size.

Post by nitrofurano »

i can imagine

soon i might fork vgm2txt and vgmplay to gitlab and work there - my problem is only on having an account at github, not downloading sources from there (even wget can be used for that, i guess)

about sample data blocks, having large text lines (somewhat 64 characters or alike) with hexdumps wouldn’t do much more than doubling the file size there (which i think it’s not exactly "blowing up"), and these lines might not need to be commented out that much - something like:

Code: Select all

;- 0x00001203 - sample 01 - 512 bytes
03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d
03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d
03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d
03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d
(...)
03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d
03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d03339a9d
about classic vgm files, please help me to choose a good example to show back an working example of what it would look like - i’m struggling to find a good example (k053649 examples has too short samples for that (32 bytes long, i guess) - and as far i could find and figure out, yamaha ym examples i found had no samples)

i understand perfectly that having a text version of vgm files might result in large files, but i think that, not only it would make results from vgm2txt more useful, as it would make both vgm2txt and vgmplay an amazing composing, experimentation and researching tool, specially considering that vgm trackers (and not misregreting who spent their efforts on developing them, specially considering i never tried to develop whatever kind of music editor) are still way far from being decent enough for what vgm tools actually supports (and now i’m remembering interviews from Hisayoshi Ogura and Toshiaki Sakoda, that back in the 80’s they composed their tunes directly on the sound chip registers, so working on vgm tools that deeply might provide a quite amazing composing experience with the technology we have now)
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Post by ValleyBell »

TwinBee Yahho should have rather large sample blocks. Or Daytona.
Packs that use the RF5C68 also might be interesting.

Post by nitrofurano »

thanks! :)

Post by nitrofurano »

i'm seeing now better the situation (even considering that Gedit/Pluma are fine for opening megabyte-large text files) - perhaps a command line argument would allow us to choose having samples or not, and txt files without samples would result into unplayable txt files (with some information in the file notifying us that the samples were removed)

another command line argument might be useful if we want txt files converted from vgm2txt as it is now, or as hexdump with comments
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