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NebulasRay

Namco NB-1 (C352)

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  • ValleyBell Offline
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NebulasRay

Post by ValleyBell »

TitleNebulasRay
ComposerMasahiro Fukuzawa, Takayuki Ishikawa
SystemNamco NB-1
Sound ChipsC352
Tracks16
Playing time27:50
Pack authorctr
Pack version2.00
Last Update2022-12-02

  • Despatche Offline
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Post by Despatche »

"[Multi Looper]" isn't part of the track's name, that was just to indicate that the song loops multiple times on the album, because most of the other songs don't.
  • Despatche Offline
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Post by Despatche »

Wow, I actually did post about that before. Oh well, here's a better post.

The "Multi Looper" bit in Sandvurn's title is not actually a part of the title, but is referring to that track being the "big" one on the album that has multiple loops. Some other songs on that album loop twice, but Sandvurn loops three times.

Stream Drive drops in volume for a certain early section. The album doesn't do this, nor does any other song in the game or on the album, so I'm assuming it's a MAME bug of some sort?

On the album, Lost-Marinarc has this cool effect "close-in" effect that I don't know music/sound theory enough to have the right term for. It's the only song that has anything potentially "weird" versus what the game code is probably doing. The album sounds like a PCB recording otherwise, and to my knowledge all of the Namco Game Sound Express albums are. I feel that this is another MAME bug/error/omission?

NebulasRay, and the other games on this hardware, aren't really figured out right yet, and last I checked it was only very recently (I remember a big post about it in 2014/2015?) that a chunk of progress was made here. Unfortunately, very few people are known to have this particular game, and I don't really know anyone that does to be able to ask about these two issues.
  • ctr Offline
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Post by ctr »

Despatche wrote:The "Multi Looper" bit in Sandvurn's title is not actually a part of the title, but is referring to that track being the "big" one on the album that has multiple loops. Some other songs on that album loop twice, but Sandvurn loops three times.
I removed that tag from the song in the QuattroPlay playlist, but I don't see a reason to update the VGM pack for this alone.
Despatche wrote:Stream Drive drops in volume for a certain early section. The album doesn't do this, nor does any other song in the game or on the album, so I'm assuming it's a MAME bug of some sort?
Actually this is written into the song itself in the ROM, the song contains "Set track volume" commands at these points. I could of course patch that out but then you're making a choice between accuracy to the OST or the game itself.
Despatche wrote:On the album, Lost-Marinarc has this cool effect "close-in" effect that I don't know music/sound theory enough to have the right term for. It's the only song that has anything potentially "weird" versus what the game code is probably doing. The album sounds like a PCB recording otherwise, and to my knowledge all of the Namco Game Sound Express albums are. I feel that this is another MAME bug/error/omission?
They added reverb for the OST version of that song for some reason. The PCB does not have any extra reverb/DSP at all, and no other C352 games have that either. Not all Game Sound Express albums are 100% direct PCB recordings, good examples being Knuckle Heads and Alpine Racer (both have extended themes which aren't present in the game itself), Great Sluggers (different instruments), and also the earlier albums like Valkyrie no Densetsu, Dragon Saber etc which were all reprogrammed in order to improve the sound quality since the C140 doesn't actually sound that great when captured. Compare with the recent Namco Arcade Sound Digital Collection CDs by City Connection/Clarice Disc.
Despatche wrote:NebulasRay, and the other games on this hardware, aren't really figured out right yet, and last I checked it was only very recently (I remember a big post about it in 2014/2015?) that a chunk of progress was made here. Unfortunately, very few people are known to have this particular game, and I don't really know anyone that does to be able to ask about these two issues.
Since I fixed the music timing in MAME a while ago the sound on this game and all other games on this hardware should match the PCB. Sure, several things might not be figured out but the sound isn't one anymore. Namco reused their sound hardware on most of their PCBs at that time anyway.

Don't forget that I reverse engineered the Quattro sound driver used by all C352 games and made an almost perfect reproduction. You can load any game (using the C352) in QuattroPlay and I can pretty much guarantee that it will sound just like the PCB. With some exceptions for Cyber Commando (which uses a single command that I haven't implemented) and the games using the Gashin sound system (it's just a bass amplifier, you could maybe simulate that manually with an equalizer)
  • Despatche Offline
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Post by Despatche »

Cool, also weird. I just figured those were MAME bugs, particularly the Stream Drive behavior.

Last I checked, Knuckle Heads doesn't have anything new. I don't know anything about Alpine Racer.
  • ctr Offline
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  • Joined: 2013-07-17, 23:32:39

Post by ctr »

I uploaded a "fixed" version of Stream Drive here with most of the "set track volume" commands stripped out. Enjoy.
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