Tom's topic

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-03-01, 19:44:26

Since everyone else already posted some songs I guess I can do the same, even though I am the first to admit there's nothing special to see here.
All of these songs have been converted from the XM format to smps and are replayed through Sonic 1's engine, and therefore they use YM2612 + SN76496 (regular Mega Drive / Genesis setup). I already posted most of these songs on other websites, so it is likely that you already heard some of them. I post them in backwards chronological order, meaning that the most recent songs are at the top.
Note: tagging isn't consistent, most authors are missing; nineko == Tom.

Rockman & Forte - Magic Man
Dr. Mario - Fever
Action 52 - Cheetahmen
Bubble Ghost - Main Theme (XM arranged by Puto)
Chip's Challenge - BGM2 (YM2612 only; old version, I later changed the panning a bit but I cba to rerecord it)
Castlevania - Bloody Tears
Sonic Adventure 2 - Escape from the City
F-Zero - Silence (YM2612 only)
Super Mario Bros 3 - Some BGM (old version, I later changed the panning a bit but I cba to rerecord it)
Sonic 2 (8-bit) - Sky High Zone
The Lucky Dime Caper - The Andes Mountains
Yoshi's Island - Athletic Theme
Rayman - Bongo Hills (unfinished, very preliminary wip)
Jingle Bells
Dragon Ball KAI - Dragon Soul (arranged by Tweaker)
Super Mario Land 1 - Chai
Dragon Ball - Maka Fushigi Adventure (arranged by Tweaker)
Sonic 4 - Splash Hill Zone 1 (arranged by RAMPKORV)
Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow - Rival Trainer
F-Zero X - Sector α/ß
Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
Sonic 2 (8-bit) - Green Hills Zone (aka Sonic CD - You Can Do Anything)
TMNT - Fire Level
Puzzle Bobble - BGM
Ranma½ - Omoide Ga Ippai (aka Full Of Memories)
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Rydeen
Aim To Be A Pokémon Master (co-arranged by Tweaker)
F-Zero - Big Blue
Plok!
Super Bonk - Water Level
Medley: Sonic 2 (8-bit) - Mecha Green Hill Zone / Mega Man X - Theme Of Zero (arranged by King Meteor)
Europe - The Final Countdown
Star Soldier - Power Up
Sonic & Knuckles Collection - Launch Base Zone 2
Sonic & Knuckles Collection - Carnival Night Zone 2
Sonic 2 - Robotnik's Theme (remix)
Sonic Advance 2 - Egg Utopia
Super Mario World - Athletic Theme (YM2612 only)
Knight Rider - Opening Theme
Sonic Advance 2 - Ice Paradise 1
We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Super Mario Bros 2 - Birdo

... and I stop here because the songs I converted sooner than that are even worse

Also, the whole VGM pack of soniNeko, my hack of Sonic 1.

Tomy · Post by **Tomy** » 2012-04-07, 20:09:20

Kind of forgot to comment here.. First of all, that "Dr. Mario - Fever" is soo infectious.

The Cheetahmen theme brings a smile easily too as that acid bassline is just so spot on. Haha. At F-Zero's Big Blue I thought, damn nice cymbals for YM2612.. but it's the PSG chip doing them. You can do suprisingly nice drums with it, imo.

Glad I checked out that soniNeko too, there's some Toaplan in it! Out Zone is a blast, though my favourite from the game would be "The Undertaker Of O.Z."

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-08, 0:09:02

Thanks for your comments

dissident93 · Post by **dissident93** » 2012-04-08, 5:09:15

So you just convert MIDI into XM, then run it through one of these SMPS tools?

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-08, 13:07:23

For most of those tracks, yes. But it's not as simple as you think. The MIDI files imported with Mod Plug Tracker usually require some degree of manual optimisation to be correctly converted to SMPS; sometimes it's as simple as moving some notes around, but sometimes entire channels have to be rewritten, when the MIDI has 20+ polyphony notes and I can use only 9 at most. In some cases I spent 2 or 3 hours organising the channels in the best way, deciding what should go on PSG and what on FM, and so on. Sure, you can drop a MIDI in Mod Plug Tracker and save it as XM without caring, but the end result is likely to sound like crap (which is what happened to 90% of the other people who wanted to add custom music to their hacks). And yes, I used "one of these SMPS tools", namely the one I made

My soniNeko hack was actually meant to be a simple music hack with no additional features, just to be used as a showcase of what my converters could do since music hacking was quite primitive before (there was Sonic QX but its results were questionable), but I later ended up adding other stuff to it. Some of the songs were converted from games which used the Cube/Iwadare sound driver, with another (private) converter I wrote, with Wiz's help.

dissident93 · Post by **dissident93** » 2012-04-08, 13:41:28

If a channel isn't monophonic, what will occur in the SMPS conversion? Silence?

And I wish I could code.. I'm just young with an eye for detail "/

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-08, 13:49:39

See, one of the points of the MIDI to XM conversion is actually to remove the polyphony from the channels, since XM channels are monophonic just like SMPS's. If the MIDI plays three notes on channel 1 at the same time, Mod Plug Tracker will spread those notes on three XM channels, already ready to be converted to SMPS. If you convert directly from MIDI to SMPS you have little control on which notes get through and which notes get cut, but by converting a MIDI to XM you'll have a precise idea of all the notes playing at a given time. By dragging and dropping whole blocks of notes you can also maximise the usage of each XM channel, if you see that a channel doesn't play any note for a while you can put another instrument there, and always end up with 9 actual playing channels. This is harder to do with a MIDI because many MIDI composers place different instruments on different MIDI channels (which is actually a correct practice).

dissident93 · Post by **dissident93** » 2012-04-09, 9:12:30

Ah! I see. And this automatically caps it at five FM (and one percussion channel) and 2/3 square waves?

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-09, 14:37:34

No, as I said you can end up with a XM file with 25-30 channels full of notes if you import a MIDI with a lot of polyphony, so I have to dig through all those channels and decide what should be kept and what should be removed. I manually move stuff around until I narrow it down to 9 channels, which I later assign to the proper FM and PSG channels.
It should be noted that the SMPS engine doesn't allow for the 4 PSG channels to be used at the same time, it's internally limited to 2+1 or 3+0, but 3+1 won't work. Which is why I've been saying 9 channels and not 10, throughout this topic.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-06-23, 13:40:35

Proof of Concept of 2×YM2612 + YM2413: Johnny B. Goode

Proof of Concept means that it sucks; namely, the pitch bends are all wrong because the midi uses a custom range (±12 semitones instead of the usual ±2, set via controllers 100 and 101), and I quickly hacked the 2× code into an old version of my mid2vgm YM2612 that doesn't take that into account. I think ValleyBell fixed this issue in a later revision.

Still, it's the first 2×YM2612 vgm ever (I think)

Later today I'm going to try a 2×YM2612 + 2×YM2413 + 2×SN76496. Maybe.

neologix · Post by **neologix** » 2012-06-23, 20:58:28

Tom wrote:Proof of Concept of 2×YM2612 + YM2413: Johnny B. Goode

there seems to be a weird timing issue btwn the ym2612s and the ym2413, somewhere in the range of a couple ntsc frames; i don't know if it has to do w/the tempo of the song or if it's just some discrepancy btwn merging vgms of different conversion results. i haven't done any in-depth analysis, but that what i hear.

or maybe the source midi file was kinda terrible? that could be it also

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-06-23, 23:00:40

neologix wrote:there seems to be a weird timing issue btwn the ym2612s and the ym2413, somewhere in the range of a couple ntsc frames; i don't know if it has to do w/the tempo of the song or if it's just some discrepancy btwn merging vgms of different conversion results.

http://vgm.mdscene.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=206#206 indeed.
Which is one of the 9000 reasons that leads me to believe there should be ONE gigantic mid2vgm tool that outputs to all the chips at the same time

neologix · Post by **neologix** » 2012-06-23, 23:10:05

Tom wrote:Which is one of the 9000 reasons that leads me to believe there should be ONE gigantic mid2vgm tool that outputs to all the chips at the same time

SSSHHHHHHH! i'm trying to keep it a secret!

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-06-24, 1:08:35

The timing might still be broken, but I couldn't resist.

Here's another Proof of Concept, of 2×YM2612 + 2×YM2413 + 2×SN76496: Blondie - Maria.

Since I am not happy if I don't do something wrong every time, the fadeout at the end of the song is half broken because I forgot to copy some volume controllers on some channels when I split the midi.

Still, Proof of Concept

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-07-01, 18:55:25

Someone should stop me before it's too late.

Here's another 2×YM2612 + 2×YM2413 + 2×SN76496 song: Ricky Martin - She Bangs.