Sound Files Editing (VCE)

[Daniel3D]

4D boxing has many of the same instruments as stunts, but different coding.
So I made a test file with all instruments (77) to see if stunts can handle them and choose different ones than stunts to hear the sound.
Secondary objective is replacing music files for the Ferrari edition, to test the possibility it is convenient to have all instruments.

Attached is a cleaned up version with only the ones stunts uses.
Alternative sound..

[llm]

4D boxing has many of the same instruments as stunts, but different coding.
So I made a test file with all instruments (77) to see if stunts can handle them and choose different ones than stunts to hear the sound.
Secondary objective is replacing music files for the Ferrari edition, to test the possibility it is convenient to have all instruments.

how do you know that there are 77 instruments available?
and how are these mappend in the instrument bytes?
zapper knows some of the bytes - do you know more?

[Daniel3D]

I extracted them all from Mario's, boxing and stunts. Then dropped them in one folder. But some of the instruments from boxing have the same name but sound different.
I still have to look at other games, 4D tennis is first.

[llm]

I extracted them all from Mario's, boxing and stunts.

you talking about instruments like its is totally clear how the instrument-data is structured - i thought that isn't clear?

zapper wrote he knows that from the instrument-data block

Columns (decimal offset)
      300..339: not tested
      343: change pattern (decimal values: 15-31-47)
      344: change pattern (decimal values: 15-22-28-82)
      346: change pitch (decimal values: 3-5-7)
      352:   fadein
      356: fadeout
      358: change pattern (decimal values: 0-6)

how do you see 77 unique instruments in these bytes? i just don't understand were a instrument begins or ends, what is the byte-size of one instrument in the VCE files?

[Daniel3D]

I extracted them all from Mario's, boxing and stunts.

you talking about instruments like its is totally clear how the instrument-data is structured - i thought that isn't clear?

I know that the structure is the same for these 3 games. So I look at the chunk as a whole and identify them by chunk name (not by structure).
Also keeping in mind that the are "midi" based and points to the opl2 chip or equivalent.

how do you see 77 unique instruments in these bytes? i just don't understand were a instrument begins or ends, what is the byte-size of one instrument in the VCE files?

The instruments are identified by chunk name only. There are differences between games, but researching that would mean a deep understanding of how the FM Synthesys is interpreted and routed to the OPL2.

[llm]

so you got 77 different titles (with instrument data)
i thought each title contains multiple instruments - not a single instrument (as you stated)

[Daniel3D]

The Kms/vce combination is built like MIDI and the chunk names match synthesized instruments.
There are also hints in the Kms files.

[Daniel3D]

so you got 77 different titles (with instrument data)
i thought each title contains multiple instruments - not a single instrument (as you stated)

I found a bit of light reading for you
Programmer's Guide to Yamaha YMF 262/OPL3 FM Music Synthesizer

OPL3 is a direct descendant of OPL2 (what a surprise), so most features of OPL2 are also present on OPL3.

[llm]

so you got 77 different titles (with instrument data)
i thought each title contains multiple instruments - not a single instrument (as you stated)

I found a bit of light reading for you
Programmer's Guide to Yamaha YMF 262/OPL3 FM Music Synthesizer

OPL3 is a direct descendant of OPL2 (what a surprise), so most features of OPL2 are also present on OPL3.

thanks, i've got plenty of hardware programming documentation about the sound blaster - but this one is nice and small

another idea to easy the analyse of the VCE stuff would be logging the data that gets tunnelt from stunts to the loaded DRV-plugin
(at least extending the dosbox source a little)
maybe its just more or less the content of the VCE files then we can understand how this data is used exactly in den DRV
and write a small program that uses the DRV-Plugins to play the sounds without using stunts
i can do it, but my limited time makes every fun project a problem

[Daniel3D]

I know what you mean by limited time. Most of the time is spent on it this last few weeks were at the expense of sleep. Which is not advisable, but excitement got the better of me..

Being able to play sounds would be very helpful, but also limited in long term use. I can do a lot without.

I have discovered that a vce file with every available instrument chunk works fine in stunts. When loading a Kms music file the code only loads the instrument chunks it needs.

[Daniel3D]

I know what you mean by limited time. Most of the time is spent on it this last few weeks were at the expense of sleep. Which is not advisable, but excitement got the better of me..

Being able to play sounds would be very helpful, but also limited in long term use. I can do a lot without.

I have discovered that a vce file with every available instrument chunk works fine in stunts. When loading a Kms music file the code only loads the instrument chunks it needs.

i am trying to expand the data.
I have a new instrument pack (113 now)
and i have found a way to make songs from other games work in Stunts.

So attached a reverse compatible instrument library (stunts songs still sound the same)
and the title song from mission impossible. (which fits the animation quite nicely)

[llm]

i started to investigate my dosbox-extension-to-trace-DRV-data-communication-idea
seems to be easy, i've branched dosbox-staging and started to implement stunts-DRV-tracing

what can we do with that: each driver got 22 functions - few of them are used and i know at least based on my https://github.com/LowLevelMahn/UnifiedMT15 project what the parameter,content-size/types are - but not if these data just the VCE, MKS content

hope i've got a little time on the week-end to get at least some of my micro-projects ready

[Daniel3D]

maybe its just more or less the content of the VCE files then we can understand how this data is used exactly in den DRV
and write a small program that uses the DRV-Plugins to play the sounds without using stunts
i can do it, but my limited time makes every fun project a problem

Could you make it play the music as well?
Somebody (Darien?) Made a convert to midi at some point.

[llm]

Could you make it play the music as well?
Somebody (Darien?) Made a convert to midi at some point.

the first step is to analyse the Stunts <-> DRV communication - after that im able to write a player - but it will take some time

[Daniel3D]

Could you make it play the music as well?
Somebody (Darien?) Made a convert to midi at some point.

the first step is to analyse the Stunts <-> DRV communication - after that im able to write a player - but it will take some time

I have noticed   

@Daniel3D

my next goal is to write an MT15.drv based player to play the game sounds outside of the game