Sort of... Tweaker did tell DNX that this was the case, and later confirmed this intent with me, but by the time he told me directly, that plan was abandoned. I was later given permission to use the resources from a build of the game (no source code given). I don't think the issue is "oh, Thorn and DNX have the Sonic 2 Megamix name", but rather "how would Team Megamix feel about a 'sequel' that really isn't one?"
Say, will the OST for this, once the completed version of Megamix is finally released, be released as an album we can pay for? Seeing as how it will all be original music. I do admit, I like supporting good artists if I like their music.
I believe there was a post in the previous thread confirming this, and I think one of the videos shows that the option is on the preferences screen.
That was the original plan; we're not quite sure how this is going to be now. Also, having a completely original CD soundtrack while the FM soundtrack is just recycled songs is kind of eh... we'll see.
I'd thought this, too. Ideally there would be two versions of every song, but that's an unrealistic expectation in view of how much else is being done for the game.
Uncompressed, the current one-song-per-zone soundtrack comes to 528MB, so the math is pretty well against that. Also, with greater than two acts per zone, two song variations would just be awkward. As for what's "ideal", I believe it's Team Megamix's place to determine that :P
But by "two versions" I was referring to the post above mine, which mentioned having both CD and FM soundtracks. That was what I meant by it being an unrealistic workload. And I meant "ideal" in terms of pleasing everyone on here... if such a thing is possible! You're right about multiple songs per Zone being too much, also; but that wasn't what I meant. In any case, I'm not asking for anything either way; I was just pointing out the logistical barriers to such ideas.
Ah, I misinterpreted, then. I was just remembering earlier discussion about act variations in the CD soundtrack As Puto said, considering the other updates being made, the FM soundtrack full of recycled songs is feeling more and more out-of-place. The option shown in some older videos was added pretty much right after the decision was made to include CD audio at all, well before we turned out a near-complete original soundtrack and totally original level artwork, among other things. That's not to mention that there are other factors that seem to support dropping FM from the main game That's about all I can say. I guess if that's likely to happen, it's better people are prepared for it
If that's the case, I'm gonna miss it. When Tweaker was heading the project, I was thinking that there would be a tune replacement for almost everything, so I figured you'd end up using 8-bit PCM or ADPCM instead of pure CD audio to fit everything in. Just curious; but do you think that using something other than CD audio would have been technologically feasible on the Sega CD? I'm guessing it was, but why didn't any of you think of that before?
You could play music through the standard MD chipset, PCM and the CD audio decoder on the Sega CD, yes. But when you can play CD audio, does everything else really matter? =P The PCM takes up 8 KB every second, while CD audio comes in to around a lot. PCM Audio needs to be constantly streamed from the disc, which isn't a problem so long the game doesn't need to load other stuff, at which point one can either preload the music or just stop it. Last but not least, to get decent quality out of PCM, you really need to use a high sample rate like 44 kHz, meaning you'd get around 45 KB per second. Really, it's not a problem if compression can be used, but meh. CD audio is just shinier.
I certainly won't be missing the recycled tracks from other games... which I thought were mere placeholders. However, I agree that having a non-CD version of the new soundtrack would be a nice bonus, indeed.
CD audio is not looping friendly. That's a major downside. Also, you can't have that much music with it. There's only enough room for 60 minutes, and the game data will eat up some of it. Or, you could just use PCM samples as instruments, much like modules or what the SNES does, saving out a lot of space in comparison to prerendered music... (besides it's much easier to loop!) In fact, Sonic CD does this with the past music! EDIT: also instrumented music can have its tempo altered by just changing one value, or you could change the pitch up or down without much issues, etc.
Good point, I didn't think about that. Although I'm sure you can make CD audio somewhat looping friendly... it all just boils down to hacking the shit out of everything. Well yes, you could implement a sort of PCM sample based thing, but then you have the issue of creating music for that system. Sure, you could just write the music in a simple hex editor, but that's not exactly the best thing ever. Bleh, I feel like I'm hijacking this topic so I'm just going to shut up
Impossible though, due to seeking times. The amount of time it takes before restarting the track is unpredictable, and also during that time you will have silence. Trying to fill the gap with a short PCM stream doesn't work either for timing reasons (it's way too easy to get it wrong, requires extremely accurate timing). Or they could just adapt Sonic 1's SMPS code to use the PCM channels and then take a SMPS tool...
Considering how Sonic CD had four versions of stage music for every zone and that game had seven zones, I imagine it's possible to fit in a different song for each Megamix stage with CD quality. Dunno how much the Sonic 1 music takes up in space though.
