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xm3smps: now with more Visual Basic

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by nineko, Dec 9, 2007.

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  1. Apr 3, 2008 #141
    muteKi

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    I have been a bit on the busy side lately, though if it will make you feel better I'll download it now.
     
  2. Apr 3, 2008 #142
    PsychoSk8r

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    30 Day Project: Revisited.A New Release!
    Nineko, I downloaded it as soon as you released it, maybe that's what the majority of others here done.
    The program is very useful, and I know a few people who don't know where to start with it? Perhaps you could give a small Read-Me to encourage the people who aren't familiar with it? I mean, it might attract more people who aren't interested because they don't have a clue. Converting MIDI-XM is no problem, it started getting confusing for me (a few times) when I opened up xm3smps. Some people are just impatient and want to be able to do things in one click =\

    Still, I personally think you're doing a great job, and I'd love to see more releases of this =P
     
  3. Apr 3, 2008 #143
    nineko

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    I can't fix the download link right now because I'm at work and I can't access my FTP. However, there is the latest version on Hacking Cult, I always release my stuff also there. Go get it from there until I get home: http://www.hacking-cult.org/?utils

    I don't like you because you stole my "Song per Act" guide. I think you could figure that out when I didn't reply to your PM.

    Oh right, that reminds me: XM3SMPS IS ONLY TO BE POSTED ON SONIC RETRO AND HACKING CULT.
     
  4. Apr 3, 2008 #144
    shobiz

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    Oh for god's sake. His guide was nothing like yours - he made people copy muslist1.bin twice instead of copying muslist2.bin, he placed his act checks inside Level_PlayBgm instead of Level_GetBgm, and his didn't cover invincibility and countdown fixing. I believe at the time he was making his guide, yours was on the second page of Engineering and Reverse Engineering or something so he didn't notice it, otherwise I'm sure he wouldn't have made it, particularly since yours covers more stuff.
     
  5. Apr 3, 2008 #145
    Tweaker

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    I guess you missed the sarcasm.
     
  6. Apr 3, 2008 #146
    nineko

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  7. Apr 3, 2008 #147
    Overlord

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    I'd have downloaded it if I actually had the time/skill to do an up-to-date-in-terms-of-ability Sonic hack. =P

    If it makes you feel any better, I think next to no-one bothered with STE when it came out =P
     
  8. Apr 3, 2008 #148
    muteKi

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    Well, it's mainly because a jive translation of Zero Wing is only good for the length of the intro.
     
  9. Apr 4, 2008 #149
    Qjimbo

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    Nineko you seem to have a very odd attitute towards this tool, I mean people clearly use and appricate your tool, yet you bitch because noone said anything when the link was redirected? It's almost like you're trying to find something to be unhappy about.

    Look, dude, you've written a great utility here, no need to be so insecure about it. :D

    Anyway if you really begin to hate it and decide to discontinue, please don't hoard the source, open it up so someone else to continue the work, because trust me, people do care about this.
     
  10. Apr 4, 2008 #150
    JoseTB

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    People care, it's just that positive feedback is rare - not getting comments usually means there's nothing to complain about. I can't really comment about it, never got too involved with music stuff to actually being able to do something decent with the tool, but nonetheless it looks promising.

    Also random question, how hard would be to actually emulate the YM2612 in the tool, so one could hear the voices or even the song before exporting it? Something like this would simplify things a lot...
     
  11. Apr 4, 2008 #151
    Flygon

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    This is something I can also agree on to be honest, but it is still easy to just simply compile and go to the sound test but this measure of convenience would be great none-the-less.

    Edit: Also Vista jibs standard users and I can't run XM3SMPS because it does not like me installing stuff to system32.

    And I can't exactly become an admin in a click of a finger on this computer either.
     
  12. Apr 4, 2008 #152
    roxahris

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    It may not be needed, but... I agree.

    Anyway, why aren't voice files available anywhere? I can't seem to find any, and the only one I have was given to me (thanks, oerg)...
     
  13. Apr 4, 2008 #153
    nineko

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    I'd love to do that, at least to preview the voices. The problem is that I know nothing about FM emulation. Also, I'm not sure if I can play ANY sound in Visual Basic. The ms-dos version was a better candidate for that, I wrote more than one sound driver in Quick Basic, including an XM and a vgm (psg only) player, but that was like 5 or 6 years ago. As xm2smps was based on that old XM player of mine (I recycled a good portion of the XM decoder code), it has been fully capable of replaying songs... for a few minutes, until I got rid of the additional legacy code :P
    Not a great loss btw, as they were played like XMs and not like SMPSs, and there's no point in replaying an XM when you can hear it as many times as you want in Mod Plug Tracker or your tracker of choice. Also, you know that Windows 2000 and above are gay when it comes to sound emulation in ms-dos, so that replay feature couldn't work at all under XP or Vista.
    Back to the original question: no, I'm sorry. I want, but I can't.

    Solution 1 (recommended): get rid of Vista. Not only you'll be able to run xm3smps, you will also get a much better Operating System.
    Solution 2: the needed libraries can be put also in the same folder as xm3smps. So if you have it in, say, C:\something\xm3smps, you can put the OCXs and the DLLs there. I thought that Vista came with all the needed libraries btw; XP for sure has several of them by default.

    Well, it depends on the format you are looking for.
    1. Raw collections of voices arranged in the $19 bytes format don't exist at all by default, with the only exception being the Universal Voice Bank, which you can rip from Sonic 3 & Knuckles;
    2. ymx banks can be found bundled with Sonic QX files, and can be also obtained by converting syx libraries with Sonic QX or SOME;
    3. I don't have a single clue about TFM and MVS instruments, try here, I guess;
    4. Voices in the raw Cube format can be ripped from games that use the Cube/Iwadare sound driver, given that you know where to look for;
    5. The "Extract voices from Sonic 1/3/K/Crackers" feature works on binary song files from the above games, just get them from a split disassembly.

    It's not so hard to find voices. But it shouldn't be too easy, and for this reason I'm not attaching them to this topic.
     
  14. Apr 4, 2008 #154
    roxahris

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    I see. Anyway, I just tried it out. My thoughts:

    I feel stupid now. Why? I'm afraid I can't tell you that...
    File loading is slow. Everything else, however, seems to be quite fast...
    I love the auto-fill option! It makes everything easier, for some reason...

    So yeah, this is awesome. It's a shame you can't implement song previews, but this still rocks.
    Also, I use Vista... and it works for me. Weird. I can't agree with removing Vista, though. It's okay. You need, however, to place MSVBVM50.dll in the same folder as XM3SMPS to get it working. Or else you'll get a "THIS PROGRAM USES SOMETHING WE REMOVED SO GO FIND IT" error.
     
  15. Apr 4, 2008 #155
    nineko

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    These two statements are consequents. I do most of the conversion while loading the XM file, to save time later. Since you're supposed to load it only once, and change parametres and voices as many times as you want, I thought this was the best way to proceed. I can speed up the loading, but that would make the actual conversion slower. And, as I said, you may happen to convert the same XM file 35 times in a row while tweaking it.
    I *may* try to optimise it a bit, but that's not my priority right now.
     
  16. Apr 4, 2008 #156
    Polygon Jim

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    Anyone know any good midi to xm converters. I found one, but every time I convert the song has no sound at all. Damn you nineko for not including midi support >;)
     
  17. Apr 4, 2008 #157
    nineko

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    I could easily add midi support if I wanted to, I perfectly know MIDI specifications.

    I don't do that because midi files are gay, XM files are superior.
     
  18. Apr 4, 2008 #158
    Qjimbo

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    Well arguably MIDI file editors are usually more natural for people who like to see a score etc., but XM files are closer to SMPS in their concept and once you get used to trackers they're not so bad.

    Anyway GrandMasterJimmy, be grateful for what you've got.
     
  19. Apr 5, 2008 #159
    Flygon

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    Not exactly a viable option, it's my fathers computer, not mine and sadly he is quiet content with Vista.
    Putting them in the same folder does not work, it still gives me MSCOMCT2.OCX errors.

    So right at the moment I am quiet a bit less than content with Vista.
     
  20. Apr 5, 2008 #160
    Polygon Jim

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    flygon, I don't know why your having trouble in Vista. xm3smps runs fine for me in Vista home premium. Did you try to turn off user account control?
     
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