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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - ROM Hacking - Star Ocean's sound engine. |
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blackhole89 Moronic Thread Bodycount: 17 (since 2006-08-21 09:50 EST) F5 F5 F5 F5 F5                  Since: 12-31-69 From: Dresden/SN/DE Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6279 days |
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It must have been a while since I last posted a thread...  but yeah, back on topic.
Star Ocean is an SNES RPG of the last generation (i.e. a '95 or '96 release, I don't exactly remember). It is a good, but not exceptional RPG (it was translated by DeJap... just google for it), but there is one aspect to it in which it is unbeaten: its sound engine. It is the most advanced both in technical and quality aspects I have seen on the SNES (and I have seen quite a lot of them), but that also has a downside: Nobody as of yet managed to create a proper dump of Star Ocean's soundtrack (which is a pity by all means). The main reason for that is instrument samples being uploaded delayed by the 65c816 to prevent major lag when changing the playing song. As a result, not all instrument samples are loaded at the beginning of a song, so SPC dumps made at the start of a song either entirely crash or miss some instruments/have them replaced with random garbage. You can convince yourself of how much lower the quality of the only dump present so far (originally found in Zophar's archive, but also mirrored on acmlm.org now) is than the original, ingame sound. I myself have not enough time or a sufficient amount of enthusiasm to pick the mammoth task I am suggesting here, but I still would like to call for some deeper research on that sound system. Since N-SPC, we know it is realistic to decrypt a music engine's data format; by doing that for Star Ocean's, we'd both allow making quality dumps of that game's soundtrack (by finding the location pointers in the SPC's RAM and rewinding them in later dumps) and have the best sound system for the SNES decrypted, which would then probably make a porting of it into other games possible. If anybody already has deeper information on this engine, I'd appreciate it being posted here. Thanks in advance. In the attachement, there's an accurate dump of the title BGM I produced with the classical three-file comparison method (it didn't work as easily for the other dumps though  ), just to show it is possible.
~blackhole89. |
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Dwedit Rope フクト オン フォニクス   Since: 11-17-05 From: Chicago! Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| I think Dragon Warrior 1&2 also delayed loading instrument samples. | |||
MathOnNapkins  1100  In SPC700 HELL  Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6279 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| Uh... the so-out.spc file doesn't sound noticeably different from so-01.spc in the dump I have from 1999. (Zophar's) Am I missing something?
Bleh, either way - I don't find the music of Star Ocean to be terribly good, but if it's really that advanced a sound engine then it's worth looking into. Is it the same as the one in Tales of Phantasia? I've heard that's also pretty good, but I can't remember if the same developer put both SO and ToP out. I'd also like to see how this compares to the sound engines put forth by Rare in DKC 1,2,3. They also seem to be pretty good, at least in terms of what I hear from playback. Lastly, this should be moved to advanced rom hacking probably. It seems to be the new playground for SPC talk. |
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d4s Shyguy  Since: 12-01-05 Last post: 6402 days Last view: 6299 days |
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Originally posted by MathOnNapkins top and so were both developed by the same people. they left wolf team and founded tri ace in 1995 or so. sakuraba motoi composed the music for both of them. i agree, the music player is pretty cool, but the sample streaming is very buggy. its prone to glitch even on a real snes. and the timing is totally screwed on pal systems. personally, i'd prefer a system where the spc requests samples when it needs them, not the other way round. i think you'd be better off coding your own spc player. especially when it comes to converting music between different formats, proprietary players tend to be difficult to deal with either due to the song format or unsupported effects and such. guess why i wrote my own pro tracker player instead of hacking a proprietary snes music player like the n-spc one.  |
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GeckoYamori Koopa  Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6294 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| I don't think DKC's sound excelled in any technical aspects. The most impressive stuff I've heard from the SPC chip probably comes from Jurassic Park 2. | |||
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blackhole89 Moronic Thread Bodycount: 17 (since 2006-08-21 09:50 EST) F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 Since: 12-31-69 From: Dresden/SN/DE Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| MathOnNapkins: Listen to it for a while. You'll notice the Zophar's version lacks the main melody instrument after a bit.
The creative value of SO's music is a matter of opinion really... what I rather was referring to is the technical quality, in the sense of instrument samples and the environment simulation. And yeah, now that I think of it, Advanced RH seems to be better of a place for this. *moves* d4s: I have never noticed it glitch up in ZSNES or Snes9x... but last time I played the real SNES was about 6 years ago, so I can't really know what it is like on the real one. ~blackhole89 |
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d4s Shyguy Since: 12-01-05 Last post: 6402 days Last view: 6299 days |
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| my last post was a bit misleading.
so's sample uploading handler for the music doesnt seem to glitch. the buggy part is the vocal stuff (as heard in the top opening song). well, to be more precise it isnt exactly buggy, more like extremely touchy when it comes to timing. so touchy that it sometimes glitches even on the real thing in 60hz. (edited by d4s on 02-15-06 03:47 PM) |
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HyperHacker Star Mario Finally being paid to code in VB! If only I still enjoyed that. <_< Wii #7182 6487 4198 1828 Since: 11-18-05 From: Canada, w00t! My computer's specs, if anyone gives a damn. STOP TRUNCATING THIS >8^( Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| Wouldn't it be better, easier, and far more legal to just write your own sound engine to put in other games? If you're trying to rip from SO, that's another thing, but if you just want the sound code, writing your own would probably save a lot of headaches. |
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