Previous Page | Next Page

by jhouse at 4:34 AM EDT on August 1, 2012
unfortunately i have been trying to do the same thing and even through my years of experience i have not come out of an easier way than that. i do he that a program will be made possible soon so that projects like that will come easier for us. still waiting on any furture updates on this.
by Yuuto at 6:43 AM EDT on August 8, 2012
I created soundfonts from the TP instrument banks with the help of the elaboration by itsacatfish.
http://hcs64.com/mboard/forum.php?showthread=5046&showpage=13

Nearly the half is finished. I created manually a table for each instrument which contains the sample ID, the number of the AW file, loop start and loop end sample positions, key range, root key and the name of its .wav file that belongs to the AW.
I wrote a tool to simplify the process of getting these information from the sound banks but unfortunately I can't find it anymore ):

The track names of the converted MIDI files indicate which instruments are used (but there are a few sequences which aren't converted properly). Some tracks also contain instrument changes like in field_link_day.bms.

edited 6:48 AM EDT August 8, 2012

edited 8:06 AM EDT August 8, 2012
by TurbomanAlco at 10:01 PM EDT on August 8, 2012
The numbers on the instruments in the midi files don't make any sense at all. How exactly does this work out? According to itsacatfish, the .bms file should indicate the wave thats used. Im not too good analyzing hex code but I can tell you they didn't write it out in plain english or numbers but in some gibberish string. Probably just information we all know already but thats all I can make out of the hex code. How exactly are you doing this Yuuto?

edited 10:13 PM EDT August 8, 2012
by Yuuto at 4:15 AM EDT on August 9, 2012
The game has 240 instruments in total that are actually used in the sequences. They are defined in Z2Sound.baa.1_5.bnk (extracted from Z2Sound.baa using baad.exe, I don't know if the other banks are relevant). The track names of the MIDI files show the number of the instrument used. The .bnk contains information about all the samples the instruments use (sample ID) and the key range.
Z2Sound.baa.1.wsys contains information about each BGM sample, namely root key, length, loop positions and the associated AW file.
I think the only way to find out which samples a sequence uses is to look at its instruments.

I could explain the process of creating a soundfont out of this in detail, that means which hex values are neccessary and so on, if you want.

Here are some examples of soundfonts I've finished (I grouped the instruments just for testing purpose). Try to apply them to filone_forest.bms and deathmountain01.bms.
Faron Woods
Death Mountain


edited 4:17 AM EDT August 9, 2012
by TurbomanAlco at 1:44 PM EDT on August 9, 2012
Yes please do explain this in detail. But what exactly are the soundfonts? Are they an alternative to midi files but maybe more advanced? And that would seem true that there are only 240 instruments because there are 2,453 instrument waves in total and it does seem like there are alot of repeats. Thats definately a big relief that it could be alot easier to work with.
by Yuuto at 2:22 PM EDT on August 9, 2012
A soundfont is like an instrument from TP's sound bank (better: a collection of instruments/presets), it contains samples for the playback of sequences (in this case for MIDI files).
Viena is a free soundfont editor, you can use it to 'play' the soundfonts, too. There's another program called SynthFont for the playback of MIDI files, there you can actually use the soundfonts. Both you can find at www.synthfont.com

The detailed explanation will follow ^^

edited 2:25 PM EDT August 9, 2012
by TurbomanAlco at 3:06 PM EDT on August 9, 2012
This seems realy cool. I'm looking forward to this. So when the soundfont is finished it should be rigged up to work in synthfont with any midi file right (with an exception to the ones with mixed up instruments)?

edited 3:08 PM EDT August 9, 2012
by Yuuto at 3:30 PM EDT on August 9, 2012
Right. At the moment I create a soundfont for every instrument, which is much simpler. Later I'll assemble all instruments in a single soundfont. Another cool thing is that the MIDI files can be rendered using SynthFont and the soundfonts.
Due to the limitation to 16 tracks per BMS some sequences use instrument changes, which aren't included by the PHP script. For the moment, these can be done manually in SynthFont.

But there are still some other problems with the sequences, e.g. the missing reverb values and errors during conversion. See the wrong notes in e_dekutoad.bms.mid and e_goma01.bms.mid.
Maybe I will try to write a new conversion program later.

by Lunar at 5:06 PM EDT on August 9, 2012
I imagine you'll hit quite a few problems like that. I'm sure the end result won't sound quite the same as the game, somehow, indeed due to things like DSP, possibly bi-directional looppoints which soundfont doesn't support, non-standard controllers, maybe the samples themselves would sound different just because it's a different engine using them... like interpolation and stuff like that. I'll be interested to see how it turns out nonetheless.
by Yuuto at 5:22 PM EDT on August 9, 2012
Apart from the missing reverb, the improvised envelope data (attack, hold, decay, release) and the slight errors during conversion it currently sounds almost like in the game. Even vibrato is supported.
Btw what are bi-directional loop points?

Previous Page | Next Page
Go to Page 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Search this thread

Show all threads

Reply to this thread:

User Name Tags:

bold: [b]bold[/b]
italics: [i]italics[/i]
emphasis: [em]emphasis[/em]
underline: [u]underline[/u]
small: [small]small[/small]
Link: [url=http://www.google.com]Link[/url]

[img=https://www.hcs64.com/images/mm1.png]
Password
Subject
Message

HCS Forum Index
Halley's Comet Software
forum source