Problem: the BGM quality is kinda bad (8khz) in the arcade version of this fine game.
Last November (2014) I came up with the idea to use the PS1 or Saturn cd-quality soundtrack, but I wasn't too sure how to do it.
The other day my buddy iq_132 came up with a way to use the cd-quality soundtrack from the PS1 or Saturn version of DonPachi in the arcade version of the game by translating the calls to the oki msm6295 chip to our sample engine. In awe and almost total disbelief, I ended up staying up till 6am that night/morning tweaking it to perfection and working on integration with the emulator. The technique behind it works similar to how Fireshark uses the recorded samples for the music/sfx due to the encrypted/unavailable mcu. Bonus: Everything is perfectly synched, even with savestates(!)
Get FBAlpha (emulator) @ http://www.fbalpha.com
How-to make/get the samples needed: http://pastebin.com/RD2iM9KG
Ah, good ol' sample hacking! It's something I'd thought of doing a while back after sample-hacking Raiden Fighters for similar reasons but as an amateur dabbling in an area that most folks don't seem to want to support the MAME hack I did has some limitations as a result, particularly in lack of stereo support and having to prebake loops into the song.
Since you're an FBA dev I gather you're doing this in FBA rather than MAME? Is the sample engines between them very different? I was also thinking of sample-hacking G-Stream G2020 which also uses OKIs but it isn't supported in FBA last I checked.
Hey there,
I only work on FBA at the moment, regarding the sample engines - the code is different, but they achieve the same result in the end. We might not have every game in the book, but for the ones we have we try to support all the latest hacks/mods & stuff that gets rejected by MAME but actually makes things better for the gamer - all of which are totally optional by a dip setting or alternate rom selection.
Another neat mod I came up with is a virtual-mixer for ESP Ra.De. if you've ever played the game you'll notice that the sfx & constant shooting completely covers up the excellent music in the game, with the virtual mixer mod on it gives a bit of separation between the sfx and music.
emphatic, that would be killer, but I havn't been able to come up with a way to do that one yet as it uses a completely different sound system. Hopefully I can figure something out some day though
I see in the source code for FBA there is some support for playing a sample at a specified position. Would it be possible to use the game's own code or a self-made set of vars to reduce the filesize by correctly looping the music without prebaking the loops into the sample files? Also is there stereo support?
BPzeBanshee, The music samples are just a regular 44100/stereo standard audio cd-rip of the Sega Saturn DonPachi cd, the code in FBA's sample core automatically loops the music. The reason for the large samples is that they aren't compressed.
p.s. sorry for the late reply, somehow I missed your message when viewing new messages!
best regards,
- dink
Another new feature added to FBAlpha - stereo sfx in Mars Matrix - something emulation has been missing for quite some time.
Ever notice that the SFX in the game are hard-panned to the right speaker? This is really noticeable / annoying when playing with headphones or earbuds.
Listen to a before & after recording: (2 small mp3's, zipped) http://sharesend.com/2hpjrw2p
I'll post back when the next version with this feature has been released
is it possible to fix the soundtrack issue with MAME?
Strange thing is, I played Donpachi some 10 years ago with MAME and did not remember the audio quality was so poor. Sometimes the emulator or the rom stop working with newer versions. How does the pcb sound?
The PCB has the same samples that are low quality. unfortunately..
Want to play it in high quality? Get fbalpha from http://www.fbalpha.com (free, opensource)
get samplepak from http://www.mediafire.com/download/kb8y5 ... npachi.zip
put samplepak in fbalpha folder\support\samples, and play
p.s. once you load donpachi for the first time, press ctrl-f5 (or input -> set dips), and enable the high quality music setting.
best regards,
- dink
Cololonel wrote:Hi,
is it possible to fix the soundtrack issue with MAME?
Strange thing is, I played Donpachi some 10 years ago with MAME and did not remember the audio quality was so poor. Sometimes the emulator or the rom stop working with newer versions. How does the pcb sound?
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