Sound association problem in kof94 & 95

[ffman1985]

Hello mer-curious, I think we are using the same kof95.zip since we dont see the crc error. I am using aes japan bios which may be the reasons. I have also experienced the corruption of save in the following cases: 1. Switching from very old version to recent version. 2. Loading save in neogeo startup screen (the save actually works if I skip the intro first)

(Note: The aes japan bios is in fact not a good choice, just lazy to setup. In kof 2000 char select screen, there is text error when using bios other than the unibios)

 

About the sound association in kof98,  by combining track25 & 06 to get the ‘Here come a new challenger’ music is good in most case, but it do not loop like the arcade version. I wish only the second part of the music is looped.

Besides kof98, I would like yo talk about there are other games with some music which cannot or not so good to use the ngcd track directly. For example, kof95, the terry team music should add the ambient sound at the beginning, and athena team music should add a few second of empty space  at the beginning, so that it will sound the same way as arcade. There are many other example, maybe it is better to make a new post to talk if interested.

 

I am also interested in ngcd game specially the one with little sprite cut and bonus content, like the kof95, 96 with extra ending. 

(http://neogeocdworld.info/html/jeux/jeux/differences.htm )

(http://neogeocdworld.info/html/jeux/jeux/bonus.htm )

Therefore, I have tried to do something to modify some cd games to make them more perfect. For example, I modify the cd kof95, 96, 97 a bit, so that only one music is playing non-stop throughout all rounds of battles, just like playing rom. If you are interested, I will open another post to talk about it and share the modified files.

Edited September 13, 2022 by ffman1985

[ffman1985]

Are there some games do not support the sound association function?
After loading the rom Real bout Fatal Fury 2 and Samurai Shodown, I cannot reach the Sound Commands function.

[Tux]

1 hour ago, ffman1985 said:

Are there some games do not support the sound association function?
After loading the rom Real bout Fatal Fury 2 and Samurai Shodown, I cannot reach the Sound Commands function.

You replied yourself, the detection is done on some signatures in the sound rom, some are not tested. Although "Samurai shodown" is supported here, but "real bout fatal fury 2" was not, it has a signature very similar to some other games though so I can enable it for next time, but it will require some more testing to check if everything is ok. The detection of the 1st tracks is right.

For samsho be sure that speed hacks are disabled in neogeo/neocd options otherwise it destroys the intro sequence.

Edited September 14, 2022 by Tux

[ffman1985]

Sorry I type the wrong name, the one not work should be Samurai Shodown 4

[Tux]

7 minutes ago, ffman1985 said:

Sorry I type the wrong name, the one not work should be Samurai Shodown 4

Same kind of signature, will be enabled next time, and will require some more testing too.

[ffman1985]

Did anyone try the sound association in Samurai Shodown 3? I got some problem on this game. It cannot play the associated musics.

Edited September 16, 2022 by ffman1985

[ffman1985]

13 hours ago, ffman1985 said:

Did anyone try the sound association in Samurai Shodown 3? I got some problem on this game. It cannot play the associated musics.

Solved:

It is not the problem of the game. The cause of the problem is that I create the sound list in the text file and I copy and paste the mp3 file link. If I make the sound list in Raine, it is all fine. But it is very strange that I have two games.cfg files which have exactly the same text, when I open them in a hex editor, there are something different: In the not working file:

36 = ‪D:\Games\Neo Geo CD\Real Bout Fatal Fury 2\Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 - Track 03.mp3

between the = and D, there is something strange (E2 80 AA in hex editor), which cause Raine cannot load the file. I have upload the files. You can only see the difference in hex editor.

games.cfg:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xIKwp4rmeP6VYxKdDrwG0MZv9bH3vq2G/view?usp=sharing

 

games - not work.cfg

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oructTJwMzzrtooCHkN-vm_E6Uj6h0O8/view?usp=sharing

Edited September 17, 2022 by ffman1985

[Tux]

Yeah welcome to the wonderful world of utf8 insanity, your 3 bytes is just a weird utf8 sequence which is ignored if seen in a browser but raine can't ignore it of course !

It happens sometimes especially when getting a text from the web, you have to find a way to filter out this kind of sequence in this case.

Anyway you found a way around the problem so it's fine.

[ffman1985]

Just try the 0.94.2 to creat the sound association for real bout fatal fury 2 which is newly supported. There is a problem in the opening music. When I press start button in the opening to end it, it goes to the title but the music wont stop.

the sound code of the opening music is 21h

Same problem appears in Samurai Shodown 2 character select music, it cannot stop when entering the battle. The sound code of it is 38h.

Edited September 17, 2022 by ffman1985

[Tux]

5 hours ago, ffman1985 said:

Just try the 0.94.2 to creat the sound association for real bout fatal fury 2 which is newly supported. There is a problem in the opening music. When I press start button in the opening to end it, it goes to the title but the music wont stop.

the sound code of the opening music is 21h

Same problem appears in Samurai Shodown 2 character select music, it cannot stop when entering the battle. The sound code of it is 38h.

Yeah I hoped we would be lucky, but it's rarely the case. It will probably take quite some time, I'll look into it a little later... well it went much faster than anticipated because for me in arcade mode when I insert a coin the music indeed stops ! I'll try to switch to console mode then... !

Edited September 17, 2022 by Tux

[ffman1985]

Sorry, there is no problem for samurai shodown 2. It is normal that the character select music continues when entering the battle.

[Tux]

Ok, here's your experimental build, it's not really experimental this time, it just adds the handling of the reset sequence used here by rbff2 to stop its intro music in console mode, and only in console mode, usually this sequence is followed by a music number so I never bothered to emulate it fully until now, this is the only place I know where it's not followed by anything and the music must really be stopped here.

I attach the binary here because it's very possible you'll find other problems like this one later, so I won't make another version all the time. Thanks for your finding anyway ! (still the 64 bits version, if you prefer the 32 bits one, just tell it).

(attachment removed, it's released in 0.94.3).

 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Tux

[ffman1985]

Thank you for your quick response to the problem, now the music stop normally.

I know little about programming. May I know if you have to create the sequence for every individual game when sound association is supported?

Many games are similar as this one. For example, in kof96 and later, when press start in the opening, the music must stop and enters the mode select menu.

Edited September 17, 2022 by ffman1985

[Tux]

Create the sequence ? I guess you mean to ask if each game has a separate handling for sound associations ? Of course no there are similarities, but not always obvious, there is an ascii signature in the sound rom at offset 0x3e, but it gives only a hint, sometimes roms with this same signature have a slightly different behavior. And then there in a table at an offset to find based on the analysis of the rom which tells if a particular command is a song or not. Beside the songs there are basic commands, those which are < 0x21, this is what makes most differences for the neogeo games at least.

To find this here, I add some debug message telling me which sound command is processed in real time, so I got the sequence 3 4 7 (which is usually a reset and followed by a new song number), except this time it was followed by a sound and not a music, the few short notes you hear when the menu appears.

So I tested the 3 4 7 separately on the vanilla to know at which point the song is interrupted, 4 seems like a good choice, and I did the same here.

Now it's not because some games look similar that their sound rom is similar, this one is a type 1, the most modern neogeo games like garou, kof98 and up are like this.

 

[ffman1985]

Is that mean modern games have higher chance to get this type of error? 

By the way, i find an error in kof99 when switching to the character select screen from how to play. When I press button to stop the how to play and switch to char select, the music change fine. However, when I watch the full how to play and it switches to char select automatically, the music wont switch. 

The sound code for how to play and char select are 38h and 39h respectively.