XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Discussion of development of software for any "obsolete" computer or video game system. See the WSdev wiki and ObscureDev wiki for more information on certain platforms.
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Stef
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XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Post by Stef »

I finally completed my XGM / VGM player that i started more than 1 year ago :)
It's still not perfect, has some bugs (refresh, playback issues with fast tempo...) but i am happy enough with it's current state so i think it can be released =)
XGM player is intended to play XGM music through the XGM driver i developed for Sega Megadrive. I developed a tool to convert Megadrive VGM file into XGM format so you can basically see the XGM player as a Megadrive VGM player... This tool is called xgmtool which is part of SGDK, you can also use it to optimize your Megadrive VGM files (and it does a very good job here compared to others tools).
The main difference between VGM and XGM is that XGM allows to play up to 4 PCM at same time where classic Megadrive VGM is limited to 1 PCM channel only... that is an handy feature for game where you can play several SFX at same time through PCM channels, it can be used for richer music as well but currently no tracker support the XGM format.
Another interesting part is that XGM format is optimized for Megadrive sound hardware so files are generally 25% smaller than optimized VGM.

Currently i only provide a test rom to introduce the XGM player capabilities, and for that what better than a Technosoft compilation :)
Musics from the following games are included in the rom :
- Dragon's Fury
- Elemental Master
- Thunder Force 2/3/4

Because of rom size limitation i could not include all tracks so i made a (personal) selection of 80 tracks.
You can download the rom here: http://bit.ly/2nw9JRN

Later i will try to provide a tool allowing you to produce your own rom from a selection of VGM file :)

Small animation showing the XGM player in action: https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CnHGA82WIAAuo9B.mp4

Image
Last edited by Stef on Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
ccovell
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Re: XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Post by ccovell »

Well, it has a lovely interface. Hopefully you'll release an easy-to use ROM builder sometime too. :-)
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koitsu
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Re: XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Post by koitsu »

Awesome. Visual layout/interface distantly reminds me of the Sidmania "demo/compilation" that Anthrox did on the SNES.
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Stef
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Re: XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Post by Stef »

Thanks ! Of course I plan to release a room builder for that so everyone can build its own compilation :-)
Never saw that sidmania SNES demo, look really interesting ! Can we still find it ? :-)
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koitsu
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Re: XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Post by koitsu »

Stef wrote:Thanks ! Of course I plan to release a room builder for that so everyone can build its own compilation :-)
Never saw that sidmania SNES demo, look really interesting ! Can we still find it ? :-)
Probably somewhere. Filename is SIDMANIA.SMC or SIDMANIA.SFC. It "mostly works", but there are some songs or subtracks which can crash it (and other ones mess up the audio layer until a reset). But I'd say maybe 95% of the songs work. It's pretty cool. Plus it does a lot of crazy crap that emulators (bsnes-classic, SNES9x, etc.) don't get quite right (some mode 7 effects with overlays, for example), which for all I know could be bugs in the code that don't show up on actual hardware. Dunno. Don't wanna get too off-topic.
Stef
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Re: XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Post by Stef »

Thanks, i just found it, need to test that =)
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koitsu
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Re: XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Post by koitsu »

For those wondering, re: Censor SIDMANIA demo, I recorded a version of it taken from an actual SNES/SFC. I detail the problems/oddities in the video description. But enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUfWKdTKc5k
Revenant
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Re: XGM / VGM player for Megadrive

Post by Revenant »

Since you identified one of the unnamed songs in the description, I thought I'd link my old SNESMusic thread where I identify all of them, including the named ones (which were sometimes misnamed and/or miscredited), and some other SIDs from SNES intros that weren't in SIDMANIA itself.

Even though the SID emulation isn't that great, that demo is what got me into C64 music back when I was first exploring SNES homebrew. The R-Type title music with those opening scrollers are still an awesome combo.
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