SPC File Format looks like S***

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koitsu
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Re: SPC File Format looks like S***

Post by koitsu »

ccovell wrote:Wasn't Pan a dude out of New York who espoused some, erhm, unconventional views in an interview? :-)
He was on the east coast (wasn't sure if NY, NJ); I don't remember the interview in question. Doesn't change the fact that asking him for details about something from 20 years ago is still legit; not like I'd be trying to track him down to run for president or something. :P
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koitsu
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Re: SPC File Format looks like S***

Post by koitsu »

Revenant wrote:But, is there normally supposed to be any music playing on the main menu at all? Aside from the little jingle when the Super Wild Card logo appears, there's normally no BGM when I emulate it. But I'm not currently able to actually access all of the menu's features (like the PCX viewer / built-in game), hence wondering if someone who actually owned the unit could clarify that a bit.
I'm going off of memory here: I believe it's a toggleable feature in one of the menus somewhere, *OR*, it only played in some of the firmwares versions (1994 version may have it, while 1996 might not). My memory keeps telling me that the SWC DX2 was silent in the menu interface (though later below you state that the DX2 has different music, so I'm probably wrong -- I'm being asked to remember things from over 20 years ago :) ). I imagine if they switched to that method, the reason maybe was that a) the music does get annoying (and it was actually pretty loud) if you let the system sit there for long periods (which you would during development sessions), and/or b) maybe saving EEPROM space for future things.
Revenant wrote:That would be awesome if you could - if nothing else, surely just because he could shred some light on my theories from the aforementioned thread :D

Really, it'd be cool to see something like a "where are they now" with some of those big names from the 90s SNES scene, but I guess that's a little ahead of the subject :P
I'll do what I can. And yes, the latter is something I'd love to see as well, but tracking people down who just used monikers and were really private people is an extreme pain -- and expensive (I've thought of hiring actual agencies to do this for some old snesdev people).

On the flip side, it always makes me laugh when someone says "OMG Y0SHi! you're so hard to find!" I've had several people over the years tell me that -- it's like, are you kidding? There are under a hundred or so Jeremy Chadwicks in the world, and my stuff comes up on the first page of Google. It takes a total of 30 seconds of sleuthing time to find me. But others aren't so public, or didn't put their real name on their works, so they're tricky to track down.

I'll see what I can figure out. I gotta try to remember who all was in the "SNES scene" part of Anthrox and then track down whoever, as maybe they know who went where. Brief story interlude: back in the 90s there was a really obscure demo group from South Africa called Guru Magic -- I loved their Shrine demo (especially the ending credits music -- beautiful piano piece), but several attempts to reach out to them failed. A few years ago, by total chance, I found one of their members on Reddit (talking about old PC demos or music sequencers or something, I forget), and he was able to get me a ton of old music of theirs (stuff that had never been released . He was totally blown away that anyone remembered them from that single demo. I lost it *all* when I fat-fingered a filesystem migration command 2-3 years later -- some of the songs I had were also ripped from their demo (which is encrypted or compressed somehow) by a friend of mine (the music format they used was their own, called Pyrotracker 16, like a 16-channel Amiga MOD), which still bums me out. Maybe I'll try to get those files back today.
Revenant
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Re: SPC File Format looks like S***

Post by Revenant »

koitsu wrote:I'm going off of memory here: I believe it's a toggleable feature in one of the menus somewhere
Ok, I just fired up the 1996 ROM and you're right - the first song can be made to play on the menu. Still not sure about the second (non-looping) one, but I figure it might be related to the built-in games or something.
koitsu wrote:My memory keeps telling me that the SWC DX2 was silent in the menu interface (though later below you state that the DX2 has different music
I only know for sure that it has different audio (i.e. sound effects and jingles, or whatever), I don't know if it actually has any proper music.
koitsu wrote:Brief story interlude: back in the 90s there was a really obscure demo group from South Africa called Guru Magic -- I loved their Shrine demo (especially the ending credits music -- beautiful piano piece), but several attempts to reach out to them failed. A few years ago, by total chance, I found one of their members on Reddit (talking about old PC demos or music sequencers or something, I forget), and he was able to get me a ton of old music of theirs (stuff that had never been released . He was totally blown away that anyone remembered them from that single demo. I lost it *all* when I fat-fingered a filesystem migration command 2-3 years later -- some of the songs I had were also ripped from their demo (which is encrypted or compressed somehow) by a friend of mine (the music format they used was their own, called Pyrotracker 16, like a 16-channel Amiga MOD), which still bums me out. Maybe I'll try to get those files back today.
Damn, that's a real shame :( I'd be interested in getting my hands on that music too, if you're able to get it back.
ccovell
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Re: SPC File Format looks like S***

Post by ccovell »

I can just see it:

"Where are they now?
The Doctor -- Head of Nintendo UK
The Assistant -- MD, Sony of Europe" ulp. ;-)
Revenant
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Re: SPC File Format looks like S***

Post by Revenant »

In case anyone cares, I finally fixed up the SWC DX music dumps so they should be non-broken on software SPC players. (edit: had to fix it a second time for foo_gep)

RSN archive

For some reason the driver code was doing some funky shit involving the IPL ROM that was causing software players to choke. Changing a handful of CALLs to NOPs "fixes" it without actually affecting the music at all. Weird stuff.
fred
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Re: SPC File Format looks like S***

Post by fred »

Haha sweet! Thanks dude!
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