Sound association problem in kof94 & 95

[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.

[ffman1985]

Sorry, after some testing, I find it is not the problem of sound association.

Code 38h is in fact the music of how to play plus char select. When I watch the full how to play and switch to the char select, the program plays 38h only, no switching of music.

The AST is different from the OST, where the track42 only includes the how to play music plus only a few seconds of char select music. When I associate the track42 to 38h, I can see the music fades out when switching to char select screen from how to play without pressing any button.

The only way to solve the problem is editing the mp3, but not the job of programming. Thank you for your attention.

[mer-curious]

Hello ffman1985!

I don't think you need to edit this track if you manage to get it from the Dreamcast or PC release of KOF99. Those ports have a full length How to play/Here comes a new challenger/Continue service music track.

I have taken mine from the Dreamcast release. If you want it, it's here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1znv_5RZbVf6OcI0AG6iJJKvbregOyXRJ/view?usp=sharing

Also, in KOF99 for the NGCD the arranged music track for Kyo's encounter is missing, but it is available in the DC and PC releases too. I also have it uploaded in case you need it, here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/104AbijsZ4F59PRsTU4lQm3lsVfAld-d4/view?usp=sharing

You can get the sound command information in my games.cfg posted in the previous page of this thread.

 

[ffman1985]

hello, mer-curious

Wow, the dc version track fits perfectly. I think you have spend a lot of time to test this game. Thank you very much for the files and your time to test it.