1730 replies to this topic

[toxie]

@SomeRandomGuyIdk: On nuatari there also popped up a new(?) Middle Earth set, maybe you want to check that out, too? (change is commited)

[Robsoie]

Hello,

 

Been recently toying with Star Gazer for the first time, when i started to hear the sounds it seemed to me that there is a couple of them (most are normal) that seems wrong (like corrupted oversatured sounds).

 

I checked with various youtube video that featured the star gazer pinball to see if those couple of sounds were normal and noticed no sound similar to them when the real table is played.

I also noticed some sounds i never heard when playing on vpx, so it looks like those corrupted sounds may be in fact those sounds that may not be rendered correctly.

 

After looking at the table , it's not any of the sounds that comes with the .vpx file, so it's the sounds from the stargzr.zip rom.

 

Is this a know problem with the stargzr.zip or is it coming from the vpinmame side that may read the sounds wrong for this rom ?

 

EDIT :

 

To see what i mean, here's someone playing it on vpx (sounds start to be heard at 0:42) :

 

and a real table :

Edited by Robsoie, 02 August 2020 - 10:54 AM.

[LuckyMike]

Hello!

 

I'm interested in taking a crack at extracting the sounds from both the Ice Cold Beer and Zeke's Peak rom's, and I came across VPinMame as a potential way to do this.  I've got roms for both Zeke's Peak and ICB.  After following along with the instructions here: https://www.vpforums...ials&article=54  I know the first method (M1) won't apply for these roms as they're not in the database, so I'm attempting to find the proper memory addresses via the second method (PinMame and the Sound Command Mode).  Reading through the source "icecoldbeer.c", I realize it's not fully functional, but partially works?  I do hear an interesting sound which may be a "coin up" sound when I boot the rom and press 5, so I'm hopeful that perhaps the audio samples are embedded in the rom?  On the other hand, maybe the rom I have doesn't actually have any audio as it's only a single file?  My apologies, I'm just learning about this program recently and just started going through the source code a bit.  

 

I did add a small helper function to support the Sound Command Mode.  I've created an auto-increment function for the memory address parameter, so starting at any address you want (ex. 000000000000) it will automatically increment correctly all the way to FFFFFFFFFFFF with a small pause (tunable delay) after each increment to trigger the playCmd function.  It definitely increases my chances of finding something, as I can leave it running overnight and create an trigger to capture the screen if any audio is detected.  You can also start at any address, it will just count up from there.  That being said, a 12 digit hex address has an insane number of possible combinations, I'd still need to know the general starting area to scan to have any luck.  

 

I did notice the "lastCommands" section, which in some cases seems to display the memory address of the last sound that was processed (if you're lucky?).  It seems to work for some roms and not others.  Assuming that "coin up" sound is legit, if I could somehow get that memory address it could be a good stating point.

 

Does anyone have any insight into the Sound Commander, or how sounds are embedded into rom's in general (and how PinMame processes them)?  Looking through the GitHub repo, I see a gentleman by the name of Gerrit Volkenborn has mostly been the one working with the icecoldbeer.c source file, if anyone knows how to get in touch with him perhaps he has some insight into the state of emulation for ICB/Zeke's Peak with PinMame?  Any pointers, useful tidbits or links to somewhere else would greatly be appreciated.  I'm more than happy to send a patch or create a pull-request on the GitHub repo with my automatic-increment changes for the Sound Commander if there's any interest as well.

[Carny_Priest]

Take a look at this:

 

http://vpuniverse.co...t&comment=47961

[toxie]

Hello,

 

Been recently toying with Star Gazer for the first time, when i started to hear the sounds it seemed to me that there is a couple of them (most are normal) that seems wrong (like corrupted oversatured sounds).

 

I checked with various youtube video that featured the star gazer pinball to see if those couple of sounds were normal and noticed no sound similar to them when the real table is played.

I also noticed some sounds i never heard when playing on vpx, so it looks like those corrupted sounds may be in fact those sounds that may not be rendered correctly.

 

After looking at the table , it's not any of the sounds that comes with the .vpx file, so it's the sounds from the stargzr.zip rom.

 

Is this a know problem with the stargzr.zip or is it coming from the vpinmame side that may read the sounds wrong for this rom ?

 

Will have a look. Thanks for the detailed report.

[toxie]

It's related to the simulation of the old Stern sound boards. This is still a bit rudimentary.  :/

[Robsoie]

Thanks for confirming it's coming from the emulation, after some time tweaking my sound card settings to see if it could help with those strange sounds without improvement, i  was wondering where it was going wrong.

Edited by Robsoie, 05 August 2020 - 08:29 PM.

[LuckyMike]

Take a look at this:

 

http://vpuniverse.co...t&comment=47961

 

Thanks for this!

[SomeRandomGuyIdk]

@SomeRandomGuyIdk: On nuatari there also popped up a new(?) Middle Earth set, maybe you want to check that out, too? (change is commited)

Interesting, seems to be the same gameplay wise from a quick glance. There's a lot of code shared as well.

If I get around to disassembling Middle Earth one day, then I could take a closer look.

[toxie]

I guess there is most likely more important stuff to do than that.. 

[toxie]

New build up in the first post:

 

Added VGM file output support for AY8910, OKI6295, SAA1099, YM2151, YM2203, YMF262(OPL3), YM3526, YM3812, Y8950, and SN7648/9X (unsure about the mappings for these latter ones though!) sound chips
 Either use -vgmwrite on the commmand line (PinMAME)
 or select it in the game options (this requires a restart though, as VGM output requires to track everything)

PinMAME(32): Added an Automatic Sound Dump functionality:
 Started via 'F6' (instead of the Recording function via 'F5') and
 skips automatically to the next sound / creates a new file if there
 is no sound at all anymore (silence) or the length reaches 4mins.
 The dump stops automatically after soundcommand 0xFF (=max 256 overall generated sounds).
 There is also an altsound CSV created with the dumps. This one can be
 altered with lucky1's Altsound Editor.

 

pinPROC : updated library;  VS2019 build
YAML-cpp: updated to 0.6.3; VS2019 build
 

- E.F.O. sound board mostly working - a strange issue with IRQ concurrency remains which sometimes causes a sound hangup
- Inverted sound bits for early Playmatic games, tone frequencies left as noted in the schematics though, seem a little off
- Enabled coin settings on early Playmatic games
- Loosen up 'fast flips' check for Starship Troopers
- Slightly improve YM2151 noise

*** SIMULATOR ***
Demolition Man: Added lamp layout, simulated all major shots (except maybe a weak car crash shot), the elevator and cryoclaw mechanism, along with the right ramp diverter that feeds it, and enabled the Buy-In button
                (also demonstrates how to show P1-P4 scores at all times)


*** ROMS ***

New:

Atari: Middle Earth (alternate)
       Middle Earth (Prototype or German) - bad dump, not working
Data East: Data East Leon Test Chip (version 4)
Taito do Brasil: Football (sound ROMs only)

Correct Dumps:
Atari: Airborne Avenger (using 20252 sound PROM)
       Atarians, The (using 07028 sound PROM)
       Middle Earth (using 20252 sound PROM)
       Time 2000 (using 07028 sound PROM)
Micropin: Pentacup (rev. 2, 8085A hardware)

Clones:

Funhouse (Prototype System 11 Sound ROMs)
Last Action Hero 1.04 (French), 1.07

Removed Clones:
Atarians, The (MOD working bootleg) - the original ROMs work fine after latest emulation patches
 

and regressions from last builds that were fixed:

 

- fix unstable RIOT6532 test (e.g. caveman, Sys80B tester) and port the same to 6530

- making sure S11C sound works for games that use the high ROM select line without having extra ROMs (e.g. Atlantis)

[mystman12]

Hmm, I'm not sure what's going on. When I try opening the latest build I get an error saying that an old version of comctl32.dll has been detected. This disabled game properties and so I can't turn on the VGM write functionality through the menu. When I try opening it through CMD, it instantly crashes if I use -vgmwrite, but opens fine without it. I tried following the link in the error to download comctl32.dll, but it just led to a 404 on Microsoft's website.

[toxie]

Hmmm.. This is bad.. The command line thingie should only work with PinMAME though (i.e. NOT PinMAME32)..

[toxie]

Please retry with the new build in the first post. This one now also includes the 'standard' PinMAME.exe (without any UI), where the -vgmwrite will (should ) work.

 

Other changes since yesterday:

- correct OKI6376 support for VGM

- add Baywatch 2.01 (French)

  (and assign A4.00 display to the Dutch 4.00 version)

[fourbanks]

Hmmm.. This is bad.. The command line thingie should only work with PinMAME though (i.e. NOT PinMAME32)..

just to confirm toxie in that the files you overwrite are in the  PinMAME32 folder? 

[Thalamus]

Yes, that's correct Fourbanks.

[fourbanks]

Yes, that's correct Fourbanks.

thank you

[mystman12]

Alright, with the PinMAME.exe I can now rip VGMs through command! Thank you so much for adding that feature and helping me out!

Edited by mystman12, 10 August 2020 - 05:11 PM.

[toxie]

If you have some cool recordings, maybe you could upload them in return, please?! 

 

Hmmm.. This is bad.. The command line thingie should only work with PinMAME though (i.e. NOT PinMAME32)..

just to confirm toxie in that the files you overwrite are in the  PinMAME32 folder? 

 

I don't know if i understand.. Which PinMAME32 folder?

You just grab all the files as-is from the new zip in the 1st post, and copy them into the existing PinMAME folder on your disc.

And then you have a PinMAME32.exe (which features an UI), PinMAME.exe (command line only) and VPinMAME.dll (what is needed for VP8/9/X).

[mystman12]

If you have some cool recordings, maybe you could upload them in return, please?! 

 

 

 

I'm planning on extracting the FM synth presets and putting together a pack of them for use with programs like Deflemask. Once I get around to doing that I'll definitely share them here!