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malducci

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On the TG16 SuperCD...

 

 

Just a play through test on the real system. I like the Cutman and Gutsman tracks, but some of the other tracks are so-so. The rest are from PSP Powered Up and some don't particularly sound appropriate for the game. Ice man, Fire man, Bomb man are the ones I'm thinking. Still looking for remix tracks though, to replace those.

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On the TG16 SuperCD...

 

 

Just a play through test on the real system. I like the Cutman and Gutsman tracks, but some of the other tracks are so-so. The rest are from PSP Powered Up and some don't particularly sound appropriate for the game. Ice man, Fire man, Bomb man are the ones I'm thinking. Still looking for remix tracks though, to replace those.

 

Have you checked out the remixes here? http://ocremix.org

They have tons of game music remixes, I highly recommend downloading the torrent packs that have all the remixes, a good majority of them are fantastic with only a few stinkers among them. There is quite a bit from Mega Man as well though not sure if any of it suits what your looking for.

http://ocremix.org/quicksearch/game/?qs_query=mega+man

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What is this? A homebrew port? If so, I have a couple questions.

Malducci has done NES emulation for the PCE in the past (with this game, and others). It's definitely not a from-scratch port.

 

1. Why is the music techno and not heavy metal? Mega Man music is Iron Maiden in 8-bit.

 

I agree! The tracks are definitely not very fitting. NES era games without chiptunes usually have that problem, especially when its replaced with redbook that sounds like it belongs in a kids cartoon, or a mall elevator. It needs some serious metal. I don't know why powered up used this crap.

 

Mega Man tunes all sound like 80s power metal.

 

 

There is what should be playing in Cut Man's stage. The unexpected, face melting, sweeping solo really drives the point home.

 

there are plenty of people who have rock remixed the living fuck out of Mega Man tunes. I suggest locating the good ones, asking for permission, and using those instead of the dinner party remixes from Powered Up, etc.

 

 

Fire Man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FJH9R-BbJQ

 

Ice Man:

 

Guts Man:

Eh, that ones OK

 

Elec Man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMl2ans4Smg

 

Bomb Man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xawFxK4uTGM

 

 

These would probably fit better for the level music.

Edited by Arkhan
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Have you checked out the remixes here? http://ocremix.org

They have tons of game music remixes, I highly recommend downloading the torrent packs that have all the remixes, a good majority of them are fantastic with only a few stinkers among them. There is quite a bit from Mega Man as well though not sure if any of it suits what your looking for.

http://ocremix.org/quicksearch/game/?qs_query=mega+man

 

I did actually. There's only 9 Megaman 1 remixes. And most of them are redundant remixes. I have to say, while a remix might be good - it doesn't necessarily fit in a game. Or at least this one. Even the two remixes for Cutman and Gutsman that I added in (all the rest are PSP Powered UP remade tracks), need the beginning of the tracks hacked off. The build up was just too slow for the game itself. These levels in the game aren't long enough for that (and dieing resets the track).

 

The other problem I ran into, was the tempo of the remixes. While the remixes sounded great, the tempo was wrong. Like Fireman, it's one of the few tracks in the original game that had an urgency about it. The remix tracks I found that I liked

of Fireman didn't have this urgency. But a lot of other remixes I've found for other levels are just the opposite, too fast when the original tunes were more laid back. Plus, mixing metal and non metal tracks just seem to mesh overall. Maybe I'm just being overly picky. There seems to be waaaay more material for MM2 than MM1.

 

What is this? A homebrew port? If so, I have a couple questions.

 

1. Why is the music techno and not heavy metal? Mega Man music is Iron Maiden in 8-bit.

 

2. Why are you not porting Mega Man 2? You could be putting real heavy metal music in Mega Man 2.

 

Homebrew in the context that every one uses? No. Homebrew implies that I created the game (or at least the game engine) from scratch. I did not. This IS the NES rom running on the PCE. I wrote emulation code for the video, audio, mapper, and I/O. The emulation code runs on the PCE processor in real time, and the game/rom itself also runs on the PCE's processor in realtime. You could technically say the emulation back end code I wrote might be homebrew, but I'd be reluctant to call it that since it really gives the wrong impression.

 

1. Megaman Powered Up was the first complete track package I found, so I used that as a place holder and test with. They don't feel like 'techno' to me. Maybe a few tiny parts in Cutman, but Cutman's remix actually sound very video game-ish IMO. I'm not quite sure true heavy metal tracks would feel right in this version of the game, but I agree that some guitar work would be perfectly fine. But it would need some synth along with it too. But hey, you find a full MM1 sound track completely remade in HM fashion - there's nothing stopping you from replacing the tracks themselves once I released this version. I already released a beta of the non CD track version.

 

2. I'm already looking at MM2. But I've already made the mistake of working on too many of these nes2pce projects at once. I already have Dragon Warrior, SMB, Contra, Ducktales 2, RoboWarrior, Castlevania. They're up and running, but they aren't finished because I can't focus on all of them at the same time. So one thing at a time for me. And this one thing is Megaman.

 

 

I already have that one. It's great, but non of the other metal tracks come closest this arrangement. That would be a perfect fit, if the rest of the tracks were done like that. Ala Lords of Thunder treatment of MM1 but still feels like game music in game. Unfortunately it didn't fit with the rest of the tracks either. Mixing metal and non metal is weird. I also stated I didn't care for the PSP tracks, they're just place holders really.

 

That's Elecman music you posted a link to, is too busy/cluttered. And it also sounds too urgent. It doesn't fit. I've yet to find a Bombman remix track that I like overall. That metal one sounds terrible.

Edited by malducci
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Homebrew in the context that every one uses? No. Homebrew implies that I created the game (or at least the game engine) from scratch. I did not. This IS the NES rom running on the PCE. I wrote emulation code for the video, audio, mapper, and I/O. The emulation code runs on the PCE processor in real time, and the game/rom itself also runs on the PCE's processor in realtime. You could technically say the emulation back end code I wrote might be homebrew, but I'd be reluctant to call it that since it really gives the wrong impression.

 

1. Megaman Powered Up was the first complete track package I found, so I used that as a place holder and test with. They don't feel like 'techno' to me. Maybe a few tiny parts in Cutman, but Cutman's remix actually sound very video game-ish IMO. I'm not quite sure true heavy metal tracks would feel right in this version of the game, but I agree that some guitar work would be perfectly fine. But it would need some synth along with it too. But hey, you find a full MM1 sound track completely remade in HM fashion - there's nothing stopping you from replacing the tracks themselves once I released this version. I already released a beta of the non CD track version.

 

2. I'm already looking at MM2. But I've already made the mistake of working on too many of these nes2pce projects at once. I already have Dragon Warrior, SMB, Contra, Ducktales 2, RoboWarrior, Castlevania. They're up and running, but they aren't finished because I can't focus on all of them at the same time. So one thing at a time for me. And this one thing is Megaman.

Oh, this is wicked cool. An NES emulator on the PC Engine. I didn't know.

 

As for a complete track package, you got me there. I only really know the guitar arrange CD that had selections from the first 6 games. The Dr. Wily Stage music from Mega Man 2 absolutely melts face on that CD, though. I'd love to play the game while listening to that song as if it belonged there and not muting the entire game.

 

EDIT: This one.

Oh man, I want this song to have my babies. Edited by Chuplayer
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EDIT: This one.

Oh man, I want this song to have my babies.

HAhaha, yes! I love that track too. I have PC-Engine

that plays that tune via ADPCM (done by the cpu, no CD addon). One of my all time favorite arrangements of any Megaman track. But yeah, that would be incredible to have an entire game sound track like that arrangement. Hell, even if it was just MM2 - I'd be happy. I love MM because it was the first one I played, and played the hell out of it because I didn't have very many NES carts (I had the whole summer off to play it too). But MM2 is just incredible game compared to the first. The music especially, IMO.
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How did you get the video emulated? NES uses data and address ports for PPU loading.

 

Heh, solving the I/O ports was the easiest part. The hard part was the video emulation itself. The NES PPU is nothing like the PC-Engine/TG16. The tilemap (and tilemap mirroring) on the NES is different. The fact that it's 256x240 map and not 256x256 was a real pain (I had to use a h-int system to do a correct repeat seem of 240 pixels). Or that the PPU uses four small tile maps with mirroring option via the cart. The attribute system is completely different and lots of bit shifting to get the palette to tile association out of it. The planar graphic formats for the tile aren't even the same (there's composite like the SNES on the PCE/TG16) and they're 4bit on the PCE/TG16. The VDC is a WORD read/write only device port on the PCE, where it's only BYTE on the PPU. The sprites are 16x16 not 8x8 cell based on the PCE. The sprite attribute tables are completely different order too. Emulating the sprite DMA of the NES means I have to reposition everything into the PCE's SAT format, and flipped sprites need X/Y offsets added because flipping works different for 16x16 than 8x8, all in realtime for the DMA process. Then there's the problem with vram itself. If the game is all CHR-RAM, there has to checks everywhere in case the game writes both tiles and sprite or any combination two areas sequentially by overflow into another boundary of vram. Reading from vram was a whole 'nother problem too. Etc.

 

I/O ports are handled by simply patching all LDA port or STA port to JSR $xxxx. That goes for any I/O interaction; video, audio, gamepad, mapper chip. Everything else is emulation. No redoing the sprite/tile/map/etc routines to make them native to the PCE/TG16. That would take a ton of work (not that this wasn't) and wouldn't be reusable from game to game like the emulation code/approach is.

 

You can look over the source code if you want.

Edited by malducci
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malducci, you've done an amazing work here ! I've never expected the PCE to be powerful enough to emulate the NES/Famicom. It would have been quite amazing to release such emulator back in the days, when the PCE first came out. Great work ! :)

 

Hey lkermel. Thanks :D Yeah, that would have incredible to see BITD. It's weird. In some ways it's barely powerful enough and in other ways it's much more than enough. Case in point, the emulation code can push/delay the game logic out of vblank into the active screen area (the PCE/TG16 makes it a perfect system for this since it can write/read vram no problem during active display - unlike other consoles of the 8bit and 16bit era) because it takes longer than it original does on the NES. But it also runs the actual game logic much faster too. So the game doesn't have the slowdown issues running on this PCE/TG16 emulation like it does on the real nes/accurate nes emulators.

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malducci, you've done an amazing work here ! I've never expected the PCE to be powerful enough to emulate the NES/Famicom. It would have been quite amazing to release such emulator back in the days, when the PCE first came out. Great work ! :)

 

There were some hacky NES games w/ tweaked music back in 1993, I believe.

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But it also runs the actual game logic much faster too. So the game doesn't have the slowdown issues running on this PCE/TG16 emulation like it does on the real nes/accurate nes emulators.

Wait, so it would fix the slowdown in Mega Man 3 like the Japanese-only PS1 version and the Anniversary Edition collection did? Awesome!

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