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SAP Conversions


Xuel

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2 hours ago, ivop said:

The only thing I did is take the SAP file you said contained the right first song, and hexedited 05:xx.xxx to 65:xx.xxx :)

 

Edit: which player do you use?


$ asapconv -o bla.wav Ballblazer.sap
$ mpv bla.wav
Playing: bla.wav
 (+) Audio --aid=1 (pcm_s16le 1ch 44100Hz)
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz mono 1ch s16
A: 00:00:22 / 01:05:26 (0%)

Exiting... (Quit)

I definitely hear the fourth channel slowly increasing in volume.

 

Edit2: altirra plays the .sap file fine, too.

You are absolutely correct.. I must have made a mistake when I ripped it into WAVs. DOH.
Appreciate the effort, apologies for my mistake.

I would still love an actual SAP rip of the XEGS version!! 

 

In the mean time here is a stereo MP3 of Jet Set Willy.

JSWv2.mp3

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41 minutes ago, BoroPaul said:

You are absolutely correct.. I must have made a mistake when I ripped it into WAVs. DOH.
Appreciate the effort, apologies for my mistake.

No worries. Glad we figured out what was wrong.

 

41 minutes ago, BoroPaul said:

I would still love an actual SAP rip of the XEGS version!! 

Do you have a link to a binary or an ATR or something?

 

41 minutes ago, BoroPaul said:

In the mean time here is a stereo MP3 of Jet Set Willy.

Interesting how you process the resulting audio. It sounds a lot more vivid than the mono version, and it does not sound like just fake stereo widening.

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I don't think you edited 5m up to 65m.

 

I convert it exactly as you suspect using ASAPCONV, but you can also split out the tracks into individual wavs which is what I do.

 

So the wav for track 4 looks like the image attached.

 

As you can see, the rising falling track does that 8 times, the final one is traingular in shape. I have compared the traingular ones and #2 is different from #2 which is different from #3 but then the #4 is the same as #1.

 

So I have no idea what you did here!
 

You seem to have given me 32m 14s of unique ballblazer music, which is wonderful!

 

Sorry, I just get carried away with this stuff. Like I said, makes me feel like a kid again.

 

Now.. XEGS and 7800 versions...

I have located the CRC checksum for every version of ballblazer I can find out there.
According to the interwebs there should be 3 different 5200/8-bit roms and 5 different 7800 roms but I can only find three..

 

8-bit/XE/5200 Versions

def2a207 - Ballblazer (1984) (Atari-Lucasfilm Games) - 5200 and 8-bit

94d97d14 - Ballblazer (1984) (Atari-Lucasfilm Games) [a1] - 5200

820E5CE5 - Ballblazer (1987) - ballblzr.bin - US 8-bit and XE, XEGS 64 KB (13)

 

So the 1987 versions are all the same! So if your version loads up with the date 1987 then you have the funky version.

And the version you have given me is definitely funky. 

 

I have come to the conclusion that the version in this video is heavily edited.
It has a reverb on and it starts with a bass break and no random melody track.. which just does not ever seem to happen!!

 

 

Can we get the music from the 7800 versions.. 
As I understand it the 7800 had 2600 sound, so to get good sound you had to put a chip in the cart, Ballblazer had a pokey in there.

 

OK, I just got ProSystem emulator to work (it is a fiddly swine!) and loaded up the USA version and this is the one! It does not play for long before the game stops the music and starts playing an attract mode game.

Can get you the music out of a 7800 cart?

https://lmgtfy.app/?q=Ballblazer+(USA).a78

 

7800 Versions

48f75a89 - Ballblazer (Europe).a78 7800
aff85565 - ballbleu.bin - PAL 7800
a4c4808b - Ballblazer (USA).a78 or ballblzr.bin - USA 7800
5b635cb6 - 7800 cannot find this one

44615260 - 7800 cannot find this one
 

 

 

 

Ballblazer65.JPG

Edited by BoroPaul
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OK, I think I have done it. Don't think I need anything else. Time to move on to the next tune.
I have attached a sample of a funky section with drums and no random melody playing.
I played around making lots of randomizing versions.
It is surprising that the ( 3 sets of 8 ) diamonds in the image above (which are a visual representation of the fade in and fade out of the random melody) are not a consistent length!

So as well as the notes being different speeds and lots of different potential combinations of notes, their fade in, hold, and fade out duration varies as well.
And on the bass track it plays a steady melody with odd semi random interruptions that sometimes end simply going back into the normal bassline and sometimes ramp back in in a very funky manner.

 

I basically put the track with the drum and 1 note of the chord to one side, added the random melody.

Then the track with the random drum/chord/slightly delayed random melody to the other

Finally the bass+chord note in the center.

I had the center channel oscillate slightly side to side with each note

Then I put a slight reverb across the whole thing.

 

I think it is quite nice!

Now to grab some images and make a nice video to pay homage to a technically great game with a even more technically great soundtrack!

Thank you very much ivop for all your help!

BallblazerStereoFunkySample113bpm.mp3

Edited by BoroPaul
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12 hours ago, BoroPaul said:

So I have no idea what you did here!

This is the only difference betweeen Ballblazer.sap from ASMADB, and the patched version:

17,18c17,18
< 0000200  30  35  3a  32  36  2e  38  34  32  20  4c  4f  4f  50  0d  0a
<           0   5   :   2   6   .   8   4   2  sp   L   O   O   P  cr  nl
---
> 0000200  36  35  3a  32  36  2e  38  34  32  20  4c  4f  4f  50  0d  0a
>           6   5   :   2   6   .   8   4   2  sp   L   O   O   P  cr  nl

 

Note that I only changed $30 to $36, so that's actually one nibble ;)

 

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It just occurred to me that asapconv probably starts playing the SAP file with predictable random numbers. I just checked, and asapconv renders the exact same WAV file everytime. That's not how it should be.

 

Edit: I just checked Altirra. If I run it from the command line, like altirra Ballblazer.sap, it's exactly the same everytime. But if I run it from within altirra again with File->Open Image, it plays a different tune! But it still doesn't vary after re-opening the "image".

Edited by ivop
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Another test:

 

$ asapconv -o bla.xex Ballblazer.sap
$ atari800 bla.xex

$ altirra bla.xex

Altirra consistently plays the same song. atari800 on the other hand switches between two variations seemingly random between various calls.

 

It could be nice to run this routine through siddasm2 and see how it works.

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I sliced it up in Ableton, a Digital Audio Workstation, and it is amazing how well each of the random pieces play with each other. You can completely randomize it and get a 50/50 chance of something that sounds interesting, often way more interesting that ballblazer itself throws us as it follows a fairly consistent pattern.

 

I was making a video for YouTube with lots of images I had gathered but it crashed on me after about three hours and would not re-load. So I either give up or start again.

Edited by BoroPaul
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So the three loops of 8 verses when all in a row looked like they were duplicates.

 

But when I put them one on top of each other they are quite different.

 

ballblazerNotTheSame.thumb.JPG.ecb21d3eab07d5708de66869a7f10fc9.JPG

 

When you zoom in on the beginning you can see the different notes played at different times with different velocities.

 

different8secs.thumb.JPG.0eed5868afe66fac5c52ccf32e3ef8ac.JPG
 

I have remade the video! Thank you again for your help.

 

I have also made a stereo version of Alternate Reality.

 

33 minute ballblazer video...

 

 

Alternate Reality Video - Stereo

 

 

AlternateRealityStereo.mp3

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12 hours ago, BoroPaul said:

I have also made a stereo version of Alternate Reality.

 

33 minute ballblazer video...

Alternate Reality Video - Stereo

 

 

AlternateRealityStereo.mp3 8.17 MB · 3 downloads

 

Here is mine - and many others...  pigwa

(Beware, I am hard hearing, so if the sound recordings are not that great, you know why.)

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14 minutes ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Here is mine - and many others...  pigwa

(Beware, I am hard hearing, so if the sound recordings are not that great, you know why.)

Nice collection of sound recordings. It's fun to click around all the songs and play them directly in your browser.

 

Came across this one: Ninja

 

Still one of my favorites. Note how it does not use distortion $C for the bass. And it's only three channels IIRC. This one screams for a remake with a proper low 16-bit bass ;)

 

@CharlieChaplin note that @BoroPaul's recordings are not plain recordings of the music, but each channel is recorded separately, and remixed on a PC to create a stereo impression.

Edited by ivop
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2 hours ago, ivop said:

@CharlieChaplin note that @BoroPaul's recordings are not plain recordings of the music, but each channel is recorded separately, and remixed on a PC to create a stereo impression.

 

My recordings were made with a "Stereo Phaser" by Portronic aka AMC-Verlag, to create a stereo impression.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 9 months later...
On 1/7/2020 at 10:12 AM, lotek_style said:

These seem to be pretty hard to do... but I'd love to have them:

 

https://demozoo.org/productions/108344/

I tried very hard on these about two years ago but came up short. Getting the BASIC environment and timing to match up proved to be too tricky. I went so far as to start writing a bespoke BASIC compiler to convert these songs into stand-alone assembly programs but I couldn't maintain the timing and I never could properly implement some of the wacky FOR/NEXT loops that some of the players use. Here's my shoddy work environment if anyone wants a laugh:

 

the-music-box.zip

 

I think the right approach here would be to create a TYPE-D player that can recreate the exact POKEY register update timing achieved by the BASIC programs. For one thing, a lot of the percussion in these songs produce bursts of sound that are less than a frame long. Furthermore, the songs' BPMs are not frame multiples and there is noticeable BPM jitter and drift that comes from using delay loops instead of a truly periodic timing method like VBLANK. This gives the tunes a certain charm as they tend to slow down a bit during more complex interludes and speed up when just a few instruments are playing.

 

This might mean including the whole BASIC interpreter in the SAP or coming up with some as of yet non-existent format/player which can update registers after varying increments of VCOUNT.

 

Maybe someone else can think of a quick and easy way to convert these?

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  • 2 months later...

Anyone using Altirra, remember you can record as a SAP file from the record menu, ok, you have to manually start and stop it but its there.

 

Edit: it saves as Type R which does not seem to have a lot of support, most sap players show it as an unsupported type, but Altirra will play them from what I've tried.

Edited by Mclaneinc
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