Adding music to bad ports
 

Bit of a generalised question, but how hard would it be to add music to games that suffered from 'lazy port' syndrome?

I'm thinking games like Streetfighter II Turbo or Final Fight where the music exists, but it was left off the Amiga port (probably for memory reasons). Or CD-32 titles that you can only get music for if you play it off a CD. Not to mention games like Zool or Premiere that had great music and SFX but annoyingly forced you to choose between them (again I'm assuming because of memory limitations).

I'm completely clueless on coding matters, so I'm just wondering if it's a matter of including the MOD files and adding a line to the code to trigger it? Or if you have to weave it into some rich tapestry of memory access and audio-chip timings and stuff I don't pretend to understand. (or even if the source code is available for any of these old titles).

It depends but in most cases you would need to disassemble the game. With some luck you just need to replace the music files (e.g. MOD) like Zool CD32. It might will fail if you choose a to large mod (not enough chip mem). The WHDLoad files installs are worth a look.

More than memory limitations, choosing music vs sfx is often a matter of available audio channels. We have 4 in our Paula chip, and while getting more is possible, it takes heaps of cpu power (at least on non-accelerated machines) that is better invested in other parts of the game.

Besides, even if it were easy to just include a mod file, said mod file must exist at first place...

I understand the 4 channel thing, but there are enough games with terrific sound FX and music at the same time to show that it's completely possible and it just seems lazy to have to choose.

Technically it seems possible, I just figure the most legitimate reason is memory (most of the games which make you choose tend to have fairly large sprites and stuff) and nowadays most people would be running their machine's with some extra RAM.

Mostly I'm just wondering, to choose my example above, if one could cut-and-paste the music from SFII (tinny as it may be, better than nothing) and past into SFII Turbo and just make use of the extra fast RAM a WHDload user would have (or to push something else into fast mem so you have chip mem available, but you get the idea....)