BZR Player - a new music player for Win

[Alexco]

Strange.
Can't see anything special here.
It just quits after loading.

[SuperPlay]

Nice player, testing it now with PC Engine HES files

thanks :-)

[SaphirJD]

Player UI is still so small No chance to add an option to make it twice as large?

[bLAZER]

@Alexco Can't see anything wrong in the log. So what files crash? All or all hvl? Some hvl?

@SaphirJD I'll have a look at scaling the GUI.

[Alexco]

@bLAZER: any .exe file will crash. Also all .hvl which I downloaded from the hivelytracker homepage.

[bLAZER]

I have no idea, tried a clean 1.0 and a bunch of .exe files and 31 hvl files without any problems...

But mod, sid, mp3 etc work fine?

[ptyerman]

No problems here either with .hvl files, they all play as normal and any .exe files are just skipped and crossed out in the playlist as unplayable.

[Alexco]

@bLAZER
.mod works here (at least for my approx. 100 mods here), .mp3 crashes (tested only 3 files) like .exe or .hvl.
Did not test any other format.

[ptyerman]

It sounds like you may have a codec clash on your system. BZR Player plays anything I throw at it that it can play and just skips what it cant. What codecs or codec packs have you got installed? I have Klite codec pack on mine and have no problems but other packs might.
If it isn't codecs, it's definitely something you either have or haven't got installed.

[Alexco]

As I said, it is my office notebook, no admin rights, no code packs, nothing. Just plan simple Win7 64-Bit. That's why I tried BZR because I do not need to install something.

[ptyerman]

Ahh sorry, missed that bit. Will have a play with a locked down system and see what happens then get back to you.

[bLAZER]

Yeah, BZR Player doesn't care what codecs you have installed. It uses only it's own codecs, located in the plugin dir.

@Alexco What you can try is to remove all plugins except codec_ahx.dll and see if hvl still crash. If it works, move plugins back one by one and try again (with a restart every time) until you find the culprit.

[Alexco]

Hi bLAZER,

did what you suggested. The asap codec is responsible for the crashes. If I remove this from the plugin dir, everything works as expected, hvl, exe, mp3.

[bLAZER]

Great! I'll have a look and see if I can find something in ASAP. A bit hard since I can't reproduce though.

[bLAZER]

Working on (optionally) scaling up the GUI, going well, I'll post some screenshots when it's more done.

[bLAZER]

Here's some examples at different scalings (not 100% done yet). You can scale the GUI as small or big you want, but 2x shown in this example is the original for the graphics.

[kkgarbod]

Nice

[OddbOd]

I actually just dropped by to congratulate bLAZER on hitting 1.0 and to bully him about UADE integration again just kidding, well done mate.

Then I got distracted...

Originally Posted by prowler

Google Chrome now reports the Zip file as malicious, though Avast! reports no threat.

I think this was probably the culprit.

Originally Posted by ancalimon

Is it possible to make BZR Player play the songs from Indiana Jones 4 and Monkey Island 2 (Amiga versions of course). I have yet to find any player that is able to play songs from these games.

From a certain perspective it already can (it plays MIDI files) from another POV it's impossible, I'll try to explain why. BTW When you say Indy 4, you mean the adventure game and not the arcade game that bLAZER was referring to, right? Ok, well the problem lies in the fact that MI2 has one of the most sophisticated dynamic music systems ever created and is an engineering feat of such genius that it has never really been replicated. I suspect LucasArts themselves had a hard time when they tried to reimplement iMUSE for the Special Editions of the Monkey Island series. For some examples that originally accompanied Peter Silk's article on iMUSE, watch [ Show youtube player ] of the coda variations that play when Largo exits at the beginning of the game, or how [ Show youtube player ] as you enter and exit various locations around Woodtick or even how [ Show youtube player ] by embedded audio cues to give a more cinematic feel to the game.

Originally Posted by ancalimon

Some of them sound much better than the PC midi versions.

Actually the Amiga version uses MIDI files as well it's only the way the audio is played that differs, samples on the Amiga versus raw MIDI on the PC (excepting PC speaker replay). I take it you've never heard the PC version being played properly i.e. through a Roland MT-32, check out [ Show youtube player ], it might change your mind

Originally Posted by ancalimon

Well... Actually I don't even know how to rip them

Ripping the actual MIDI data out of the game is trivial thanks to SCUMM Revisited, just open each data file (the .000, .001, .002 etc. files) and save them out. It's never going to sound the same as the only "player" that can really do the job is SCUMMVM, for the reason explained above.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

I think this was probably the culprit.

Looks like you've nailed it, mate! Well spotted!

[bLAZER]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

I think this was probably the culprit.

Yeah I know about that, but I don't know what to do about that. I mean, everyone is free to make their own FMOD (The sound engine I use) plugin that does whatever they want. So I can't really stop them. AFAIK that "vulnerability" could be applied to all programs that use FMOD.

By the way, Google Chrome stopped reporting my files as malicious a couple of months ago, have no idea why.