Heroes of Might and Magic II

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by adrdesign

Simple 8bit stereo play need many CPU power, that's all? Please, you are doing a conversion for 10mb Amigas. Are you kidding me?

To be honest and trying to be polite, I personally dont see a point to do a HUGE work converting those marvellous midis to 500kb 4ch mod, doing the mixing and chopping thing to the samples. It will sound like ****, believe me o not. I respect the author about that and won't do it.

There are long pad instruments that will be cut everytime, and all the incredible atmosphere that songs requires will dissapear with a crappy module. So, I apologyze if I misunderstood your needs. I think your work deserves a half attention to the music (I havent ever heard such a good midi music from that era). Without it, (if you stay with the Protracker idea) It will be FAR worse than the PC version.

I hope you will find the solution soon. Good Luck!

PS: Please, I apologyze if my english is poor, rude or doesnt sound polite.

For conversion MIDI to wave/sample musician is not necessary.
If conversion to Protracker is too hard, then please convert these MIDI to FastTracker format.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

For conversion MIDI to wave/sample musician is not necessary.

But in this case it will sound much better.

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

If conversion to Protracker is too hard, then please convert these MIDI to FastTracker format.

Isn't FastTracker heavier than just playing samples (which is what you'd convert your WAV file to)?

[meynaf]

The problem with the music here is that the cpu is already more than busy.

Of course a 68030 can do 32 channel mixing to 14bit in 28khz even with interpolation.
But it will become problematic when it also has to handle lots of graphic operations ending with a 640x480 c2p...

In several places the game isn't fast enough at all.

And Protracker 4ch has the advantage of taking nearly zero.


Also i don't want the release to become real huge - merely recording the midi musics on a good midi hardware doesn't make much sense for me as i could have provided the CD audio tracks (even though i don't like these opera songs ).

I think that what is needed to make soundtracker music out of these, isn't converting but retracking.

About SFX, 4ch are already used by it as of today. So i'll take 1ch for the most important sfx and 3ch for the music (removing the less important sound), if i get PTK music.

I am afraid that it's very difficult to make real good music in PTK here, but i believe it is possible. It is sure an average musician cannot do that, but don't we have geniuses here ?


Btw1. GOOD midi conversion would help not only with this game, but for other games coming from the PC.

Btw2. As the game constantly hits the disk, streaming from it will perhaps have some trouble and "holes" would be heard.

Btw3. There are quite a few PC games using midi where the Amiga version has a better music even though it's 4ch.

[saimon69]

@adrdesign
Am trying to contribute to this project, despite it's been a while that i did important MODs:
WIP: (video link) - this is mostly done, have others on progress, in several states.
Like to do some impossible things before lunch: the important is to get the essential of it

Well, my idea is to get the important part of the melody that compose the music, leaving behind most of the poliphony; if the essential sounds good then the atmosphere should not be lost.
I don't and cannot expect a 1:1 port of the tunes -especially the cities, where there is also singing involved, so will try to get some workarounds; however if i can reach a good rendition above the soundblaster MIDI should be already a good result: i did look around for instruments gutting sf2 files, still i miss good harp and a good piano, though.

Is also challenging the part that mostly three voices will carry the main tune and the fourth one will be of support: this means organize the tune in that way.

[adrdesign]

Originally Posted by saimon69

@adrdesign
Am trying to contribute to this project, despite it's been a while that i did important MODs:
WIP: (video link) - this is mostly done, have others on progress, in several states.
Like to do some impossible things before lunch: the important is to get the essential of it

Well, my idea is to get the important part of the melody that compose the music, leaving behind most of the poliphony; if the essential sounds good then the atmosphere should not be lost.
I don't and cannot expect a 1:1 port of the tunes -especially the cities, where there is also singing involved, so will try to get some workarounds; however if i can reach a good rendition above the soundblaster MIDI should be already a good result: i did look around for instruments gutting sf2 files, still i miss good harp and a good piano, though.

Is also challenging the part that mostly three voices will carry the main tune and the fourth one will be of support: this means organize the tune in that way.

Good work man!

If you need good orchestral instruments, please have a look at Edirol Orchestral VST. For converting samples you could try sox (find some instructions here
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=72698 )

for better results and less noise i suggest you to turn off reverb when dumping.

I think the only method is that you are using. 1:1 is impossible at all. Good luck mate!

[saimon69]

@ardesign
conversion from PC to amiga is the least problem, since am working on Milkytracker plus WinUAE for testing and Audacity, since my 1200 is still in Italy; however, if anyone got some good piano and harp samples please send it to me...

[adrdesign]

I don't know if you're aware of, but there are some sample collections I've done that include some orchestral sounds. Look for them in the zone, adrdesign folder. I suggest you have a look to the emu proteus orchestral soundfont.

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by saimon69

@ardesign
conversion from PC to amiga is the least problem, since am working on Milkytracker plus WinUAE for testing and Audacity, since my 1200 is still in Italy; however, if anyone got some good piano and harp samples please send it to me...

Original Roland's 16-bit samples set is available here:

http://wt.exotica.org.uk/test.html

All samples from this set are easy to convert to 8-bit.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by adrdesign

Good work man!

If you need good orchestral instruments, please have a look at Edirol Orchestral VST. For converting samples you could try sox (find some instructions here
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=72698 )

for better results and less noise i suggest you to turn off reverb when dumping.

I think the only method is that you are using. 1:1 is impossible at all. Good luck mate!

Hello Saimon, you port of the grassland song on amiga is absolutely brilliant. Better than what any musician working for Sierra or any other company would have done ! Hats off !

[saimon69]

Will download stuff tonight at home

[saimon69]

A couple more WIP that are not that well refined yet, among the most finished so far - still video links:



As you can hear there is still a lot of work to do, am in the part in which am trying to draft the songs and polish it later.

[adrdesign]

Originally Posted by saimon69

A couple more WIP that are not that well refined yet, among the most finished so far - still video links:



As you can hear there is still a lot of work to do, am in the part in which am trying to draft the songs and polish it later.

Good flow and dynamics. I envy you!

[saimon69]

Er, beside ripping the .dls file passing it by audacity or another editor, is there any faster way? :P

[adrdesign]

I've converted the DLS supplied to IFF-8VSX (8 bit) and FastTracker2 XI (16 bit). Both can be used in most trackers. Hope it helps!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v4lfre57fr6qow4/GM16-8SVX.zip
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wq76e2nvzhz5skp/GM16-FT2.zip

[saimon69]

thanks,i owe you one

[dlfrsilver]

That's awesome guys, you're doing such a good work !!!

And Saimon latest theme songs for Heroes II are really really good !!!

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by adrdesign

I've converted the DLS supplied to IFF-8VSX (8 bit) and FastTracker2 XI (16 bit). Both can be used in most trackers. Hope it helps!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v4lfre57fr6qow4/GM16-8SVX.zip
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wq76e2nvzhz5skp/GM16-FT2.zip

Good job. Could you adapt these IFF files for GMPlay?

http://aminet.net/mus/midi/GMPlay13.readme

[adrdesign]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

Good job. Could you adapt these IFF files for GMPlay?

http://aminet.net/mus/midi/GMPlay13.readme

I'll try, but it won't sound as good as the original. There are some multi samples like the piano for the dls you've supplied. That midiplayer doesn't allow that.

[saimon69]

Coming back to HOMM2, tonight had an idea on how to implement the song lyrics (like in Castle of the Barbarian), but to do that i need to know if the clean song parts are available somehow (mean voices only no music):

my idea is to get the repeating parts, stretching the long wovels more than needed (wooooooooo ist deeeeeeeeeeein ) and point with the sample offset command 9XX to create the singing, repointing in where the loop repeats longer than my sample; might need three/four samples but could work (if kept within 64k each sample)...

[adrdesign]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Coming back to HOMM2, tonight had an idea on how to implement the song lyrics (like in Castle of the Barbarian), but to do that i need to know if the clean song parts are available somehow (mean voices only no music):

my idea is to get the repeating parts, stretching the long wovels more than needed (wooooooooo ist deeeeeeeeeeein ) and point with the sample offset command 9XX to create the singing, repointing in where the loop repeats longer than my sample; might need three/four samples but could work (if kept within 64k each sample)...

You have 2 options (or three)

I've done that before for the Final Fight intro. You need the original WAV instumental track and the one with the singing (they must be the same music for both versions, I mean, it must be mastered same way). So you invert the phase for one and mix with the other adjusting the start offset so both are perfectly synchronised) and the volume to be the same. So

(the voice + the music)+(-the music) = the voice

This method is really hard to sync (and it must be digital mastered) but provides the best sound. In this video you have both versions ripped from the cd at 0:33:46 (with voice) and 0:38:10 (only music)
[ Show youtube player ]

this is the isolated voice.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/84uwvundgx...speechfull.mp3

The second option is ISSE, and Interactive Source Separation Editor. [ Show youtube player ] explains how it works (my english sucks!)

The third option is [ Show youtube player ] (i couldn't test this yet)

Hope you could find a proper method. If you need help, just tell me.