Xenon 2 BETA Audio concept

[Galahad/FLT]

So, I had been thinking about this for a long time, and then finally I decided "why not just do it?".

So I did.

Now that Amigas with lots of memory and emulated systems also have lots of memory, this is now a thing that can happen, and happen for lots of reasons.

So, the Xenon 2 theme by David Whittaker is a very nice thing, it still sounds as great today as it did in 1989.

But what if we could enjoy the ORIGINAL by Bomb the Bass as they intended?

Well..... now you can!

So in the zone is a rather obvious zip file.

Unzip to Amiga, it should create a directory called "Xenon2Beta".

Obviously CD into that directory and assuming you have enough memory (i.e. 22MB of any type), this will work for you.

I've not done any bug fixing for Xenon 2, this is a proof of concept at the moment to see if its something people want, and it can also fix that age old bugbear of "why cant the Amiga play music as well as samples?".

Because, if time permits and other WHDLoad authors are up for it, we can now do that.

Obviously it will take up a lot of diskspace, but hard drives and CF cards etc, are so cheap and plentiful, why not use that space to good effect?

So what i've written is a fast ram sample player that sets up a one shot sample player that plays from three buffers.

One main buffer to copy the data from the music, and then two additional buffers to separate the pair of channels embedded in the music file.

The buffers are pretty small. It uses WHDLoads feature of loading from a file offset so we don't have to separately allocate any extra memory for the preloaded music file.

Obviously this system to operate on 68000 based machines, will have to be tailored on a per game basis, because if the buffer is too big, then the 68000 might have a lot of other stuff going on at the same time and it might struggle, so its finding a balance with each game to ensure it works, there is no one size fits all.

Yes there are some graphical glitches in the Xenon 2 intro, its just proof of concept, I simply ripped the data from the disk, patched it to get it to work and stop David Whittakers original tune from playing.

Only tested in a WinUAE environment at the moment.

The benefits once this is streamlined is obvious, in the game it is a heavily truncated version of Whittakers original playing on only 2 channels.

Now, we could have the FULL original Bomb The Bass music playing with sound effects, or, if the user wanted to, could record the original Dave Whittaker music as a sample which can then be converted to 2 channels with no loss of quality, and retaining all instruments and playing SFX on the other 2 channels.

Same thing with other games, turn the mods into samples, have them play through two channels (4 mixed into 2) and SFX playing on the spare 2 channels, we now have the chance to have Amiga games sound better and get rid of that age old "but its either music or SFX".

Proof of concept, let me know what you guys think

WHDLoad will likely quit with an error when it gets to the end of the music, simply because I haven't put in any error correction at the moment, remember, proof of concept

[S0ulA55a551n]

This sounds like a great idea will give this a whirl.

Something you could clarify, if you don't mind.

Is this a proof of concept?

[paraj]

Sounds great, and works OK on my 060 (good thing I recently got around to upgrading from 16MB->64MB). Music loops just fine when it reaches the end btw.

There are glitches in the intro (I know it's early preview) that look like unintended sprites.

[ransom1122]

Sounds promising, looking forward to trying it. Does this mean games like Shadow Warriors can be fixed to have music & sfx at the same time?

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by ransom1122

Sounds promising, looking forward to trying it. Does this mean games like Shadow Warriors can be fixed to have music & sfx at the same time?

Yup.

Any game that has channels cutting out can be done subject to memory requirements.

[ransom1122]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Yup.

Any game that has channels cutting out can be done subject to memory requirements.

Amazing, I hope it can come to full light at some stage

[LieutLaww]

Well this sounds like an awesome idea !

[ransom1122]

Checked it out, Music is fantasic and works well. Obvious small gfx issue which you know about.

Pressing Fire, nags about registering whdload. Is the intro all you have done so far?

[musashi5150]

This is very cool indeed

[turrican3]

really great idea !

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by ransom1122

Checked it out, Music is fantasic and works well. Obvious small gfx issue which you know about.

Pressing Fire, nags about registering whdload. Is the intro all you have done so far?

Yes, didnt want to go too far if there was no interest from others.

But for sure, I could have that same music playing in game or sample the Whittaker version and have that playing during gameplay and no more music cutting out.

[ransom1122]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Yes, didnt want to go too far if there was no interest from others.

But for sure, I could have that same music playing in game or sample the Whittaker version and have that playing during gameplay and no more music cutting out.

Proper audio & no music cutting out. It will be amazing.

There have been many times I avoid shooting in xenon 2 just to avoid the music cutting out, lol. I know I could use cdtv version, but your whdload work is something I've been wanting for years.

I even made a video a year ago of shadow Warriors with music and sfx at the same time using retroarch and music player in sfx ingame mode.

[ Show youtube player ]

[viddi]

Had a simple idea some time ago:
Just mute the weapon sound.
It's annoying and would free a channel for ingame music.

But your project is awesome!

[alexh]

Cool. Thanks for the hard work.

The Amiga finally catches up to the Atari STe version released by Pera Putnik in 2015.

https://www.8bitchip.info/atari/SCRSH/xen2s.html
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/23...th-mega-music/
https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=27444

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by alexh

Cool. Thanks for the hard work.

The Amiga finally catches up to the Atari STe version released by Pera Putnik in 2015.

https://www.8bitchip.info/atari/SCRSH/xen2s.html
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/23...th-mega-music/
https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=27444

I'm too lazy, I thought about this years ago but obviously big ram Amigas were not plentiful like they are now.

If I were to resource the CDTV version, it would be possible to get rid of the massive ram requirement and have multitasking loading still active and load offsets using AmigaDOS.

Now that storage is no longer an issue this stuff is all feasible and can be of benefit

[trixster]

Amazing work! Very cool indeed

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

If I were to resource the CDTV version, it would be possible to get rid of the massive ram requirement and have multitasking loading still active and load offsets using AmigaDOS.

Pera Putnik also did STe enhanced versions of other games that had CDTV/CD32 CDDA. Cannon Fodder, Chaos Engine, Robocod. There was talk of him doing Turrican 2 with the remixes by Chris Huelsbeck but I don't think that ever happened.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by alexh

Pera Putnik also did STe enhanced versions of other games that had CDTV/CD32 CDDA. Cannon Fodder, Chaos Engine, Robocod. There was talk of him doing Turrican 2 with the remixes by Chris Huelsbeck but I don't think that ever happened.

I think the ST Market is significantly smaller and he may have thought there was lots of effort here for very little benefit.

Assuming Amiga Mini is a success which there is no reason to think otherwise, something like this could do very well.

I just ripped the Rastan arcade music, all channels playing in two and it sounds great as I'm sure the arcade was inly 8bit as well.

I just need to get a healthy balance with taking the original music and converting it to 8svx or raw so that it retains the sound quality but is maybe a bit smaller lol

[DisasterIncarna]

brilliant idea that can only be seen as an upgrade for our old titles.

[alexh]

Some video games musicians remixed their own in-game music tracks that appeared on CDs. e.g. Immortal series

These are prime candidates for users to enhance their Amiga versions.

Alistair Brimble (Project X, Alien Breed, Super Frog, ZeeWolf, Dizzy etc.)
Matthias Steinwachs (Ambermoon, No Second Prize, Lionheart)
Ron Klaren (Battle Squadron the best remix ever)
Barry Leitch (Lotus Turbo Challenge series)

People enhancing the games wouldn't even need to supply the music, the users could supply their own. Just the infrastructure to add songs within a game and perhaps a conversion methodology?

I was surprised no-one ever did unofficial CD32/CDTV re-releases with CDDA music once good remixes became available? The change to the original code to "not play" the original music and instead start playing CDDA must have been much easier than streaming music from RAM.