Games that made you choose between music or sound effects

[CLXIV]

Cheers, added!

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by TCD

You mean that the all of the music would have to be re-written, the sound effects would have to be reduced *and* the game logic that handles sound also would have to be re-written. Alternatively you could just skip the music/sound logic of the game, mix music and sound effects down to four channels and play that along the game instead.

Guess that's about an afternoon's work for Mr. WHDLoad

You could edit the tracker code with a means to interrupt in sound effects, and then patch the game's sound effect engine to send samples to that. Since most games use off-the-shelf tracker code you could design a patch for each flavor and it should be quick to adapt to all games that use that code, with only the sound effect routines requiring bespoke work on each game.

It wouldn't be a massive undertaking but it would sound terrible. Music for games that have both music and sound effects is usually carefully planned so that one or two channels are used for sound effects, and the music is written such that the instruments that are least important for the music are placed on those channels.

Music not planned this way uses all the channels however it wants, so you could have sound effects preempting important parts of the music.

Meanwhile, sound-effect-only modes often assume they can use all four channels, so it would be stomping all over the music.

Probably the most realistic way to do it would be to convert all the music to 64kbps MP3s, require a bunch of fast ram to buffer it, and a fast CPU to drive the I/O, and then require something like a MAS player to decode and play the MP3s. This wouldn't work for dynamic music, but most games with sound effects-or-music option just have static MODs that they switch between anyway.

Then enable both code pathways, with the mod playback code completely ripped out and replaced with the send-MP3-to-MAS-player routine. You could reuse that on pretty much every game without even having to think much about what their playback routines are.

Still not an easy patch, but not a super difficult one either as you could leave the sound effects codepath entirely intact, and just have to find the entry routines for the music code, and patch that in so it runs even when in sound effect mode.

Since MAS Player requires using the parallel port, this would work best on games that are fixed to work with cache enabled, etc. freeing up CPU cycles for the PIO. Would work especially well on games that can have some logic moved to fast ram. Might not work on ECS on games that are particularly nasty on DMA, so those might require AGA with a fetchmode patch.

Wouldn't be an issue on clockport MP3 players and such. Could also do a version that hooked directly into AHI drivers (rather than AHI itself, since there's no multitasking in most games) for systems with tons of RAM to cache PCM versions of the tracks, or use a low-CPU-intensity compression routine.

Or bypass all of the hardware considerations and just make it only work in UAE.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

You could edit the tracker code with a means to interrupt in sound effects, and then patch the game's sound effect engine to send samples to that. Since most games use off-the-shelf tracker code you could design a patch for each flavor and it should be quick to adapt to all games that use that code, with only the sound effect routines requiring bespoke work on each game.

I think some games do it like that already. They 'kill' one of the music channels to play effects if needed. Would be interesting to hear the result of that in a game that isn't intended for it.

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by TCD

...Would be interesting to hear the result of that in a game that isn't intended for it.

+1
or an unofficial CD32 version perhaps?
Leander or Killing GameShow ie would be interesting

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other two titles to add to the list :
Power Drive and Mega lo Mania

[CLXIV]

Originally Posted by kremiso

+1
or an unofficial CD32 version perhaps?
Leander or Killing GameShow ie would be interesting

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other two titles to add to the list :
Power Drive and Mega lo Mania

Leander would be nice!

Thanks, those are added :-) We're past 50 now!

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by kremiso

+1
or an unofficial CD32 version perhaps?
Leander or Killing GameShow ie would be interesting

Problem with CDDA is if the music will fit on the disc. Quick check for Leander looks like it should work fine.

[Marce]

Originally Posted by ransom1122

Dalek Attack

this is really a very strange and weird game , I did not know its existence until ur post

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

Quick check for Leander looks like it should work fine.

interesting!
also Mega lo Mania would be even better with both music and sfx

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CLXIV, Space Gun is another title
(maybe Beast Busters too?)

[CLXIV]

Originally Posted by kremiso

interesting!
also Mega lo Mania would be even better with both music and sfx

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CLXIV, Space Gun is another title
(maybe Beast Busters too?)

Thanks :-D We're digging up some niche stuff now! Want me to test Beast Busters? Assuming I can get hold of it of course.

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by CLXIV

...Want me to test Beast Busters?

no, i was just wondering, due the same SpaceGun coder
his previous work (Beast Busters) seems using just sfx ingame

The Untouchables is another one, 'S' key ingame to switch between music and sfx

[CLXIV]

Thanks, added :-)

[kremiso]

Miami Chase
Gulp!
other two

[CLXIV]

Originally Posted by kremiso

Miami Chase
Gulp!
other two

Haha you're unstoppable! :-D

Really appreciate all the contributions (it would be a short list otherwise!)

[kremiso]

no problem
i'm just testing the ipf set in this period, for other reasons (in effect another list )
i'm posting here as soon as i encounter some matches, before i forgot... forever again

there are surely more

[CLXIV]

Originally Posted by kremiso

no problem
i'm just testing the ipf set in this period, for other reasons (in effect another list )
i'm posting here as soon as i encounter some matches, before i forgot... forever again

there are surely more

Can't beat a good list :-D Keep em coming!

[jotd]

CD32 audio tracks added to games is the easiest option. Then you just need a CD32 or WinUAE to enjoy them...

I tried to add full fledged music (Lotus 1,2,3 tunes) to Supercars 2 AGA with sfx at the same time. It wasn't too bad. But I had to turn off the engine sound in that case. And rewire sfx replay to ptplayer (which can handle music & sfx at the same time). But I had access to the source code...

Without source code, this is becoming rather annoying (I almost gave up finding the music replayer when I tried to adapt Marble Madness to CD tracks, but in the end that was worth it as the original music is so great)... Besides, not sure that anyone mentioned chipmem size, which is another reasons game made you choose between sfx & music.

I was contemplating adapting Leander at some point. But the music is just always the same track... And also Unreal. Z-Out (with sunspire remixes) is almost done (the sfx are really killing the music, specially in level 2). I'm not too much into CD32 audio stuff right now. CD32 also allows to substitute original music with remakes. There's a superb remake of the Unreal soundtrack for instance. Mega lo Mania looks interesting too.

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by jotd

...chipmem size, which is another reasons game made you choose between sfx & music.

yup, a good amount of titles (80/90% ?) were developed to run on 512k base;
and i would add, sadly many didn't use at all whatever extra memory, if present
i mean, also to have some extra like both music and sfx maybe?

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other two
Lollypop
Wings of Death

[CLXIV]

Cheers, though Lollypop was one of the original entries the list began with :-)

[kremiso]

other two

Predator 2
Robozone

[CLXIV]

Cheers :-)