Anyone think this would be useful for any actual Mega Man 9 NES demos or anything?
You already know that I'm working on trying to remake the MM9 demo which include the concrete man level on the nes. The songs you made will be useful for that proof of concept, of course. I remade a few of them while looking at your s3m for reference for some of the songs but the remaining ones (title, selection screen and boss), I have no more energy to remake them these days
You know how picky I'm on how they should sound "the same". If we can find a way to make the title song the same speed as the original and fix the same thing for the boss level, I will be more than happy. I want to see how much it can be done on the nes with any trick possible. I don't know how to approach it yet thought.
For the capcom intro, I checked MM6 nsf notes and it's not done that way. They don't change the duty cycle at all. What they do is just set it once for each channel and play with the volume. I started to remake it but for now didn't have time to finish it. I'm sure that if you look at the result at slow speed with nes play (if you feel like fixing it), it will be a breeze for you compare to me.
To ask how useful here for a game is not maybe the right place since I don't think people are interested in making nes games in general on this forum but more about making music. But... To ask on nesdev is hard too since everybody seems to like to re-invent the wheel (i.e. they all want to remake their sound engine...) and in that case, the FTM have not much value to them except for reference for the notes. I'm maybe the only one that see value in the FTM/engine to make a game it seems. Maybe once I have something working, people will start using it.
The capcom logo was remade from it's SNES counterpart, not the MM6 counterpart, though I did take the "Fade in" idea from the MM6 version, I still kept the SNES style because I liked that version better.
But anyway, I was wondering who might be interested, I knew you were making a version, but I was also wondering if anyone else was making one, mostly because I really didn't like Capcom's decision of doing Concrete Man as a demo on the PS3. :P Lol. Tornado Man, and/or a full remake of the special stage on the NES would be a much more fun demonstration, imo..
Tallboy, why not post it anyway? It would be interesting to see your take on my S3M version of it.. I know my S3M had some wrong notes, which I later fixed but never published.. this NSF however does contain those fixes.
Aw while you typed that i made the attached version, which sounds closer to mm6. At least you can take the notes from it since yours are wrong in a couple areas.
I have attached my interpretation of Overdrive Scramble based off the S3M by tssf. Also I made maybe 2/3 of the Maze of Death based on the S3M version as well. I will post that if anyone cares to finish it and clean up the inaccuracies. I have just not gotten around to trying to finish and fix them all.
Thanks RushJet, I actually may incorporate your fix, the whole idea was to get the capcom logo jingle in there for nostalgia purposes.
The only thing I don't like is the crescendo near the end, I'll fiddle with it then add it in!
BTW Yeah, your version of FamiTracker messes up some of the song names, at least..that's all I can see that's different in the FTM edits you've posted.
Tallboyy: I'm actually very impressed with the translation of my S3Ms (yes, I am TSSF) that you've done. Some of those S3M techniques obviously can't be used in FamiTracker due to some of the tracker limitations itself, but there are some opportunities to take advantage of other little tricks. As far as I can tell, your Overdrive Scramble version is very close, aside from some wrong notes. You also did the same thing danooct did, in that you mixed MM2 / MM3 sound system styles (MM2 has a frame cut before all notes, MM3 doesn't utilize that, but does utilize frame cuts before next notes come in on the triangle channel) ..this in turn causes the music to sound like the frames are unstable, and it feels like it's unquantized.. if you know what I mean (like frames are skipping back and forth)
And might I add, thank GOD you transferred over the triplets properly. Lol. You're probably the first person I've seen doing MM9 music in FamiTracker do that properly. :D
Thanks for the feedback. I think what helped me right away was just the examples you gave and also reading the text file. As soon as I d/l your MM9 file after emailing you for help 8 months ago I went right to the examples to see why yours sounded so much more accurate. I can't overstate the value of just seeing those examples and practicing (imitating) them every time I wanted to do a cover. Just the time saved from having to avoid the trial and error made it worth it really. I also forgot that I made a Plug Man cover as well based on your S3M (and the example file you gave of the first 4 frames). I'll attach that.
Pretty close on the plug man song. The first time the notes are really fast in the tracker (after the first bit of melody) some notes are incorrect but not too many. Some vibratos are a little too strong, and the volume-controlled single channel echo that you have is a bit too loud on the echo part.
The echo part during frames 11 and 12 is great, other covers i've heard have butchered this part but yours gets the job done (as tssf's original did).
Well since everyone's throwing out their cool covers ( I especially love the maze of death cover), I thought I'd throw out my Flash in the Dark cover (Wily Stage 1). I think it turned out pretty well.
EDIT: Tallboyy, I have to steal the way you're doing triplets. I've never even thought about doing them like that and they sound brilliant. Everytime I tried them before I would use the Gxx effect ON the note instead of in between, which I could never get to work. Maybe I should replace the triplets in my We're the Robots cover to make tssf happier :p
The capcom logo was remade from it's SNES counterpart, not the MM6 counterpart, though I did take the "Fade in" idea from the MM6 version, I still kept the SNES style because I liked that version better.
Oh. was not aware of that.
tssf wrote:
But anyway, I was wondering who might be interested, I knew you were making a version, but I was also wondering if anyone else was making one, mostly because I really didn't like Capcom's decision of doing Concrete Man as a demo on the PS3. :P Lol. Tornado Man, and/or a full remake of the special stage on the NES would be a much more fun demonstration, imo..
I think for now I'm the only one crazy enough to "try" to remake one stage and I hope I can finish it. Nobody shown any interest on nesdev to my knowledge. My main goal is not really to make a megaman game but more to gain experience making a game engine for my future games. If the experiment is successful, I can always try to make another stage after. Concrete man is not the best stage, too simple in design and the fact you couldn't fight the boss at the end of the demo.. even more frustrating. My goal was to remake the demo but I can always add new stuff later. I will think about it since now I have the Tornado man song but I don't promise anything
By the way, I still want to know what are triplets that you're talking about for megaman. I don't know about music so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
@Rushjet1: It getting closer to the nes one. The only difference is the volumes do rise slowly but between notes they do some volume fade. If you look with nes play, you will know what I mean. I started to do it but gave up for now, no time, and I should be coding if I want that mm9 demo working someday.
@Everyone: A lot of great covers with ftm source. That's great. We could almost remake a game out of it
Tallboyy: Love the remake (despite some problems), definitely looks modeled after my S3M, I can hear all the mistakes in your FTM that I made with my S3M.. I'm almost tempted to redo the song myself in the FTM in the first post.. I may even do it tomorrow, with all the fixes of course.
You did all the effects via pattern when you didn't have to, the only reason I did them in the S3M is because the S3M couldn't do macro instrumentation. (That's the reason why I changed the pattern speed to A01 in your frame 11/12 because the original was doing a triplet-based effect, that I could not pull off with the way I chose to remake that song, so I said "Screw it" and pulled it off that way.
I hear the missing notes I forgot in my S3M in the bass line, and I hear some drums I forgot, but you were working off my flawed S3M of course, I'm still really happy you took the time to put it all together.
Rushjet: That was a triplet-based effect that I swore I heard when I was first remaking the song, I slowed the waveform down from 44100 to 11025, analyzed every single part, and realized that the echo effect they were using was triplet-based, and could not be achieved using normal quarter note tracking styles that mostly everyone uses.. so I turned the speed to 01 and pulled it off, though I actually had to learn which rows were quarters and which were triplets at that fast a speed, so in essence, this song actually taught me how to do it all. It was pretty fun, but I hear you. MM9 contains a lot of cool little effects like that which a lot of people just don't effectively reproduce, mostly because they're not sure how to. My remakes in NES/SNES music and experience has totally prepared me for that though. (That and I did ace the whole delay parts in sound engineering classes in my college, heh..)
Danooct: nothing would make me happier. :D The triplets are the whole character.. There's actually a discussion on how to do triplets in trackers in the main forum, I contributed to my techniques I learned for doing triplets, but if you need to figure out the delay effect-based triplets, check out the FTM in the first post, and look at the end of the boss theme (they use delay-based triplets).. Accuracy, technique, skill, these remakes will help improve all of those skills, especially with other projects, and especially with tracker-based music systems like Impulse Tracker or FamiTracker.
banshaku: Triplets are easily explained by beats in a song. In a normal song, you'd have a 4/4 song with a whole dividable by 4.. triplets are dividable by 3. It's a little confusing but let me try to explain.
Your meter is 4/4.. which means you have 4 beats.
Whole Note = a note that is 4 beats long
Half Note = a note that is 2 beats long (2 halfs make up the 4 beats)
Quarter Note = a note that is 1 beat long (4 quarter notes make up 4 beats)
Eighth Note = a note that is .5 beats long (8 eighth notes make up 4 beats)
Sixteenth Note = a note that is .25 beats long (16 sixteenth notes make up 4 beats)
So, let's say your meter is 4/4. So your beats are going 1 2 3 4..now..between beat 1 and 2, you are able to play 4 eighth notes..so..
1(234)2(234)3(234)4(234)
..Triplet notes are notes that would play 3 times between beats..if they were eighth triplets. (you can have different kind of triplet notes depending on how fast you want them, etc)
(keep in mind the meter is still 4/4, not 3/4)
So this is what a triplet would do:
1(23)2(23)3(23)4(23)
Now, in a tracker..if your patterns are set up normally for 4/4, then triplet notes will usually not have row placements, because they fall "in between" rows..there's no where to place the note.. You need to use a delay command, or configure your patterns differently to have the triplet notes play back properly.
Some people improperly substitute dotted notes for triplet notes, which is very wrong.. though Mega Man music uses a LOT of dotted notes, which is NOT wrong, but using a dotted note instead when the original note is a triplet is..ugh..a rhythmic nono in the land of NES covers. (you probably don't know, but dotted notes are basically just note-and-a-half notes.. so a dotted quarter, for example, would be a beat and a half long.. Ugh..hard to explain, but MM9's Title theme has tons of dotted notes, so does Plug Man's theme)
Listen to Maze of Death, another MM9 song that uses triplets during some transitional parts of the song. You'll notice in both the FTM posted above, and in my S3M (since the FTM is based around the S3M I did last december) that the patterns are configured differently to handle those special notes.. But, if you listen to some of the other FTM files of some other MM9 remakes around here, you'll notice a lot of these "Triplet" notes from the original aren't playing back properly rhythmically..that's because people aren't properly placing the notes in a real triplet fashion in the tracker. It's not really the people's fault, mostly because they just dont' know how to do it, but I'm hoping my explanations in the main forum will help change that.
Thanks for the very long explanation about triplets. Since I'm visual, I don't get all the details just by reading it but I think I'm starting to understand the concept.
For example, in the concrete jungle song, there is a place where you changed the speed in the s3m to accomplish this if I remember well. I changed the speed back to 03 (my preference only) but some note in the song seemed to be "not at the right place", how to say, a little early or a little bit late. I could hear that but didn't know that was triplets. For me, it was just notes at non conventional speed.
When I hear that term I visualize "3 notes" so I guess I will have to learn more about music someday So what I did to try to accomplish those "non conventional" speed note, I was using the delay option to put it a the right place.
Of course, I cannot hear all of them well yet but I know that in intro 2, there is some and I was trying to delay the note accordingly but maybe failed to do it properly.
So basically I could hear it, it was annoying me that it was not at the right place but I didn't know what it was.
See that's what I mean, Intro 2 didn't use triplet notes, they used dotted notes. They equal the same amount, but they have different rhythmic properties.
Another good example of triplets are Wily Stage 2 (We are the Robots) at times 0:12, 0:16, and 0:32 (though the triplets here are faster triplets, every famitracker remake didn't utilize the triplets here, they turned them into 8th notes)
What do you think of this one rushjet? I "copied" the ideas from your fix, even though I remade the notes from Mega Man X's SPC with solo'd channels.. (your notes were definitely right).. I got the crescendo from analyzing the waveform and using the logarithmic fade-out preset that FamiTracker uses (since that's what capcom used in theirs), and i added the square part for a "percussive start"..
I like where this topic is going. I think that with all the posts and feedback just within this topic there is enough to increase anyone's FamiTracker skills. Not just in Mega Man games, but in any type of work. I have to thank everyone for the praise on my copying skills. I was hesitant to post but I will definitely contribute more in the future. I wish I could say that I did the accurate triplet work on purpose, I just played with it until it sounded best to me. The real praise should go to tssf for making such good S3M's for me to work from. Thank you again all for the praise, it made my day.
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RE: Mega Man 9 - My FamiTracker FTMPosted: 2009-07-24 01:04
Plug man completed! Check it out guys, first post updated.. Let me know what you think. RushJet, I opted for original accuracy, let me know if I missed anything if you could!
Everything I missed in the S3M version from December is present in this version.
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