Cheapo music questions

[guest]

Yeah, I already tried one of those WAV 2 MID programs and you're right, they stink. But it's all really a moot point anyway because we need MID's for the music for Cheapo anyway. I know about recording WAV's from DOSBox and I can "record" the music from ANY Emulator or program but as I said we need MID's not WAV's.

How can I get you one of the MOD's that I ripped from Lemmings 2? I don't have a website to post them to.

I can also rip the .8SVX (Amiga's .WAV equivalent)instrument sound samples from the Amiga version if that might help.

Also, when I do a hex dump of the ONML "Disk" I see tune1, tune2, tune3, tune4, tune5, and tune 6 listed but I can't find the actual files. I'm sure they're in there somewhere.

Thanks
Guest2
(sorry about the confusion)

[guest]

How can I get you one of the MOD's that I ripped from Lemmings 2? I don't have a website to post them to.

Oh silly me, the one time I inappropriately faked the e-mail field.

E-mail guestlevels 'at' yahoo.com.

[Mr. K]

DOSBox also has the feature to record directly the data sent to the sound card (Ctrl+Alt+F7) but I know of no programs that can actually do anything with such recorded data directly.

Winamp can read and play those files in using an adlib plugin, and can convert them to WAV using the DiskWriter, but that's all I know that can done with those files.

[Guest2]

Hey 'guestlevels'!

Did you get the L2 MOD's that I sent you? Have you had a chance to look at them or that Modplug Tracker program that I told you about?

Keep me posted!

As far as the ONML music goes, I need someone to help me figure out WHERE in the program is the music? I have both the WinUAE (Amiga emulator) versions in WHDLoad and .ADF format and I know the music is in there I just need to find out where and in what format are they? WHDLoad and ADF are simply "Disc images" and I'm sure that the two-byte pointer behind the names 'tune1', 'tune2', 'tune3', etc. are pointers to 'track and sector' but I don't know how they are stored in the file. One other thing I noticed about the Amiga version of ONML is that the files don't appear to be 'crunched' or compressed by any type of RNC encoding or ZIP or anything else so that should make it easier to rip them out of there somehow. I also have the PC Windows and DOS versions but that's a whole 'nother ballgame. Any suggestions out there?

Thanks,
Guest2

[guest]

Hey 'guestlevels'!

Did you get the L2 MOD's that I sent you?

Yes, I received them, but I didn't get a chance to do anything with them yet.  I will keep you posted.

As far as the ONML music goes, I need someone to help me figure out WHERE in the program is the music?

Sorry, I doubt anyone here knows, so you're on your own.  Actually Mike might know since he's one of those who were involved in the creation of Lemmings.  But he hasn't been hanging around the forums lately.

[DragonsLover]

I want you to answer my question: Which version of Lemmings do you prefer for the music? Lemmings 95 or Dos Lemmings (Ohno, xmas)?

This is because I'm sequencing Dos Lemmings musics and I don't want these songs to be a waste of time if you still use the Lemmings 95 ones.

Just tell me if my musics are good! Email me if you want them!

[guest]

Don't ask, just go ahead and do them.  

I mean, you saw (um, hear) Adam's recent styles.  All he did was to take the existing Lemmings MIDIs in the existing Cheapo styles, and just change the instrumentations.  And this is different enough for some people to choose to use the new music.

Besides, does Lemmings 95 (the Windows version, right?) even have music for ONML?  Also, there's no point to sequencing the music for that version, in the Windows version the music are already MIDI files I believe, so the only thing left to do with them is just to rearrange or remix based on those files.

[guest]

As far as the ONML music goes, I need someone to help me figure out WHERE in the program is the music? I have both the WinUAE (Amiga emulator) versions in WHDLoad and .ADF format and I know the music is in there I just need to find out where and in what format are they?<snip>

Some slightly bad news:  somewhere Google brought up this site.  Go to that page and search for the section titled "The custom format".  Note in particular this sentence:

"The real problem for me is that Lemmings and Battle Squadron, of all games, both use custom format music, and these are two of my favourite soundtracks."

Now, to be sure, it just says "Lemmings" and not ONML, so maybe ONML uses a more standard format like MOD.  But chances are good that like Lemmings, it will be in a format no one knows about.

[guest]

Did you get the L2 MOD's that I sent you? Have you had a chance to look at them or that Modplug Tracker program that I told you about?

Keep me posted!

I got them to play in Modplug Tracker.  As for conversion to MIDI, annoyingly it seems that the only program out there to do that is 2MIDI.  Still, that's better than no program.  I haven't actually tried the program yet though.

One factor that's keeping me from moving forward faster with the MOD is, the music is pretty nice but I still think the SNES's music is better (not a big surprise, we're talking about 8 channel, 16-bit stereo music vs. 4 channel, 8-bit mono music).  Nevertheless I'll try to download the trial version of 2MIDI and try it on at least one of the L2 MODs I like.

[Mr. K]

"The real problem for me is that Lemmings and Battle Squadron, of all games, both use custom format music, and these are two of my favourite soundtracks."

Now, to be sure, it just says "Lemmings" and not ONML, so maybe ONML uses a more standard format like MOD.  But chances are good that like Lemmings, it will be in a format no one knows about.

Actually I think someone had cracked the Lemmings 1 format.   I remember downloading actual Lemmings data files and it came with a file like "Lemmings.CUSTOM" and it could be used to play the files in Deli Player.  I can send this to someone if they want to check it out.

EDIT: Also, it came with data files for OhNo and Xmas lemmings, so I believe they use the same format.

[guest]

Mr. KSoft:  interesting, I'll look into that.

-------------------

I've finally got around to creating some MIDIs.  Well, actually just one for now, and it's one of those that I made with conversion programs, though it turned out surprisingly well.

This is from the SNES version of Lemmings 2, the theme for the Shadow Tribe.

http://www.geocities.com/guestlevels/lemmings/shadow.mid

Other than a few touch-ups with overall volume, this MIDI is actually practically done.  Of course, the bane of MIDIs is that they never sound the same on different sound cards.  They shouldn't differ too much, but if you're hearing really strange notes on your computer, tell me about it and I'll see what I can do.

My next set of goals is to do convert the other SNES music for Lemmings 2.  After that I might start releasing a set of new styles with these MIDIs.

[Proxima]

Hi,

I'm just starting work on my new sets now and I've finally managed to get the hang of creating styles; so I was wondering how far you guys have got. I do like the Shadow Tribe MIDI but I'm more interested having the ONML ones since I wanted to add those to my styles..... and I haven't got anywhere with looking for them on the internet.

Could any of you who currently have any Lemmings-related MIDIs send them to me (zarathustra47@yahoo.com) so I know which ones haven't yet been done by anyone? Many thanks.

[guest]

I got them to play in Modplug Tracker. &#A0;As for conversion to MIDI, annoyingly it seems that the only program out there to do that is 2MIDI. &#A0;Still, that's better than no program. &#A0;I haven't actually tried the program yet though.

A quick update on the Lemmings 2 MOD.  Unfortunately, 2MIDI can't even load the files, even though they play fine in Modplug tracker.  So no conversions of them for now.  But as I've said, I'm probably more likely going to end up converting the SNES version of the music anyway since that seems to be the easiest option for me.

Since Ahribar is more interested with the ONML music and since it seems to be the least available, I'll probably put off the L2 stuff for now.

[guest]

Actually I think someone had cracked the Lemmings 1 format. &#A0; I remember downloading actual Lemmings data files and it came with a file like "Lemmings.CUSTOM" and it could be used to play the files in Deli Player. &#A0;I can send this to someone if they want to check it out.

I briefly looked at Deliplayer and the related Delitracker.  From the little I can gather in 10 minutes, it appears that DeliPlayer/Delitracker deals with custom formats by actually emulating the CPU and sound subsystem of an Amiga.  The custom format modules actually includes both the music data and the Amiga binary (machine code) for the custom music player.

So I don't think it's really true that the format has been cracked, just that someone was able to isolate the part of the Amiga Lemmings program responsible for playing music.  So a conversion remains somewhat unlikely at this point.  What a bummer considering it is one of the few sources of ONML music.

That being said, do send what you have to guestlevels 'at' yahoo.  Maybe the custom format is similar enough to a standard format that something can be done with it.  One can hope anyway.

[Guest2]

Guestlevels: Not bad! You got farther than I did that's for sure. I'm not real crazy about that Shadow music to begin with but you did a good job of reproducing it.

One thing I noticed about Modplug Tracker was that it was reading some of the bytes in the original MOD as a tempo speed-up. Especially in the Classic and Circus MOD's. Once I figured out how to stop that they sounded pretty good. As I said, I'm still learning about the program itself and MOD's and MID's in general. It is still messing up some of the instrument sound samples also. I'm not exactly sure why.

What about that "Export as MIDI" option? How in the world is that supposed to work. I've tried all sorts of things, trying to find intruments on my PC that correspond with the Amiga instruments and so on, with disastrous results. You should hear some of the garbage I've come up with!

On another note (sorry), when I look at the Amiga 'Holiday Lemmings' .ADF files I see 'SoundPlayer V4.05 (C) Scott Johnston  12/3/1991' which makes me wonder if those tricky fellows at DMA Design didn't use this program or some variation thereof to do/play the Original Lemmings or ONML music? Just something to think about.

I'll keep trying to find a way to get the original ONML musics out of the program and into MID format.

If anybody is interested I have all of the Lemmings 2: The Tribes graphics and objects in Cheapo-ready-go .BMP format directly from the L2 'astyle.dat' files. I even did the 'catapults', 'cannons' and 'roundabouts' as objects not that we can actually use them like they are used in L2 but it's still kind of cute to have them in some of the test levels that I did.

Keep me posted,
Guest2

P.S. Ahribar: I'll send you what few MID's I've got but they're are probably ones you've already got.