Fat man got a hobby.

[Fatso]

Called a music.

When I'm not at school or playing video games or writing, this is what I'm up to. I dabble in video game music reproduction via MSGS and my trusty Anvil Studio.

None of these are particularly awesome at the moment, and in fact all four of them are in progress, but what the hell, I need something to show.

Mega Man X2 - Crystal Snail
Mega Man X - Launch Octopus
Mega Man X - Fortress Stage 1
Mega Man 7 - Fortress Stage 1 - my personal favourite of the bunch, and probably the most faithful recreation of them. Also the only one not totally butchered by iTunes/QuickTime.

I'm still going to recommend programs that use GS for all of them (in fact iTunes and QuickTime will totally ruin the top three ones).



APPARENTLY I WASN'T BEING CLEAR ENOUGH, SO HERE'S MY WARNING:

DON'T BLOODY WELL USE ITUNES OR QUICKTIME

[TheRedPriest]

Cdex and Nero Wav editor are your friends for audio...  ##### itunes and quicktime.

[Fatso]

Thanks, that's why I said don't use them.

[ChaosVortex]

Technically no, you said they'd ruin them.

They're pretty good. I'll give them a listen again later.

[TheRedPriest]

Thanks, that's why I said don't use them.

Obviously you weren't clear enough.

[Fatso]

Fine then. *edit*

[Johncarllos]

Launch Octopus is pretty good.
Sigma 1 is also pretty good. Very close.

Quite close to the original sounds.

[TheRedPriest]

APPARENTLY I WASN'T BEING CLEAR ENOUGH, SO HERE'S MY WARNING:

DON'T BLOODY WELL USE ITUNES OR QUICKTIME

That's good advice for anything.

[Dizzi]

true

[Orange Devil]

^Dizzi's ONE post

[ChaosVortex]

Am I supposed to marvel at it and take pictures?

[Fatso]

One more for your perusal, not from an MM game this time.

Gundam Wing: Endless Duel - Epyon

This is a redo of a sequence I did of the same piece almost a year ago, which sucked hard.

The fewer questions asked of how I obtained the source material the better :S

Posted on: 10 June 2008, 02:33:28

LAPTOP SETUP ANNOYANCES MAN DEFEATED!

YOU GET FL STUDIO 8.

First upgrade: Launch Octopus touched up with modulation, pitch-bend and volume control effects I couldn't use in Anvil Studio.

EDIT: Now seriously, this one will be 100% butchered by any Apple ##### you try to run it on.

[Johncarllos]

I enjoy listening to this.

[Chron]

Nice MIDIs. I'm not sure if I'm getting the right effect, though, since I'm using the standard Microsoft MIDI device in Winamp.
Any suggestions for an output device to listen to them?

Regardless, it all sounds good. Never heard the Epyon theme before, but it sounds great to me.

[Fatso]

I sequence in GS (Microsoft midi format) so anything that uses that can work (WMP, Winamp etc) Apple software has its own synth that doesn't go well with my files.

[Chron]

Well, it doesn't do bad in SB X-Fi Audio, either.
I only wish I could find some more synthesizers...

[Fatso]

Well, it doesn't do bad in SB X-Fi Audio, either.
I only wish I could find some more synthesizers...

The sound card doesn`t matter, an SB X-Fi sound card without a special fancy synth installed will still play it in MSGS etc.

[Chron]

I mean the SB X-Fi synth.
But right.

[Fatso]

Just finished a brutishly-hard sequence. The tune is basically impossible to reproduce in its original form via any program I can get my hands on, so I settled for the next-best thing: a little something I like to call 'ridiculously absurd time signatures'.

This is a 4/4 song sequenced in 21/16.

This is X2 - Sigma 2

It's not perfect, but it's the best I could do.

Ignore the little sound artifact at the end, please, I haven't been able to figure that out.

[Johncarllos]

I hope that the original isn't very good.....

[Fatso]

Notation-wise it's as close to identical as could be accomplished by the programs I use. Sound-wise it's limited by the GS synth's voices, which can't approach the soundfont-driven SPC format. Music-wise... eh, definitely not my favourite from the game. Doing this sequence was more about the accomplishment than the tune itself.

And I may have to kill you if you listened to it in quicktime.

[Johncarllos]

...
I read the warning earlier.
I did not.

[Chron]

Actually, this is a pretty good try. I'm not sure how different it is from the actual, but the guitar is almost spot-on.
At least with my MIDI devices.

[Fatso]

Found a YouTube of the tune for you to scrutinize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMCYU5FiDZ0&feature=related

Also have another tune, somewhat more recognizable:

X3 - Gravity Beetle

May or may not be balance issues with this, but the notation is 100% perfect.

[Johncarllos]

!!!!!!!!
In that video, the MMX2 Box Art, HE IS FIRING HIS BUSTER WHILE HIS HAND IS HOLDING THE HANDLEBARS!

And you did you a damn good replication. On both.

[Fatso]

He's firing the left buster while the right hand is on the handlebar, that's nothing special. It's stranger that he's not using the Ride Chaser's main gun itself.

[Johncarllos]

BUT HIS HAND PULLS IN TO MAKE THE BUSTER!
This changes X completely.

[Chron]

... what changes it?
What ARE you talking about?

[Mikero]

He's only holding the handlebar with one hand...

[ASR]

John, stop your babbling.

[Chron]

He's only holding the handlebar with one hand...

He's a super fightan android man.
One handed steering is well within reasonable limits.

[Mikero]

No #####. I was telling that to John, who seems to think X is holding on the handlebars with both hands while still firing.

[Chron]

Sorry, had a memory lapse.
ASR's post made me think you were John for some reason.

[Mikero]

In John's wet dreams maybe!

[Johncarllos]

Why is the bottom of his Buster not round?

[Fatso]

That's a perception issue on your part. Not only IS it round, but look here and you'll see that the bottom of the buster is red.

Apologies for the size of the sprites, but the bigger weapon-GET sprites don't show the bottom of the buster.

EDIT: Not only that, but look at this higher-resolution picture.

[Jakey]

Face it, John- you were simply born to fail.

[Johncarllos]

I am incorrect.
High res wins.

[Vinchenz Rock]

MegaMan is LEFT handed!?

[Johncarllos]

ONLY WHEN HE'S DRIVING!

It's also possible that he had JUST fired with his right buster for a charge shot and switched hands to follow it up with that combo shot.

[Fatso]

MegaMan is LEFT handed!?

Durr, he's facing right can't you see? If he's facing left he's right handed.

[Mikero]

MegaMan is LEFT handed!?

He's ambidextrous, as he's used both arms as busters since they just flip the sprites. But he is dominantly south paw, since that's the arm you use when moving forward (AKA most often).

Same thing for X.

[Fatso]

Two more done.

Spark Mandrill - took about an hour and a half to do the bends on that one, and it still doesn't sound quite right. But going back and fixing it would take another hour and a half so I'll hold off on it for now.

X1 Final Battle - probably some balance issues here which will vary by soundcard.

[Chron]

The Spark Mandrill MIDI is awesome.
Only complaint is that one instrument seems to lose an echo effect at some point, but it still sounds great (I realize this is because the channel that was used for the echo was then used for another instrument).

[Fatso]

Since this isn't actually a remix, every deviation from total replication feels wrong to me. If I were remixing (and for a tune like that I wouldn't have a clue where to even start) I might keep the echo even when that channel goes to synth.

[Chron]

Well, you've done an excellent job reproducing this with MIDI in that case.
It's spot-on.

[ChaosVortex]

Spark Mandrill.

Good times. Good times. For a MIDI, it's pretty good.

[Fatso]

Out of sheer whimsy.

Captain America & the Avengers - Scene Four: The Giant Laser Cannon

The game suffers from serious play control issues, but the music is adequate.

At this point, however, I'd like to talk for a few minutes about 'dynamic voice allocation,' and how it made this an absolute nightmare.

Basically, the sound programmer, through laziness, ineptitude, or pure evil, decided not to give each line in the song its own channel. Instead, in his infinite wisdom, he concluded that it would be a great idea to have each note come in on a seemingly-random channel. Since channel-muting is one of my biggest tools in terms of making this easier, it screws me over.

Fortunately it was a very simple tune anyway.

Posted on: 26 July 2008, 20:20:46

Recently I found a very cool application called GXSCC that lets me run any of my MIDIs through an NES synthesizer (without any regard for channel restrictions either) and author a WAV from it. I've encoded MP3s of a few of them for your listening pleasure.

Mega Man X - Spark Mandrill (middle of the range in terms of size)
Gundam Wing: Endless Duel - Epyon (HUUUUUUUUGE file, upwards of nine megs)
Mega Man 3 - Wily Stage 2 (this is basically a demo of how awesomely close to an actual NSF the program can get, small file too)

EDIT: Crap, it seems not to have uploaded them correctly. I'll try again tomorrow.

EDIT2: Actually, it did. Copy these into your address bar instead of clicking the links:

http://www.freewebs.com/colonelfatso/X1_SparkMandrill.mp3
http://www.freewebs.com/colonelfatso/GWED_Epyon.mp3
http://www.freewebs.com/colonelfatso/MM3_Fortress2.mp3

Posted on: August 22, 2008, 03:16:43 PM

MOAR!

Things have been slow, partly due to lack of interest and partly due to the sheer difficulty of one of these two sequences.

Front Mission: Gun Hazard - Map Screen - "Tension"

This wasn't the difficult one. In fact, this one was dead easy. The notation took me less than a half-hour.

Donkey Kong Country 2 - Castle - "Krook's March" (the second-best song in that entire game)

Nightmare. Absolute nightmare. I regret trying to do it channel-by-channel like I did; rest assured I won't be trying that for overly-complicated tunes anymore.



I'm working on the best song from that game right now, as well as a Splash Blue arrangement.

[Mikero]

The game suffers from serious play control issues, but the music is adequate.

DEFINITELY CORRECT THERE, SIR.

[Fatso]

Oh, have you also been a party to the near-travesty that was that game?