NSF Music Emulation coming to Zandronum 2.0!

[Beed28]

http://zandronum.com/tracker/view.php?id=699

v2.0 has confirmed that the feature is working. Thanks goes to Striker for testing this.

Yeah, seems to work perfectly so far.

FINALLY!

After waiting for so long, we may be able to add proper, NSF music to the game! Saves far more space over .ogg format and plus we'll get proper looping to boot!

Discuss!

[Laggy Blazko]

Woooohooo! Nice!
But I hope it sounds somewhat accurate.

[Russel]

Not exactly news...considering ZDR 2.0 is basically everything we've missed in ZDoom up until this last version.
I mean, yeah. It isn't necessarily everything on the ZDoom wiki, but it is a large margin of it.

...Was this really that new? I kinda figured it would happen when ZDR 2.0 was announced on the bug tracker.

[LlamaHombre]

How would this kind of thing affect MM9 and MM10's soundtracks, though? There's no reliable way to get NSFs for either of those games.

Otherwise, I'm greatly looking forward to this. There aren't any problems with expansion chip NSFs, I assume?

[Beed28]

How would this kind of thing affect MM9 and MM10's soundtracks, though? There's no reliable way to get NSFs for either of those games.

Mathew Valente remade them from scratch in .NSF format. They're pretty dang close, too.

[LlamaHombre]

I forgot about 10 yeah you're right there

But I don't remember him finishing 9? I have a file but it's missing half of the master themes, notably Hornet, Galaxy, and Concrete.

[Ivory]

You can be assured that if Zandro 2.0 comes out during v4a's development, the core will move to NSF.

[Gummywormz]

There aren't any problems with expansion chip NSFs, I assume?

There appears to be, yes. I need to test it with ZDoom, but in the current dev version it doesn't seem to work.

EDIT: Doesn't work in ZDoom either. I'll need to figure out who to report this to.

[Beed28]

Wait... dev version? I'm not seeing a dev version released on the site...

[Gummywormz]

That would be over here. Apparently it only has ZDoom 2.4.1 features,

Anyway, I've looked at the issue further and the VRC7 expansion is not supported by the library it uses. All other multi-expansion songs work fine.

[Russel]

After testing the current build of Zandronum 2.0, [it's a dev build] it currently does not support expansion chips.

EDIT: Hold on...maybe it was just the raw NSFs that don't support it?
I need to test more.

EDIT 2 Electric boogaloo: Zandronum doesn't support expansion chips in its current state.

..........and ZDoom doesn't support expansion chips either.
Sorry, Llama.

[MusashiAA]

Some things come to mind, though.

Technically, only songs would use up the NSF compatibility, as switching sound effects to that format would require too much work than it needs, and it would hamper the music experience no matter what, so I'm still not out of my job. This is very important because

Another thing would be that 7FC, 8FC and &BFC don't use NSF at all. All the songs that have been remade need to be compiled into the master .nsf file or the MM7/MM8/MM&B .nsf file. Also, MM7DW1 and MM7DW2's songs haven't been remade, as well as the MM7 boss tracks (I WOULD DO IT BUT I CAN'T HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG). On that note, the PU covers would need to be incorporated into their own .nsf file separate from MM1's or compiled into MM1's .nsf file.

And another thing: the CTF tracks need to be either remade into NSF or compiled into the master .nsf file or the CTF .nsf file. On that note, MMCTF08 was not made in NSF format, so that'll need remaking (I WOULD DO IT BUT I CAN'T HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG), and MMCTF10, MMCTF13, MMCTF14, MMCTF18 and MMCTF19 will need to be kept as .wav files until ZDN incorporates NES audio module chip support.

EDIT: Regarding MM9 and MM10 music, Matthew Valente remade the entire soundtrack of those games in their entirety about 2 years ago, and they're somewhat spot on. You could use those...I guess...

[Ivory]

Well, one thing to keep in mind that the primary focus would be to use NSF of all possible music before worrying about custom tracks. It's not like every song has to be NSF or nothing will work.

[MusashiAA]

So MM1 through MM6 will have .nsf files, but MM7 and onwards plus the CTF tracks won't? Makes sense, as post-NES music tends to be updated a lot.

EDIT: I will have to say that, for consistency's sake, all tracks should be on a .nsf file sooner or later. Bad looping would be mostly erradicated, and said tracks should sound more "NES faithful" when played through ZDN's NSF audio output system.

[Beed28]

Hmm... the latest Zandronum snapshot prints several warning messages (many of them were to downsize skins that weren't being downsized before), and there's a massive Hall of Mirrors glitch in Wood Man's stage replacing the sky, and the map listing in offline skirmish is completely out of order (CTF maps in the middle of the listing? WTH?). But the Cocoron .NSF rip worked when I tried changemus to it.

Yeah, looks like I'm gonna have to wait a while more.