Extracting custom container (.DAT) package from disc

[Yagotzirck]

If it's allright, I'll write down your name as contributor to this, once I upload all the music to YT, is that okay ?

Of course I'd appreciate that, even though like I said I didn't do a whole lot, haha.
I should have some more free time in September in case you have similar projects in mind though

As for the game being broken it makes sense to me, afterall it's a budget game released towards the end of the PSX's lifespan
It's a nice game if you take it for what it is, but I might be biased here since I like the PSX-era Resident Evil games, and this one is a blatant RE clone.

[DD-Indeed]

Of course I'd appreciate that, even though like I said I didn't do a whole lot, haha.
I should have some more free time in September in case you have similar projects in mind though

As for the game being broken it makes sense to me, afterall it's a budget game released towards the end of the PSX's lifespan
It's a nice game if you take it for what it is, but I might be biased here since I like the PSX-era Resident Evil games, and this one is a blatant RE clone.

Yea we'll look more of that later, after this I'm done with these kind of things for a while haha



The trouble is that the game originally was pretty broken on PC, and when other company did the port to PS1, they clearly botched it completely. And no playtesting or bug fixing was done, that's pretty clear, when playing the game and watching videos of other playing it, it's just full of glitches and bugs that crashes/freezes/softlocks the game.

[Squaresoft74]

I wish I could contribute a bit more, but I guess I'll stay content with the extractor tool "contribution"

Your extractor was greatly appreciated !
Not only it saved me some time as i usually manually extract raw data, but it also put some right names (actually numbering) to the files that made it easy to know which ones were loaded.

My current patches are a bit hackish as i've manually injected some required pointers to get sub_8007BE68 (XMOpen) to work at all.
Those are normally written by some other sub routines i'm not using at all for now.

As for the track currently playing too fast, i'm not sure yet.
Playback stuff run from a VSyncCallback.
Either i'm still missing some other pointers / byte flags (i name those like that ) or it could be related to something similar to the tick mode (see SsSetTickMode for regular PsyQ sequences in LIBREF pdf doc) that is missing.

I'll share my patches notes with you when i get them cleaned up, so maybe you'll find something i did wrong.
I'm no coder at all, just someone used with the PSF ripping concept and tinkering with MIPS assembly with no programing background.

I should have some more free time in September in case you have similar projects in mind though

If you want some more XM / VAB driver reversing fun, then i could suggest giving a look at Peter Pan in Disney's Return to Never Land that is also using this format.

@DD-Indeed
Thanks for the timestamps !
This game is so bad that i didn't really get any motivation to actually play it at all.

[DD-Indeed]

We should move to other forum once this is done, as this forum has become so clunky to use due that constant recapha-filling when you update the page. And this is pretty dead place too in terms of these things


Did you try to debug with other emulators ? I just tried the game with XEBRA and that seems to have advanced settings for all sorts of things.

[Squaresoft74]

No$psx is fine to debug that game, it's more down to my limited knowledge in that domain.
Xebra is a good emulator but doesn't have a debugger.

I can test files on real hardware anyway, confirm that something is currently broken in my driver and is not an emulation issue.

[DD-Indeed]

But the issue is only related to that one track, and the anothr that has different drum sample for drums. There might be a possibility too that some of these songs are just leftovers from PC version, converted to PS1 use but not utilized in the game.

[Squaresoft74]

But the issue is only related to that one track

If the issue is related to an incorrect tick mode being set, it's possible that it only affects a few track and still have others to play fine.
It plays fine in game if i'm forcing it to load it.

I had that once when ripping Samurai Spirits RPG with a generic driver.
With an incorrect tick mode, only a few tracks had similar issue.
I've since re-ripped it with original driver.

and the anothr that has different drum sample for drums. There might be a possibility too that some of these songs are just leftovers from PC version, converted to PS1 use but not utilized in the game.

Not even sure that track was intended to be used at all and is possibly in an unfinished state like most of other remaining Xm files.

[DD-Indeed]

But the issue is only related to that one track

If the issue is related to an incorrect tick mode being set, it's possible that it only affects a few track and still have others to play fine.
I had that once when ripping Samurai Spirits RPG with a generic driver.
With an incorrect tick mode, only a few tracks had similar issue.
I've since re-ripped it with original driver.

and the anothr that has different drum sample for drums. There might be a possibility too that some of these songs are just leftovers from PC version, converted to PS1 use but not utilized in the game.

Not even sure that track was intended to be used at all and is possibly in an unfinished state like most of other remaining Xm files.

Okay, so, you can find the trick to extract that one song that is playing too fast, and to fix the drum sound on the one track ?

The drum sound should be on lower pitch, perhaps that sample could be replaced or something like that. And that fast song has strange issue that the pitch is correct, but the instruments are played too fast (you can hear that on the PC OST).


Some of the tracks also have this popping sound in the samples, like a spark or something.

[Squaresoft74]

If the tick mode is the current problem, fixing it should solve the playback speed for Bgm08-00CB.
It's just not that easy to figure.
The FLIRT signatures packs i'm using don't provide much result with that game, so most stuff is just assumed/guessed.

As for Bgm0B-00CE i don't know, forcing the game to play it results in the same as the PSF.
Try triggering it in game if it is ever supposed to play at all and you'll know for sure if it's just bad or not.

As for the popping sounds, they also occurs in game.
Seems like a poor job was done with the sound engine / files.

[DD-Indeed]

Well okay, just fix the Bgm08-00CB to correct speed, we'll leave the 00CE as it is now.


Edit: Oh hey, I think that there is still one track hidden in the game, and it's based on Bgm0D-00D0, but played on extremely high pitch (sounds like a broken song). You can hear it here, at 0:26, and there's second version of that at 2:22


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS7IVkahB34

[Yagotzirck]

@Squaresoft: making your notes available would be great, thanks
Anyway I think hacks are mandatory, since when it comes to PSX games the parameters are more often than not hardcoded and the code in general tends to follow the "performance over tidyness" philosophy, making it almost impossible to handle stuff in a clean way.

[DD-Indeed]

...

Any progress with that final song ?

[Squaresoft74]

Not yet, will try to get it fixed when i get some free time and let you know.

[DD-Indeed]

See if you can get those couple extra songs out from it, if not, we'll finish this project with the current ones, if you get the final one working.

Here's a save file, where you just need to walk between the two areas to trigger those high pitched versions of Necropolis song, no enemies or Trimorph present:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/5m9ne6



Okay, so you start in here:



Just walk into the camera with that dude to change into this area:



Wait till the screaming music starts to play and when you walk back to the tomb/crane area, the music changes again. Those two songs are the last hidden ones, and short ones too.

[Squaresoft74]

Gave it a look and the XM file remains unchanged.
It's using some SFX samples bank @ 0x05B150 instead of the bgm one @ 0x1010 at those points.
Looks more like an ugly game bug to me.

[DD-Indeed]

Okay, just as I was predicting too Melody is the same as with the main Necropolis track heard first time on the elevator area. Actually, that main Necropolis track plays at those points sometimes, but then it switch to those ''broken'' ones randomly.

[Yagotzirck]

Hahah, I noticed that too... this game definitely needed more playtesting
Though if we want to cut this horribly broken game some slack, audio glitches happen from time to time even to masterpieces:
https://youtu.be/t-YgL0duths?t=16
Happened to me as well on the antique shop section IIRC while playing on a real PSX, so it's definitely not an emulation-related issue.

[DD-Indeed]

Actually, this game has same sort of whining sound when you're walking on the base corridors and no music is playing, sounds like a broken audio system, could be that there's supposed to have music going on or something else. Each step sound effect, affects to that whining. Something similar broke down on Silent Hill too, thou I didn't hear any issues with that on emulation.

[kumarwaar]

Nice info great work. .22 rifle scope reviews

[Squaresoft74]

@DD-Indeed
Since i'm not sure when i'll get some time to try to fix my driver, I've just patched the game so it will play Bgm08-00CB on title screen and did a recording from real hardware for now.
You can convert the other tracks to .wav using the PSF files and Duckstation if you want to update your YT channel with this soundtrack in the meantime.