[GB] Mega Man II GB/Rockman World 2 Music Improvement V2

[forple]

Title. I know it's been done before, but I personally wasn't satisfied with the results of the previous hack, so I made my own take on fixing this soundtrack.

Links:

• GBS
• Release 1.0

Please note I have not tested this modification with other hacks like "Roll-chan World 2", so I cannot guarantee they will be compatible.


Here's a video showing an early build of the "Remade" hack:

For the technically interested, my modifications to the game are much more major than the previous music improvement hack:

The original modification was a quick and dirty mod, being simply a bit of code stuck onto the driver to make anything too high on specific channels lower by one octave. While this certainly made the soundtrack a small bit more bearable, it sounded still like a "wall of notes" that didn't sound all too great.

What I did here was reverse-engineer the driver with a couple friends of mine, understand how it worked, and modified the sound data directly. This allows one to effectively control what the driver does on a per-tick/note basis, and even allows for things like custom music and sound effects. As such, I listened to each track's channels in isolation, and modified them to better sound like actual songs. The changes varied per-song, however. Tracks like Clash Man were already quite "clean" sounding, requiring little modification, while other songs like the Stage Select and Metal Man's theme required more extensive modification to the sound data.

Despite these updates, I still do not consider this to be the "perfect" way to listen to the OST; An "ideal" Improvement Hack would ditch the original sound data entirely and create new arrangements from scratch.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy the improvement hack! Feedback would be highly appreciated with the songs, as there are some I'm still trying to "properly" figure out how to make sound the best they possibly can.

[Cris1997XX]

Title. I know it's been done before, but I personally wasn't satisfied with the results of the previous hack, so I made my own take on fixing this soundtrack.

Links:

• GBS
• Release 1.0

Please note I have not tested this modification with other hacks like "Roll-chan World 2", so I cannot guarantee they will be compatible.


Here's a video showing an early build of the "Remade" hack:

For the technically interested, my modifications to the game are much more major than the previous music improvement hack:

The original modification was a quick and dirty mod, being simply a bit of code stuck onto the driver to make anything too high on specific channels lower by one octave. While this certainly made the soundtrack a small bit more bearable, it sounded still like a "wall of notes" that didn't sound all too great.

What I did here was reverse-engineer the driver with a couple friends of mine, understand how it worked, and modified the sound data directly. This allows one to effectively control what the driver does on a per-tick/note basis, and even allows for things like custom music and sound effects. As such, I listened to each track's channels in isolation, and modified them to better sound like actual songs. The changes varied per-song, however. Tracks like Clash Man were already quite "clean" sounding, requiring little modification, while other songs like the Stage Select and Metal Man's theme required more extensive modification to the sound data.

Despite these updates, I still do not consider this to be the "perfect" way to listen to the OST; An "ideal" Improvement Hack would ditch the original sound data entirely and create new arrangements from scratch.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy the improvement hack! Feedback would be highly appreciated with the songs, as there are some I'm still trying to "properly" figure out how to make sound the best they possibly can.

I'm gonna be honest here, I think it's the music itself that sucks. Those robot master themes really aren't Mega Man-like, and the sound driver only makes things worse. I feel like new rearrangements of MM2-3's music would be better, but I know that would also take way more time

[forple]

I feel like new rearrangements of MM2-3's music would be better, but I know that would also take way more time

I have considered doing ports of the original Famicom tracks, but that would be better suited as an entirely different mod. This one aims to make the music already made for the game sound better than it has.

[Cris1997XX]

I have considered doing ports of the original Famicom tracks, but that would be better suited as an entirely different mod. This one aims to make the music already made for the game sound better than it has.

Yeah, I didn't intend to downplay the effort you put into this. It sounds a bit better at least, even though I think they planned to use the music for a different game altogether

[Abster]

One of the main things that jumped out at me regarding GB MM2 isn't so much the tunes themselves but the fact the instruments for said music change based on the last sound effect played.  It changes when you shoot, when you land, and also when you blow up certain enemies.  I always wanted a hack that allowed the same instruments throughout the game that don't change all the time.

[forple]

I'll take a look into that, actually. Since I plan on overhauling the sound effects as well (some of those SFX are just extremely shrill tones and nothing else) I'll likely check that out when I start doing the sound effect side of things, which is rather soon, since I'd like to modify those particularly nasty sounding sound effects.

[PowerPanda]

The original modification was a quick and dirty mod, being simply a bit of code stuck onto the driver to make anything too high on specific channels lower by one octave. While this certainly made the soundtrack a small bit more bearable, it sounded still like a "wall of notes" that didn't sound all too great.

I don't think this is a fair assessment of the previous hack. From that hack's description, Supper states that he fixed an error in the note-to-frequency conversion table that was causing about 25% of notes to be offkey. Then, for most songs, he lowered the 2 lead instruments (square wave channels) by 1 octave. That's pretty different from your description, which makes it sound like it only lowered notes that were too high. I have a lot of respect for Supper's approach and his restraint, not trying to fix the compositions; just make them play correctly.

Personally, I would classify Supper's patch as a Bugfix, whereas I'd probably classify yours as an Improvement. Both can exist simultaneously.

[forple]

I will admit that my assessment may have been a bit harsh, but the reality is that's all it does. The driver is just hijacked to parse octave commands in the data and turn them down on a per-song and per-channel basis. The tuning table was indeed altered, but it was mostly to fix the out of tune C# note.  If you check out the other games with this driver you'll notice all of them suffer from mostly the same "weird tuning" Rockman World 2 did; It's just that the compositions for this game hit that note especially often compared to the other games making it sound more apparent than it actually is, in which the table just has one really out of tune note. There are other out of tune notes, but they're off by exactly one value and don't pose much of an issue at all, it's likely a rounding error from whatever calculations were done to create the tuning table.

Regardless, I will always give Supper credit for what they did, since the driver's code is an absolute trainwreck to try and poke around with; It's not by any means poorly coded, it's just that there's some annoyingly weird choices done in the code that makes trying to alter it annoying beyond belief.

edit: You mentioned "just make them play correctly." I don't think that's true. The original arrangements are likely deliberately designed like that. I can't see somehow placing constant Octave 6/7 commands to be a result of the original compiler and not the result of the programmer. Especially when two other GB games using the same driver and programmer sound just as infamously bad, while others with the same driver and different programmer sound much more bearable.

[PowerPanda]

That's fair. It could be a conversion issue though. I doubt the songs were composed within that engine. They were probably written as midis (or some equivalent) and then converted. Gi Nattak and I often run across octave issues when converting from midi to a native sound format.

[forple]

To be honest, it likely is a broken MIDI conversion. The sound arranger for this game, Taiyou No Yuusha Fighbird GB, and Undercover Cops Gaiden is Hiroto Nakamura. While the GB driver he used has a clear MML structure to it, Nakamura made a Famicom sound driver for the FC version of Fighbird that was also used in the FC port of Image Fight; that FC driver is actually playing back MIDI data in real time. I get the impression Nakamura simply slapped together a MIDI converter to the GB driver's native format and called it a day, while other programmers using the driver likely had an actual MML tool on hand, or at the very least, went into the conversion data and cleaned it up.

--

In other news, I've also uploaded a video of all the "improved" songs. While some versions heard in the build sound fine, I've updated them further in the video but I don't consider the changes since that release to be "enough" to warrant an updated patch submission.

[Spooniest]

Sounds great! I remember this being the first Megaman game I beat, way back when, before I'd ever really played much of the series. I was at a friend's house who had a gameboy and while he and his brother hogged the TV consoles (NES, Genesis, etc), I played Gameboy MM2.

Here's the original title screen theme, for anyone curious about how it compares:

[forple]

Bit of an update: A friend of mine is writing a converter tool that converts data from a conventional tracker into the format that this sound driver uses. When that's finished, I can properly update all the songs in the ROM, and maybe even alter sound effects, when those are fully documented.

[Eggplantus]

Sounds good! I have to ask though, if this means the possibility of incorporating RushJet1's work.

[Cris1997XX]

Bit of an update: A friend of mine is writing a converter tool that converts data from a conventional tracker into the format that this sound driver uses. When that's finished, I can properly update all the songs in the ROM, and maybe even alter sound effects, when those are fully documented.

Awesome! I can't wait to hear more fitting music

[forple]

Sounds good! I have to ask though, if this means the possibility of incorporating RushJet1's work.

I have considered it. I don't think I will directly reference his work, as the style he went with for that OST best suit the 2A03+VRC6 sound source combo used in those covers. I plan on making my own interpretations, but I may reference his work where I see it fit.

[forple]

Things have been a bit slow recently. But no, the project's not dead. The same person who wrote the "converter tool" is still going at it, but they've been busy with university stuff, and I've had some of my own personal hurdles to overcome recently. Development on this music improvement may speed up soon, but I can't guarantee anything. It's likely better to really take my time with this one, after all the original game's developers sure didn't.

However, I will say that one tool has been made so far, and it helps facilitate development of the converter tool, as this tool parses the original song data and translates each command and how it's used into a more human readable form. I suppose it's good for those willing to make MIDIs or covers of the soundtrack, but in the context of the converter, it lets us understand how the format is best used.

If you want to check out the tool, see this Github link: https://github.com/Pegmode/RMW2Txt

[Josephine Lithius]

Title. I know it's been done before, but I personally wasn't satisfied with the results of the previous hack, so I made my own take on fixing this soundtrack.

[et cetera]

... oof.

Not to be negative, but this really doesn't sound good to me.  Maybe some of the other tracks sound a bit more chipper (get it?  Chiptunes?  Hah.  Hah...), but the music demonstrated in this video just sounds kind of... flat?  Depressed?  Dull?  I dunno.  It just doesn't sound quite right, to me.  Like, even more so than the existing "music improvement" patch by Supper.  I should know.  I redid the entire soundtrack for a fan game.  That being said, it's entirely possible to rework the music to help it sound better.

Personally, I wish I could get ahold of Mr. Kenji Yamamoto Yamazaki – the composer for the original soundtrack – and see if he still has the original compositions handy.  I'd love to hear what some of these tracks are actually meant to sound like.  I bet it would be super-enlightening.

Sounds good! I have to ask though, if this means the possibility of incorporating RushJet1's work.

... please.  Don't.

[forple]

... oof.

Not to be negative, but this really doesn't sound good to me.  Maybe some of the other tracks sound a bit more chipper (get it?  Chiptunes?  Hah.  Hah...), but the music demonstrated in this video just sounds kind of... flat?  Depressed?  Dull?  I dunno.  It just doesn't sound quite right, to me.

To be totally honest, After a month I've kinda thought the same thing. What I've done is literally just take the original sound data and modify it where I thought necessary. It's quite more involved than simply taking the music down an octave, but it's not extremely advanced either.

It's still an "improvement" to me, but I have noticed it is a rather divisive one, the people I've contacted about it consider it really good, but the general consensus from the full community is a mix of either "This is really great!" or "This isn't that good..."

I'm genuinely thinking of just tossing out the original sound data at this point. Might be better to do so since I can really only do so much with the original data to make it "better".

... please.  Don't.

I don't intend to. As I said above, RJ1's tracks are best suited for the system it's for (Famicom with extended sound source). I intend to make totally new arrangements that would properly suit the GB's limitations.

Personally, I wish I could get ahold of Mr. Kenji Yamazaki – the composer for the original soundtrack – and see if he still has the original compositions handy.  I'd love to hear what some of these tracks are actually meant to sound like.  I bet it would be super-enlightening.

I would like to as well. He had a twitter and general online presence until 2014 but seemingly vanished after that. It is a shame. The closest I've been able to get recently is to track down info on the game's arranger, Hiroto Nakamura. But he doesn't have much on him, either.

Also, you're the Quint's Revenge arranger? That's awesome. If you have a contact on Discord or the like, please do contact me there. I would appreciate some pointers on how to deal with this OST, particularly in terms of re-arranging.

[NES Boy]

Will there be an alternate soundtrack that actually adapts the original NES Robot Master themes, either as new arrangements (like in the first GB game) or direct translations (as in the third and fourth GB games)?

[Midna]

I understand this would be extremely difficult, but one way you could spice things up even more is import the sound driver used in MM World 3-5 and remix the World 2 songs for it.