View Full Version : Audio pack: progress?
Is the audio pack still being worked on? Documentation says they've only completed 6 levels - has it been stuck like that for years, or is there a chance it will be finished?
Is the audio pack still being worked on? Documentation says they've only completed 6 levels - has it been stuck like that for years, or is there a chance it will be finished?
there is very little progress from what i can garner.
go over to the glidos section of the vogons forums.
The creators frequent those boards alot
Had a look over there - can't register as my e-mail address is too long. :) I'll register with my work address later.
I was really puzzled that it could be so hard to complete the triggers. :confused:
It looks like the problem is that they've chosen a mind-bogglingly obscure way of setting up sound triggers - they detect when certain textures are drawn on the screen in certain locations. :yik: Getting that to work reliably is very difficult.
Presumably this detection was easy to hook into Glidos, but they've paid for that easiness with the impossibility of defining the triggers. It's clearly doomed. They've not managed to get it to work in years of trying. They need to step back, and just hack the binary to find where the player's location is stored. Then they can monitor that directly.
They've only got 2 binaries to worry about, and I see no problem with hard-coding it for those binaries. A few days' effort to do the binary hack will allow the triggers to be completed quickly.
so thats why everyones so reluctant to carry on with it...
If it's as 'easy' as that,KMO,why don't you contact Vince Moulton over at VOGONS,and tell him he's been doing it wrong..hmmm?
Hey, reverse engineering and patching isn't "easy", but it's a single, technical (and interesting) job that I can complete fairly rapidly. Far more chance of being finished quickly than the dull and tedious job of defining triggers using the current method.
I've started talking about it at Vogons in the "Glidos/Audiopack revival" thread. Anyone interested in the technical side should look there; this isn't really the place.
Okay, Mr Chrimajon skeptic-type-person, I've developed an 8-byte patch to tomb.exe that makes it play all the PlayStation audio cues. :ton: The triggers are in the level definitions. :jmp:
Okay, so it's not a finished solution yet, but it was pretty trivial compared to the audio pack efforts so far.
As ever, technical discussion is on Vogons.
Okay, Mr Chrimajon skeptic-type-person, I've developed an 8-byte patch to tomb.exe that makes it play all the PlayStation audio cues. :ton: The triggers are in the level definitions. :jmp:
Okay, so it's not a finished solution yet, but it was pretty trivial compared to the audio pack efforts so far.
As ever, technical discussion is on Vogons.
You sir, are amazing. :eek: I would love to try this, but I don't have a Playstation disc. Is there a way to get the music tracks?
Okay, Mr Chrimajon skeptic-type-person, I've developed an 8-byte patch to tomb.exe that makes it play all the PlayStation audio cues. :ton: The triggers are in the level definitions. :jmp:
Okay, so it's not a finished solution yet, but it was pretty trivial compared to the audio pack efforts so far.
As ever, technical discussion is on Vogons.
Awesome!
Do you have any links for us to see or download this? Where is that Vogons you talk about?
Im one of the many unlucky fans who got a "sold out" version of the game, and its for the PC, so it still doesnt play any of the original tracks. :(
Please let us know/play the game with its beautiful/amazing music!
Wait for it people! :p This isn't finished yet - my results so far are just a proof of concept; that the data is in the levels and can be used.
There are still a few drawbacks with my current patch:
You need to burn a new CD.
No more ambient background (but the ambient is triggered at the very start once in level 1).
It's clunky - maybe 3 to 5 second pause when it starts a track.
Some performance issues - the drive is currently left running after a track completes, and this seems to induce a bit of judder (didn't TR2 get a patch for that? hmmm...). Should be easy to fix this.
The patched binary is no longer compatible with the original CD.
The title track doesn't loop (does this matter?)
It will be more useful for general players to hook this up to the existing Audio Pack project so that Glidos plays the cues (and background) from MP3 on the hard drive, rather than using a CD.
However, I personally would like a reasonably good working CD solution for those who don't want to buy Glidos. I'll try and do my best to overcome the clunkiness - see if I can get it as good as TR2, which isn't too bad.
Do you have any links for us to see or download this? Where is that Vogons you talk about? ... Please let us know/play the game with its beautiful/amazing music!
There is an existing audio pack that will give you the background ambience for all levels and PlayStation music cues for the first six levels only. If you look at the TR1 FAQ (http://www.tombraiderchronicles.com/tr1/faq.html), you'll see a link. If you want to try to burn a CD for my work-in-progress, this pack contains MP3 files of all the needed audio. The FAQ also tells how to burn a replacement CD with audio.
My efforts here are to get this finished - it's been in development for years, but their problem has been defining the music trigger points. I decided to try a new approach that includes patching the tomb.exe binary, and it has born fruit.
Development is being discussed on Vogons ("Very Old Games On New Systems") on this thread (http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=10463). That's a 2-year long thread; flip to the last 2 pages for my new developments. Detailed patch instructions are there.
I'm sorry if this sounds lazy, but I don't know how to do hex editing. Could you put the patched .exe up for download, please?
No. I don't want dodgily patched versions to be distributed general players when we're still just testing. Thus keeping a technical competence barrier makes sense for now... When it's all working properly, we'll see about getting a new tomb.exe distributed.
But I'm still looking for concrete information about the PlayStation audio behaviour, if anyone who knows it wants to help me out. I haven't yet found out what it does with ambient backgrounds.
Does it have a continuous ambient loop, or is it silent apart from the music cues? If it does have ambience, does it have different per-level ambience like the PC (4 sets) or just the 1? If it has only 1 ambience, which one?
If it doesn't have ambience, is the opening background noise in level 1 the same as the PC ambience? Does it play just once? What about if you save and reload? Or doesn't that apply because of save crystals?
Detailed info on the Playstation behaviour will be appreciated.
On the PS1 version, I believe the ambient noise plays like a music track - it starts up when triggered, plays through to the end, then stops. It doesn't loop.
And there is only one ambient track - the Peru one.
In most levels the noise is triggered right at the beginning, but in others it starts playing at a certain point - like when you enter the Damocles room in St. Francis Folly.
This Gamefaqs guide (http://http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/199040/18517) should be useful. It has info all of the music tracks, and it states where they are triggered.
Hope I've been helpful! :D
Thanks Teeth!
That's basically what my patched exe does then. I've knocked out the hard-coded ambient tracks of the PC version, made it so it does play the previously ignored audio cues (numbers 3..25) in the levels from the CD, including that opening single-play Peru ambience, and knocked out the code that makes CD playing loop. So it's working as you describe.
Thanks for the GameFAQs link (http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/199040/18517) - very useful. (Your link was broken though btw).
So, what do people want from their Tomb Raider?
a) Genuine PlayStation experience - no looped ambience, just cues.
b) TR2-style experience - looped ambience periodically interrupted by the cues.
I'm assuming (b) is the way to go. Would anyone be overly distressed if option a) wasn't available? I guess if it works like the current audio pack, you could get (a) by removing the 4 PC ambient MP3s from the tracks directory. Although conversely if it plays the single ambient cues from the levels, that could cause odd hiccups with the background ambience.
As an enhancement, I'm thinking that we should also replace the low-quality in-game audio. Cues 13 and 26-56 (secret chime, tutorial Lara speech and some enemy speech) are played internally, and don't sound at all good. If we can sample them off the PlayStation version and add them to the audio pack, it would be nicer. But interrupting the ambience could be annoying for the enemy speech.
I also have a general concern about the quality - MP3 is a step down from the Red Book audio. Maybe we should include a WAV option for full lossless quality. It would increase the install size by about 200MiB.
I think it would be nice if you could get b) to work, but I would still love it even if I could just have a).
Replacing the internal sounds with high quality ones would be great too. I was thinking that it would be a good idea a while ago, but it would never work with the texture capture method. Now it's finally possible!
EDIT: The link was broken? Sorry. Put the http bit on twice. :p
The_Terminator
09-08-07, 18:06
I also have a general concern about the quality - MP3 is a step down from the Red Book audio. Maybe we should include a WAV option for full lossless quality. It would increase the install size by about 200MiB.Good Work KMO! I'm really interested in your results as I've never played the PS1 version, and never heard the music cues in their proper points.
I would disagree about the mp3 quality though. An mp3 created with the transparent settings using the latest LAME (with the recommended settings from the Hydrogen Audio forums) will be pretty much indistinguishable from a losless wav file, while being 1/10 of the size. I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference while not using high end audiophile headphones with a proper headphone amp.
These days, it's very easy to create an mp3 which matches the audio quality of a losless wav. (yes it's lossy, but imperceptably so.)
BTW, Does anyone know if there is such a word as indistinguishable? :vlol:
I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference while not using high end audiophile headphones with a proper headphone amp.
I largely agree - TR1 has enough graphical problems that it seems a bit silly to be worried about the last drop of quality from the sound, but some of us do have pretty good audio setups where the difference is usually clear. Even the difference between DVD Audio and Super Audio CD and normal CD.
(Although admittedly my computer usually just uses its own pretty standard PC speakers+bass box, because they're in the right place...)
I'm just saying I'd like Glidos to have the capability to play WAVs or similar as well as MP3s, even if the usual audio pack distribution only contains MP3s. (Maybe it already has the ability - I haven't tried it). That way we have the option of copying tracks losslessly off our CDs. Storage is cheap (even if bandwidth isn't).
rr_carroll
11-08-07, 00:55
...BTW, Does anyone know if there is such a word as indistinguishable? :vlol: OneLook Dictionary Search shows it in 17 online dictionaries (my favorite variant is "indistinguishability").
(my favorite variant is "indistinguishability").
:D that's a great word!
Edit: I wish I could add something to the technical mumbo-jumbo, but good luck to you nevertheless... I imagine quite a few people is gonna appreciate your effort, after all what is Tomb Raider without the ambient soundbits? :)
good progress KMO! I'm really interested in your results as I've never played the PS1 version, and never heard the music cues in their proper points.
same here! having only played the pc version (with audio pack) i never noticed when the audio pack sounds run out, or what else was missing. i liked it overall however.
i'd go with option B personally..
TR1 goes from strength to strength...:)
Well, it looks like I've got a first passable CD patch working.
It plays the usual PC tracks, and if the CD has extra tracks on, it plays them as the extra missing cues (it assumes they're in the same order as the current audio pack). Once it's played a cue, it goes back to the ambient.
So this needs a new CD burnt - integration with the Glidos MP3 stuff is yet to happen. Possibly Glidos may just intercept the CD-ROM calls on this version, rather than any changes being made to the binary.
I've managed to knock out most of the CD start-up delay - at least on my machine (XP, dgVoodoo, VDMSound) it now appears to be nearly as good as TR2. The problem seemed to be that it stopped the CD first then played the new track, rather than just switching immediately. It's now a fraction of a second, rather than 5 seconds
As ever, you get better all-round performance on TR1 (and TR2) if you use a utility (like Nero DriveSpeed or Naiobrin CD-ROM Tool) to slow a fast drive down to 4x or 8x speed.
I'm not quite ready to distribute this yet - we haven't resolved how it's going to interface with Glidos.
I also want to have a word with the folks at Tomb Raider Chronicles to see how to I would get such an unofficial patch up without Eidos coming down on it like a ton of bricks. Anyone know who I should speak to?
I also want to have a word with the folks at Tomb Raider Chronicles to see how to I would get such an unofficial patch up without Eidos coming down on it like a ton of bricks. Anyone know who I should speak to?
Well, I'm not 100% sure how it works, but I'm guessing you could do worse than dropping a private message to tlr, the forum admin and operator of the Chronicles site :)
Thanks ace - I've contacted tlr.
Anyone with the PlayStation version want to check a few cues for me? There's a few little odd bits of behaviour I want to compare against the PlayStation.
In City of Vilcabamba, I think the level designer intended that both times you pull a switch to open a door in the temple building it should issue some incidental music. But you only get it when you pull the first switch in the left sideroom, not the second one in the right sideroom. Is that the same on the PS1?
When you pick up your first cog in Lost Valley, you get a short chorus. I don't get further choruses on the second and third cogs - is that the same as the PS1?
In the Tomb of Qualopec, as you approach the large bare room with the pillars that are moved by switches, there's some music. And if you head away from the room, the cue is stopped. And heading back, you can start it again. Does the PS do this? I hope so, because I've had to code quite carefully to get it to do that. :p
Annoyingly I've just had a nasty crash, and it's trashed the spreadsheet I was using to keep track of my patch changes. :hea:
At least the patch is intact...
Thanks ace - I've contacted tlr.
Anyone with the PlayStation version want to check a few cues for me? There's a few little odd bits of behaviour I want to compare against the PlayStation.
In City of Vilcabamba, I think the level designer intended that both times you pull a switch to open a door in the temple building it should issue some incidental music. But you only get it when you pull the first switch in the left sideroom, not the second one in the right sideroom. Is that the same on the PS1?
When you pick up your first cog in Lost Valley, you get a short chorus. I don't get further choruses on the second and third cogs - is that the same as the PS1?
In the Tomb of Qualopec, as you approach the large bare room with the pillars that are moved by switches, there's some music. And if you head away from the room, the cue is stopped. And heading back, you can start it again. Does the PS do this? I hope so, because I've had to code quite carefully to get it to do that. :p
Annoyingly I've just had a nasty crash, and it's trashed the spreadsheet I was using to keep track of my patch changes. :hea:
At least the patch is intact...
sorry to hear about the obstacles... I'm going to replay TR once I get it from the States.. it was shipped 20 hours ago, so it's certainly going to be a couple of days, but if noone has offered their help by that time I'll be happy to help you out :wve:
I ordered the PS1 version and it should be coming soon. I'll help if I can. :)
Thanks ace - I've contacted tlr.
Anyone with the PlayStation version want to check a few cues for me? There's a few little odd bits of behaviour I want to compare against the PlayStation.
In City of Vilcabamba, I think the level designer intended that both times you pull a switch to open a door in the temple building it should issue some incidental music. But you only get it when you pull the first switch in the left sideroom, not the second one in the right sideroom. Is that the same on the PS1?
When you pick up your first cog in Lost Valley, you get a short chorus. I don't get further choruses on the second and third cogs - is that the same as the PS1?
In the Tomb of Qualopec, as you approach the large bare room with the pillars that are moved by switches, there's some music. And if you head away from the room, the cue is stopped. And heading back, you can start it again. Does the PS do this? I hope so, because I've had to code quite carefully to get it to do that. :p
Annoyingly I've just had a nasty crash, and it's trashed the spreadsheet I was using to keep track of my patch changes. :hea:
At least the patch is intact...
I've just tested these on my PS1, and here are my results. They might be different in other versions, though.
Yes, only the left switch should trigger music.
The chorus plays when you pick up the cogs in the temple and on the bridge, but there is no chorus when you pick up the one on the platform at the top of the waterfall.
The cue does stop when you move away, but it doesn't start up again when you re-enter.
Thanks Teeth! :)
1) Both switches are scripted to play music, with the "only once" flag not set, but the second one doesn't because the game is coded not to repeat music - if the level triggers the same piece of music twice in succession, nothing happens. That's necessary to stop it going bonkers as you hop on and off a trigger square. If something else was played in-between, I reckon the other switch would play. Maybe if you wandered back to somewhere to play something inbetween, like diving into the village pool to trigger the ambience. Or using a save crystal and reloading - all the music cues get reset on reloading. Or maybe if you pulled the right switch, then turned it off, then turned it back on again it would play. Possibly not on the PS given your result 3 though.
2) Unexpected result on the cogs. I'd expect it to play only on the first one you pick up (whichever that is). Did you reload between the two cogs that played music? That would explain it.
3) Interesting that it doesn't re-start the music, but glad to see that it stops. It's debatable to say which is right. The normal rule is that it won't play the same thing twice, but the remnants of the music code in the PC version shows that the "last music played" flag gets reset by a deliberate "Stop music" trigger, allowing it to play again. I think that behaviour's probably better than the PS version.
I think the ability to have a trigger to stop music may be unique to TR1. The TR2 code won't stop the music if a trigger's deactivated. There are places where odd stuff can happen because of the stopping. For example, in the Caves level, in the open area with the wolf attack and the timed switch:
If you save the game and reload past the point where the wolves attack, then pull the timed switch, wait for the cue to finish, then go back to the room entrance to trigger the "wolf attack" music again (shouldn't really happen, but the "music played" flags aren't stored in the savefile), then run back up to the switch, the attack music cuts out the moment you stand on the square with the switch. Freaky!
Actually, that's probably correct behaviour, although they probably didn't think that the wolf attack might be playing in that circumstance. It's deliberately "stopping" the music as you approach the switch so it can start it again the second time it's pulled. Without a stop, it wouldn't repeat. But as it is, on the PC version, every time you pull the switch and run for the doors, you get the camera pan and music. But I suspect on the PS version, you don't get the music the second time, like at the Qualopec room. Can you check?
Thanks Teeth! :)
1) Both switches are scripted to play music, with the "only once" flag not set, but the second one doesn't because the game is coded not to repeat music - if the level triggers the same piece of music twice in succession, nothing happens. That's necessary to stop it going bonkers as you hop on and off a trigger square. If something else was played in-between, I reckon the other switch would play. Maybe if you wandered back to somewhere to play something inbetween, like diving into the village pool to trigger the ambience. Or using a save crystal and reloading - all the music cues get reset on reloading. Or maybe if you pulled the right switch, then turned it off, then turned it back on again it would play. Possibly not on the PS given your result 3 though.
2) Unexpected result on the cogs. I'd expect it to play only on the first one you pick up (whichever that is). Did you reload between the two cogs that played music? That would explain it.
3) Interesting that it doesn't re-start the music, but glad to see that it stops. It's debatable to say which is right. The normal rule is that it won't play the same thing twice, but the remnants of the music code in the PC version shows that the "last music played" flag gets reset by a deliberate "Stop music" trigger, allowing it to play again. I think that behaviour's probably better than the PS version.
I think the ability to have a trigger to stop music may be unique to TR1. The TR2 code won't stop the music if a trigger's deactivated. There are places where odd stuff can happen because of the stopping. For example, in the Caves level, in the open area with the wolf attack and the timed switch:
If you save the game and reload past the point where the wolves attack, then pull the timed switch, wait for the cue to finish, then go back to the room entrance to trigger the "wolf attack" music again (shouldn't really happen, but the "music played" flags aren't stored in the savefile), then run back up to the switch, the attack music cuts out the moment you stand on the square with the switch. Freaky!
Actually, that's probably correct behaviour, although they probably didn't think that the wolf attack might be playing in that circumstance. It's deliberately "stopping" the music as you approach the switch so it can start it again the second time it's pulled. Without a stop, it wouldn't repeat. But as it is, on the PC version, every time you pull the switch and run for the doors, you get the camera pan and music. But I suspect on the PS version, you don't get the music the second time, like at the Qualopec room. Can you check?
I just checked for you, and you don't get the music the second time, unless you do that glitch (trigger musics, save, reload and trigger them again)
I suppose the reason I managed to get the music to play twice when picking up the cogs in Lost Valley is because there was another music cue between the first two cogs I picked up - the one that plays just before you cross the bridge.
If you want, I could playtest the patch for you. (I hope I don't sound too desperate :p )
I got my Playstation disc. Verifying what Teeth said, I played The Lost Valley last night and the music only played for one cog.
The_Terminator
15-08-07, 16:54
KMO, I just wanted to say that I find your analysis regarding the triggers and audio cues fascinating!
I mean it!
Thankyou! :D I keep thinking I'm getting too technical.
I should probably go hang out in the level editor area where they have to deal with this sort of thing all the time. I usually can't understand what they're on about. :p
I've just been testing out my new version of the patch that takes dialogue from the PlayStation CD, and boy is Lara loud in the tutorial levels! :yik:
Does it really come out that loud on the PS1?
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