Surprisingly, I'm almost done with the soundtrack
I'm still writing the lyrics for the ending theme, but all the other tracks (21 in total) are very close to their final version.

Regarding the bongos thing, how is it useful in Pilotwings?
Is it because of the wind sound playing in the background?

Note: I had a looooot of fun doing the "Bonus Game" music (but I had almost 0 fun doing the last few military-like tracks, especially the helicopter mission)

the bongos were brought up (i believe) because it's a similar case of a sound effect not working due to MSU1. the wind sounds in this work more similarly to the engine noise in F-zero though (to probably very little surprise) but ultimately all it meant was that a different mute needed to be developed for this game to restore the wind sfx

Ok, I'm ready for some testing, woohoo!

If I'm reading Aelieth's document correctly, it looks like tracks 2-3-35-36-37-38-67-68-69-70 have duplicates (example: 3 times Rocketbelt), because of the wind (not PCM) playing differently in the background.

Also, I'll see what happens with the Bonus Stages and the new version of your patch. Currently, I have a single PCM for the Bonus Track (like in the SPC file), but maybe I'll need to split the file in 2 (intro // main track) to make it work (apparently it only affects Bonus Stage 2 and 3)

JustinBailey wrote:Ok, I'm ready for some testing, woohoo!

If I'm reading Aelieth's document correctly, it looks like tracks 2-3-35-36-37-38-67-68-69-70 have duplicates (example: 3 times Rocketbelt), because of the wind (not PCM) playing differently in the background.

Not exactly because of the wind, but because the song is played on those stages. That same PCM is re-used on multiple stages. Added the wind information because I would mix the wind sound in during the creation of that PCM for future reference and in case I needed to work on it later... speaking of which, I still intend on coming back to all of this after the Holidays are over.

Aelieth wrote:That same PCM is re-used on multiple stages.

Well, that sounds great if one day there's an enhanced edition of the soundtrack... For example, the Rocketbelt Level 1 is a peaceful music, then at level 3 there's more rhythm, and the track becomes more dramatic, like during the helicopter mission.

it'd be possible, i'd just need to delve into the code a little bit more

Cubear wrote:it'd be possible, i'd just need to delve into the code a little bit more

No problem, take your time. I know that your work will be stellar
And: Merry Christmas !

merry christmas, happy holidays. it's absolutely easy to rework this patch to have a custom song for basically any combination of license level and stage due to these ram addresses
$7E:009E 1 Byte Lesson number
$7E:0CAB 1 Byte Game number. (00 = Light plane, 01 = Hang glider, 02 = Rocket belt, 03 = Skydiving, 04 = Helicopter)
if you want to do the "enhanced" soundtrack i'll write up a patch to use this new info.

Ah yes, it sounds easy enough, indeed.
I wasn't planning to create new tracks for an enhanced version, but in the future, who knows...?

Cubear, I have done testing on your patch and it's working well thus far. The only issue is pausing.

SNES9X:
Pause the game - Music stops, background noise (engines and wind) continue
Unpause the game - Music resumes, background noise (engines and wind) go silent until another sound triggers them to start again, such as going through a ring or just crashing.

BSNES
Pause the game - Music stops, background noise continues
Unpause the game - Music still silent, background noise also goes silent (everything is silent) until another event triggers which resumes both

On a further note all bonus stages are fine now and all use track 19. I've removed track 26 entirely now as it doesn't serve any purpose. Wind sounds are all fine, I've adjusted my tracks accordingly and tested multiple stages.

Looping is fine on everything. At this point everything is good, except for that pause issue, and I have updated my spreadsheet to represent it all.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MCSfM8_Cs7QIRgS-RF-QA8uQ3fjgFWy7uOnuFlg6Br4/edit?usp=sharing

Last edited by Aelieth on Wed 15 Jan 2025 - 15:41; edited 1 time in total

Here are the updated PCM files for the patch:

Pilotwings - AquaMIDI Remastered by Aelieth v2

Wait, I completely forgot that Cubear released a beta patch several weeks ago

Let me do some tests, and if everything is good, I'll share my soundtrack as well.
EDIT: so far, I'm also experiencing the same PAUSE bug as Aelieth (using BSNES).

ah, thanks for the update. missed these messages until now somehow. i'll take a peek this weekend and see what i can do about the pause issue

Awesome Cubear!

Another thing I noticed: the lesson tracks don't always reset when you start a new similar lesson.
For example: if I play the light plane lesson no2, fail, and go back to play the light plane lesson no1, the audio track will resume instead of starting from the beginning (or is it how it works in the original game?).

Also, maybe a .spc fallback would be nice, just in case?

spc fallback will not be possible with the new mute (that allows the wind sfx to play) it's literally pick one or the other at this point...a worst-case scenario in this patch would then look like making .pcm files of the SNES native audio in cases where you'd rather have fall back.

Ok, I understand.
I was asking just in case, since I have all the audio tracks covered anyway. For the lessons with a lot of wind, I also added real wind sfx to the music. The mix between snes sfx & real wind sfx works quite well actually.