Life Force (via Project Nested)

@Arasoi Also, in Mesen you have a rewind feature. Just have to map it to your controller buttons. If you die, just rewind on the fly. That is what I normally use in my test play throughs. I am away from home at the moment. Otherwise, I would patch RAM $34 to always keep lives frozen.

I moved this topic over here since it was getting too bloated. I should have originally done this from the start.

Dialing in the volume levels, I'll have 2 packs ready when I'm all done:

Nestalgica AST
Salamander HD Remaster (Android) AST

Relikk is also working on an Arcade OST pack.

Cheers, Pev & Cubear. Here's a playthrough of the current patch (at the time of posting it may still be processing).



There are a few issues.

- Boss music doesn't play on nearly all stages (this is known, I think?), but it does play on the stage 5 boss (21:40)
- But before that, on stage 5, the original NES music plays during and after the mid boss until the stage boss (19:25)
- Game Over music continues to play after transitioning to the title screen and demo, then restarts after the demo when it goes back to the title screen (29:40)

yeah lol, this game is a little miniature nightmare. i think we mostly have it figured out aside from a bit of project nested weirdness.

Relikk wrote:- Boss music doesn't play on nearly all stages (this is known, I think?), but it does play on the stage 5 boss

Yeah, still working on the boss. As Cubear mentioned, it is becoming a nightmare.

- But before that, on stage 5, the original NES music plays during and after the mid boss until the stage boss

Yesterday, I did mention I may have botched the code just before leaving home. The patch is really a beta to help get the audio levels normalized until the finished product is out.

- Game Over music continues to play after transitioning to the title screen and demo, then restarts after the demo when it goes back to the title screen

I did say it was a beta patch, right? Lol. All these little things will be fixed once the boss crap is figured out.

Thought you might like to know the issues, is all.

Carry on so.

Relikk wrote:Thought you might like to know the issues, is all.
Carry on so.

The input is always appreciated. I will eventually get back to this "little nightmare" once my workload goes back to normal.

I have completed volume balancing my first pcm pack. Since there are 2 nsf/code entries for stage 5 (one with intro, one without) will 2 separate pcm file/tracks be required for this?

Arasoi wrote:Since there are 2 nsf/code entries for stage 5 (one with intro, one without) will 2 separate pcm file/tracks be required for this?

I am aware of those two tracks and have not coded them in to be passthrough to MSU-1 playback. When I get off work, I can do a quick playthrough and get those last two tracks from stage 5. I believe Cubear had mentioned that one of them is $22 for Mini Boss. Still needs to be coded in to play.

it's pretty easy to skip to stage 5 as well.
prg 1eeb6 sets a stage to load (0-indexed) so change to 4 to get to stage 5 from the title screen.

@Arasoi @Relikk Ok, the last two tracks are assigned as ...
Stage 5 Mini Boss (Aircraft Carrier) --> Track 10
Stage 5 Resume (Thunderbolt-B) --> Track 11

They will not work properly with the patch you have. I recall Stage 5 mini boss was assigned at track-16 for that one.

With the final patch, it should be like this ...



Patch Beta 2 (with new track map):

Code:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/rrg1ywjcpn4qpf6/Life_Force_%2528USA%2529_%2528Rev_1%2529_%2528Virtual_Console%2529-Beta2.ips/file

I've completed my first pcm pack for this hack:

Life Force Nested MSU-1 (Rock AST, Nestalgica and Dusty Zahrt)

https://mega.nz/file/oLtDXYhR#7D8Cg2-WgrXpzZcDWnmt9PtXUspvDV8UwfP-vUJBUaY

I chose lf_msu for the naming scheme since pev specified it before. These tracks are volume balanced, length optimized and looped.

Here is the second completed pack:

Life Force Nested MSU-1 (Synth AST, Salamander Android, lansisland, Lytehaus)

https://mega.nz/file/VKc0xIwA#Xz8RnpK84FdU7liYwmnknzz-gZrg4HjzmaFnjarSzso

I think I will stop here, I wasn't satisfied with the other options for a pcm set. Relikk has made an Arcade OST set and will post that when he is ready.

Is it safe to assume that the boss music wasn't implemented in the latest beta patch? It wasn't playing for me. The stage music kept going.

Relikk wrote:Is it safe to assume that the boss music wasn't implemented in the latest beta patch? It wasn't playing for me. The stage music kept going.

Yes, this is the case. I am slowly making finishing touches. Last on the list to implement.

#1 Pause/Resume code (stop/resume music)
#2 Stop music on reset and for going back to title screen
#3 Stop music on last stage when transitioning into game ending
#4 Boss triggers (including Stage 5 and 6)
#4 Stop music at leaving "continue or end" screen back to title screen in beta 6 patch
#6 Set loop/no-loop for tracks relikk & myself agree to leave it all looping
#7 Music fade outs before encountering bosses in beta 7 patch

The first three are fairly easy to implement. Code is mostly finished. If work load is light today, this may be done later in the evening. Ok, first four items are checked off and implemented into beta 4 patch. Fade, I will work it out at a later time. Need to understand how this game's baked-in fade out routine works. I hope the boss trigger works out. One more item to go. Almost there. I hope.

* *  U P D A T E  * *
Beta 7 (09-21-2023 @ 12:08pm EST)

Code:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/8an7ymrtlk1jg3d/lf_msu_beta7.zip/file

Okay. I can test on MiSTer FPGA, or any emulator if that is helpful.

Arasoi wrote:Okay. I can test on MiSTer FPGA, or any emulator if that is helpful.

Sure, go for it. If it crashes on MiSTer, you may need to set the SRAM size in Project Nested to 7. Though, I believe I did that in the provided profiles. BTW, patch 4 is out. The link is in my earlier post.

Tested on BSNES Plus this morning with a playthrough. Everything was fine until the stage 5 boss. The mid boss music played and the resumption of track 11 was good, but no boss music played there. No boss music played on stage 6, either. And the same issue persists with the continue music playing through the title screen and demo as shown in the video.

Also, a re-upload of the Arcade pack with some minor changes. I've included an alternate stage 2 (Salamander stage 2) and a loop fix for track 9.

https://mega.nz/file/xyxm2QBI#tA2FmtIpn53rnzoA3ypNv3PUk5zt0rLg7iW3_3p0CuI

@Relikk @Arasoi Ok, I believe some progress was made. I may have figured out a fix for Stage 5 and Stage 6 boss not triggering. It worked for me. Can you please test to verify. Beta 5 in previous post up above as before.

Update: The beta 5 patch worked w/o issue on Retroarch Snes9x 1.15.0 core. All stage bosses triggered. I am still working on stopping the music after leaving the "continue / end" screen. So, the bug is still present in beta 5. I need someone to test Mesen, Bsnes, MiSTer, and SD2SNES.

@Relikk @Arasoi Ok, beta 6 is out. This stops the music after leaving the "CONTINUE / END" screen when you choose END. If all goes well, all that will be left is music fade out before boss. Updated link from earlier post.

Alright, fade out code is implemented. Hopefully, this is will be it.

Beta 7 (with fade)

Code:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/8an7ymrtlk1jg3d/lf_msu_beta7.zip/file

Beta 6 (no fade - for those that prefer this)

Code:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/6wmxy8kjx34sjmj/lf_msu_beta6.zip/file

Noticed that the Project Nested converted ROM has background noise when the game's internal fade routine is working from a muted NSF track. I have not noticed it in my Mesen Nes Enhanced Audio patch I am working on. So, not sure if this just a product of PN since even some FX sounds do not play correctly on stock converted ROM.

I left beta 6, since the MSU-1 music kind of masks this background noise since there is no fade built in. Cubear did mention that perhaps a hard mute approach can help with this and abandon fallback support.

For now, I am done. Taking a break. Cubear, thank you for the support regarding the boss trigger & explaining why it would not work.

Thank you for working on this, it is greatly appreciated. I will do some testing on beta 7 with everything.

Relikk and I had trouble with beta 7 not acting consistently between different emulators, so I opted for a full playthrough of beta 6 on MiSTer FPGA to keep things simple (please disregard any slight track loop errors you may hear, this is a known issue with MSU-1 on MiSTer).

Everything working fine with beta 6, except some strange 2A03 noises playing before the boss on some stages. It is audible in the linked video.

yeah, the strange noises are a known issue, it had to do partly with fixing the game's native fade-out in order for the game to call the boss track properly.

i'll think on where to go from here, which is likely polishing up the hard mute i worked out and editing the patch to include it.