XGM player on Megadrive

[Stef]

I finally (almost) completed my XGM player that i started a long time ago (few time after i developed the XGM driver)...
I was really busy with SGDK and private stuff that i had to postpone my XGM player development but finally i find sometime to complete it
It's still not perfect, has some bugs (refresh, playback issues with fast tempo...) but still i am happy with it's current state so i think i can release it =)
XGM player is intended to play XGM music through the XGM driver. I developed a tool which allow to convert Megadrive VGM files into XGM format so you can basically see it as a Megadrive VGM player as well... The difference is that it allows to play 4 PCM at same time where Megadrive VGM is normally limited to 1 PCM channel only. But ok, that is useful only for SFX for game as there is no music tracker taking advantage of it

What better than a Technosoft compilation to introduce the XGM player
Musics from the following games are included in the rom :
- Dragon's Fury
- Elemental Master
- Thunder Force 2/3/4

Because of rom size limitation i could not include all tracks for those games so i made a (personal) selection of 80 tracks.
You can find the download link at the bottom of the message.

Edit:
Released a new VGM compilation for XGM player This time it's a tribute to Jesper Kyd and its awesome tracks (mainly from Batman and Robin).
Because of the length of the different tracks i could not put more than 26 so i had to discard a lot of them unfortunately, the selection was difficult :-/
This new compilation also introduce a new version of the XGM Player (version 2), here are the differences:
- bug fixes (still some remains with fast tempo, sometime music pause without any reason)
- added a way to disable the starfield background (START + A)
- added a way to hidden the playlist (except current playing track) for nice blind jukebox parties (START + B)

You can find the download link at the bottom of the message.

I also completed my XGM Rom Builder tool so you can build your own compilation (finally).
Note that i developed the tool in java so you need Java to be installed on your system.
The tool is a bit rough but it does the job hopefully, you can find the download link at the bottom of the message.

Edit 2:
Added a new VGM compilation using the last version of my XGM player (V3).
This time this is a Streets Of Rage VGM compilation I picked music from all episode but a lot of them come from episode 2 which has imo the best tracks !

Technosoft VGM compilation rom : http://bit.ly/2nw9JRN
Jesper Kyd VGM compilation rom : http://bit.ly/2o74J7o
Streets of Rage VGM compilation rom : http://bit.ly/2ou2k2T
XGM Rom builder tool (updated to v1.2) : http://bit.ly/2nevliZ

Have fun

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[matteus]

Great piece of work stef

[chinitosoccer]

This is great, but where can we find rearranged tracks from known games using the extra pcm?

[Stef]

Technosoft does not use any PCM (except for SFX) in their game but in fact you will see no Megadrive game with proper 4 PCM channels used at once (well there is some, but very few). And as i explained before, despite XGM support 4 PCM you need to have a tracker taking advantage of it, which is not (yet) the case... currently it's just used to allow multiple SFX at same time when you develop a game.

[EPSYLON EAGLE]

Stef always surprising positively! I was curious about what Genesis games use 4 PCM?

[Sik]

Skitchin'.

I'm not aware of any other game doing 4ch PCM (some other games do 2ch PCM, but Skitchin' is the only 4ch one that I'm aware of). And even then you'd need to recreate those from scratch since VGM files would only include the already mixed result (as this is done in software).

[Stef]

Skitchin indeed does 4 PCM, i believe Duke Nukem 3D also has a 4 PCM sound driver (for SFX) but the sample playback quality is really low (something as 4 Khz). I have to check but i think some games does 3 PCM (as Contra Hardcorps) but not 100% sure on this one, and again the PCM quality is just atrocious :-/

[xbrinkx]

Thanks for making this! Will this work on real hardware? What's the best emulator to use it?

[Black_Tiger]

Stef always surprising positively! I was curious about what Genesis games use 4 PCM?

That one tennis game (Pete Sampras)?

[LinkueiBR]

God bless you stef

[Barone]

This is soooo awesome!

Thank you very much, Stef!

[Stef]

Thanks guys ! Honestly i was myself waiting for a player showing live chip status since a long time, glad i was finally able to complete it
And of course it works on real hardware, no point in having something working only on emulator

That one tennis game (Pete Sampras)?

Don't know about this one, have to test !

[Barone]

Skitchin'.

I'm not aware of any other game doing 4ch PCM (some other games do 2ch PCM, but Skitchin' is the only 4ch one that I'm aware of). And even then you'd need to recreate those from scratch since VGM files would only include the already mixed result (as this is done in software).

Skitchin indeed does 4 PCM, i believe Duke Nukem 3D also has a 4 PCM sound driver (for SFX) but the sample playback quality is really low (something as 4 Khz). I have to check but i think some games does 3 PCM (as Contra Hardcorps) but not 100% sure on this one, and again the PCM quality is just atrocious :-/

Unless I'm highly mistaken, Flashback does 4 PCM for SFX.
The best way to test it is in the Death Tower, on that screen where you have several ground mines. By the way, this is also a good way to check that the Sega CD version uses the Ricoh chip and has no problem handling all the mines' sounds at the same time.

[Flygon]

There's Toy Story, but that's less of a 4 channel PCM player, and more of a "Screw it, let's write a full-blown .mod player". But that runs on the 68k, not the Z80.

[Pyron]

Congratulations Stef, amazing job like always !

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Stef again.