DC music for Shenmue II

Sappharad said:
Does anyone else have experiences to report, good or bad? Even if I upload it to my site, it might not help and the performance could just be due to the servers being located far away from you.
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I downloaded it yesterday when you first uploaded it. It was very slow but it did eventually finish. I tried downloading it again just now, however, and it finished in under a minute this time. It seems like AnonFile's download speeds fluctuate wildly (this is my only experience with it though).
 
Sappharad said:
At the moment I'm going to refrain, because I just tried it and it's really fast:
View attachment 2868
Does anyone else have experiences to report, good or bad? Even if I upload it to my site, it might not help and the performance could just be due to the servers being located far away from you.
Click to expand...
OK. I will give it another go later today/this evening and see how things go. Could have been me being a bit unlucky with the timings.

Thanks again for all this work :)
 
It downloaded okay for me on the second try after failing for no reason.
Did some quick testing in Beverly Hills Wharf and the final cutscene. BHW unfortunately doesn't work right, the alternating pitch string sound that are wrong in the Xbox version don't play at all now. You can briefly hear them after closing the notebook for some reason.

The music in the final cutscene in front of the big mirrors works however. It seems to lack a tiny bit of DSP effects but if it actually does and it isn't just me freaking out, it is barely even noticeable. Notes and melody play right wich already is a huge improvement over the Xbox version.

How does the Zhangyu Wude music work? Is it just enough to have the DC file for it to properly play the part of the multi track?

It didn't cross my mind that the erhu tune playing during the Guilin arrival actually could actually be streaming audio.
Given how realistic it sounds it makes sense after all. This got me into digging again and I found its hiding spot.
It is packed inside the BGM04.afs and called funatukiba2. The strange part is that they used the STR file format on the DC while they are 44,1 kHz ADX files in the Xbox version. And they of course put the wrong music into conversion there.
I think I can fix that with some converting eventually.

On a side note, the files also differ in the selection of files between consoles. I actually found a streaming audio version of the above mentioned big mirror music, it is called bigrelief. This is not used in game, there is a sample based track for that. So I never heard this version. It sounds pretty scratchy and the ending part resembles the Xbox interpretation more closely, hmm...
 
Downloaded it at last.

Installed and working. Seriously superb work!
 
Eh, just hit another road block with the Guilin erhu music.

I converted the STR to WAV and then to ADX and built a new AFS based on the one from the Xbox version. Shenmue I & II doesn't like this file. None of the music in there plays and it might be because IDX Creator failed to make a new index file for the modified AFS. Or it's just because Shenmue I & II handles these streaming files different yet again.

There is a mod out there to make the notebook music more quiet, wich is inside BGM0x so if the people like @Raymonf could shed some light on how that was done...

One good news at least. The music during Shenhua's memory cutscenes still played with the modded BGM04. That means they use the sample based version in 0034_002. So no double usage and possible further adjustments necessary.
 
BlueMue said:
How does the Zhangyu Wude music work? Is it just enough to have the DC file for it to properly play the part of the multi track?
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Yes, I think so. I don't know of any other way it could be working. Looking at the original .SND files, the track data on the XBOX version takes up less than 1/4th the size of the Dreamcast version. Without knowing how that part of the format works yet, I'd say there's no 2nd song in the file just based on the size of the track data alone.
BlueMue said:
I converted the STR to WAV and then to ADX and built a new AFS based on the one from the Xbox version. Shenmue I & II doesn't like this file. None of the music in there plays and it might be because IDX Creator failed to make a new index file for the modified AFS. Or it's just because Shenmue I & II handles these streaming files different yet again.
Click to expand...
I haven't looked yet, (sorry) but I don't think the PC version uses ADX at all. They seemed to not want to license CRI's middleware and converted things to other formats instead. It might be worth looking inside the unmodified file and confirming it was even ADX.
 
Cool stuff. The Ziming tracks finally sounding good! Sappharad does what Sega don't.
 
Nothing on getting the original BGM04.afs from I&II to see what formats are in there yet?
 
BlueMue said:
Nothing on getting the original BGM04.afs from I&II to see what formats are in there yet?
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this?
Code: 
adv.wav.xma am2logo.wav.xma bgm04_list.xml BGM04.SRF funatukiba2.wav.xma jinguru01.wav.xma jinguru03.wav.xma memo.wav.xma stuffroll.wav.xma wazamakimono.wav.xma ysmark.wav.xma
 
I don't know if anybody else is aware of this, so I figured I'd just post it here.

Within Shenmue, there's a variable named 'STEP' which is pretty much keeping track of the progress you've made in-game. So, starting a new game gives you a STEP value of 0 (or 0.0 to be precise). Once you then complete the entirety of the intro sequence (watch the cutscene, see Iwao's death, speak to Ine right outside of Ryo's door etc etc) and then speak to Fuku-san in the Dojo, the game sets this variable to 11 (1.1; STEP / 10).

The reason this is even just slightly related is because this value is how the game picks certain tracks to be played. You can see this with this formatting string which is then passed on to a function which plays the audio file/track:

fre%02d00.snd

So if you have a STEP of 1.1, then fre1100.snd will be played.
 
That is great to read! What kind of quality are the wav files in? Any decrease to the original? It's a shame that piece of music is not in any of the soundtrack releases, as that would make it possible to get it into I & II at a higher quality than what was found on the DC.
 
LemonHaze said:
I don't know if anybody else is aware of this, so I figured I'd just post it here.

Within Shenmue, there's a variable named 'STEP' which is pretty much keeping track of the progress you've made in-game. So, starting a new game gives you a STEP value of 0 (or 0.0 to be precise). Once you then complete the entirety of the intro sequence (watch the cutscene, see Iwao's death, speak to Ine right outside of Ryo's door etc etc) and then speak to Fuku-san in the Dojo, the game sets this variable to 11 (1.1; STEP / 10).

The reason this is even just slightly related is because this value is how the game picks certain tracks to be played. You can see this with this formatting string which is then passed on to a function which plays the audio file/track:

fre%02d00.snd

So if you have a STEP of 1.1, then fre1100.snd will be played.
Click to expand...

This is interesting. Is there any way of getting a complete list of possible STEP values and/or what triggers them? I ask because I'd really like to get behind the game logic. A while ago I wrote this post:

DigitalDuck said:
It sounds like there's an increase whenever there's a change in game state, in which case I can give a fairly comprehensive list:
  1. Waking up on 3rd December
  2. Talk to Fuku in the dojo
  3. Talk to Yamagishi (after finding out he was injured)
  4. Talk to Tom (after finding out he had words with the men in the car)
  5. Talk to any of the Three Blades (after talking to Tao)
  6. Talk to Liu
  7. Talk to Liu Sr
  8. Sink the pool shot in MJQ
  9. Visit Heartbeats Bar
  10. Find out about Nagai Industries
  11. Talk to Nagai
  12. Fight night in the parking lot
  13. Find out about Okayama Heights
  14. Visit Tattoo Parlor
  15. Receive Letter to Father
  16. Fight in the construction area
  17. Find out about Wang
  18. Find out about Russiya China Shop
  19. Get the letter translated
  20. Phone the number
  21. Find out about Amihama
  22. Visit New Yokosuka Harbor
  23. Enter Warehouse No. 8
  24. Find out about the Old Warehouse District
  25. Try to enter the Old Warehouse District
  26. Help Hisaka look for Mai
  27. Help Hisaka deliver food to the Old Warehouse District
  28. Meet Chen
  29. Find out about the antique shop
  30. Get Sword Handguard
  31. Enter Basement
  32. Get Phoenix Mirror
  33. Get money out of bank
  34. "Idiot!"
  35. "39,634 Yen"
  36. Find out about boat tickets
  37. Buy boat ticket
  38. Collect boat ticket
  39. Get phone call from Jimmy
  40. Fight in Game YOU
  41. Visit Asia Travel Co.
  42. Ask Goro about a job
  43. Meet Goro
  44. Forklift training
  45. Fight in Warehouse No. 3
  46. Save Mark near Warehouse No. 17
  47. Fight Charlie
  48. QTE in Warehouse No. 1
  49. Find out about Terry
  50. "Terry's waiting!"
  51. Find out about a motorcycle
  52. "Stay with meeeeeeeeeeeeheeeeeehee!"
  53. 70 man battle
  54. Complete the game

So these are most (if not all) of the things that will change the game state - doing any of these things change NPC dialogue, and given that the two you've mentioned line up with two of these, it probably uses the same events for both.
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I'm assuming there's some correlation between the two; presumably the STEP value also controls NPC dialogue and move learning.

Is there a way to keep an eye on this as I play (e.g. Cheat Engine)?
 
Not to keep riding this off topic... Just check out the Dreamcast beta floating around. The debug menu prominently shows you what step the game is currently on along with a bunch of other info. Even better, you can manually change the step by setting flags, wich is a very powerful tool to get to almost any point in the story instantly. Notebook entries unlock on the spot, though not every step change comes with one.

I have a (lazily narrated) video on my channel that explains how those debug options work.
 
BlueMue said:
That is great to read! What kind of quality are the wav files in? Any decrease to the original? It's a shame that piece of music is not in any of the soundtrack releases, as that would make it possible to get it into I & II at a higher quality than what was found on the DC.
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I've simply used vgmstream for the conversion and added ".xma" to the filename.
Stream #0:0: Audio: pcm_s16le ([1][0][0][0] / 0x0001), 22050 Hz, mono, s16, 352 kb/s
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So I suppose there isn't much loss of quality, if any. I grabbed the .srt file from a CD-R 80 (echelon?) rip, though, not sure if it had already been compressed.
 
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AltGr said:
I've simply used vgmstream for the conversion and added ".xma" to the filename.

So I supposed there isn't much loss of quality, if any. I grabbed the .srt file from a CD-R 80 (echelon?) rip, though, not sure if it had already been compressed.
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It sounds like this is similar to what LemonHaze described as the dub also using. If that's the case, you can use the .XMA compressor from the 2010 DirectX SDK to put a recompressed version in there instead of WAV. Or any other XAudio supported codec.

I personally haven't had a chance to look into the streaming stuff yet. I have a lot to do recently, but my schedule should free back up next week if someone else doesn't release repacked files before then.
 
DigitalDuck said:
This is interesting. Is there any way of getting a complete list of possible STEP values and/or what triggers them? I ask because I'd really like to get behind the game logic. A while ago I wrote this post:

I'm assuming there's some correlation between the two; presumably the STEP value also controls NPC dialogue and move learning.

Is there a way to keep an eye on this as I play (e.g. Cheat Engine)?
Click to expand...

Funnily enough, I'm doing just that (except not just for the STEP values) right now and I was told to get in contact with you as you know a lot of the logic behind the series apparently :D

The STEP value is at Shenmue.exe+9E36F14, for Shenmue I.
 
BlueMue said:
Not to keep riding this off topic... Just check out the Dreamcast beta floating around. The debug menu prominently shows you what step the game is currently on along with a bunch of other info. Even better, you can manually change the step by setting flags, wich is a very powerful tool to get to almost any point in the story instantly. Notebook entries unlock on the spot, though not every step change comes with one.

I have a (lazily narrated) video on my channel that explains how those debug options work.
Click to expand...

LemonHaze said:
Funnily enough, I'm doing just that (except not just for the STEP values) right now and I was told to get in contact with you as you know a lot of the logic behind the series apparently :D

The STEP value is at Shenmue.exe+9E36F14, for Shenmue I.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll try both of those and see what I can figure out.
 
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