Messages

26

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9 PC/Steam] Background Mod incoming

« on: 2017-03-09 17:18:14 »

Perfect one is not possible (only if hand-drawn) because upscaled image is too big and too distorted. Even original PSX masks are far from perfect. But they work there cause of overally low resolution.
Personally I will still be doing most of them after all the backgrounds are in.

27

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9 PC/Steam] Background Mod incoming

« on: 2017-03-09 17:10:55 »

Fraggoso
I also neglected some things on disc1 and will probably come back there to fix them... But that is not related to masks, I only do masks for like 1 background per zone, and sometimes not even full background. I tried various things for masks but they still don't match the hand-made ones.

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Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-03-09 16:53:53 »

I knew Cleyra will be a pain in the ass... It is killing me (Probably not the final version) 

29

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-09 10:22:48 »

BTW I took for granted that file LENGTH is an issue. But does that really so?

Making file longer with the same or higher bitrate makes file SIZE bigger. Which could result in all the files in the archive being broken after the point of insertion., which may lead to crashes and all sorts of nasty things. If SIZE is a real issue, then you may need some much more serious engine modifications than just an AKB header. Edit: of course making sure it is never bigger than original is an option too. Assuming proper splitting/joining will be done, neither SIZE nor LENGTH issue should matter. Unless you want to increase the bitrate. But there is no real need in doing so, ~128kbps is more than enough.

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Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-09 09:52:23 »

I seriously need to finish the damn Background mod so I can poke a bit in the dark.

IKR. I already want to poke something else, but still long way to go with backgrounds too

I didn't say that he's not knowing what he's doing. Albeit I say that he maybe need a little push in the right directions as he has (to my knowledge) no background in modding sound files whatsoever and you seem pretty smart. ^^

Well, figuring out what some values in the header are is a very basic thing in hacking some uncommon file format. Regardless of what you're trying to do. Be it audio, or whatever else. If that is not possible, I would leave the project for someone else to do.

31

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-09 09:39:48 »

The "problem" as I see and heard is that some sound effects are split into different files instead of being one as it should be.

Well even if they are split or joined, I don't see why the replacement files can't be split or joined too.
Edit: just needs someone skilled with Audition or Audacity

And not everyone is as technical as you, Meru. Heck I don't even know what that header means. *lol*

To me this sounds like you're saying "Sharon does not know what he is doing". But I assume this is not what you meant to say

32

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-09 09:30:59 »

The sounds effects will be fixed as soon as I find a solution to the random crashes that currently occur when any sfxs is replaced.
I'm trying to see if there's a way, or could be a way to reverse the engine's sound system, so it can accept easier formats - minus the akb header and length obligation altogether.

Why length is an issue? Just make a replacement file of the same length?

If AKB is a culprit why you want to get rid of it? It is only 304 bytes long. Only 22 bytes of them are different between files. Is it so hard to find out the meaning these?

33

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9 PC/Steam] Background Mod incoming

« on: 2017-03-08 22:25:54 »

Are you doing all the masks right away? I started to work on BGs when you was at Ice Cavern, I think. So you have to be past disc2 by now. I am mid-disc2 and only did the most ugly masks so far

Cleyra is probably gonna be a real pain in the ass in terms of these masks that would need to be created even though I don't want it for now. I was gonna do some part of Cleyra but couldn't bring myself to open the folder with textures... Maybe tomorrow 

34

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 21:28:04 »

Fraggoso

If this is the case, I don't find it surprising that FF7/8 had no sound issue while FF9 has. When FF7/8 ports were made, the actual square developer team took some part in it. Steam version is a port of these old PC ports. I don't think anyone of them worked on FF9 port though. Many probably don't work for square at all anymore...

Edit: in fact FF9 was made by Square USA, which was dissolved at some point (or something else happened I forgot, but it is long gone).
Edit2: I have not played FF7/8 on PC yet, haha. Maybe when I'll finish backgrounds for FF9 i'll try FF8 PC...

35

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 21:12:20 »

You mean that the sound is made by the psx Chip like it plays music?
I'm not entirely sure if that is the case with sound effects.

Yea I mean that. I can't comment more on it. Since all the "problems" mentioned were regarding magic I tried to look for magic. Whatever what I found is not magic, or it is different from everything else. Most of the audio, except maybe movies and some selected pieces are a collection of samples that are composed on the fly. But Magic doesn't seem to work the same way. If it is pre-composed/pre-rendered, that wouldn't explain the difference between PC and PSX. And the difference in sound is not like something that comes from shitty conversion. It just sounds differently.

36

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 20:51:32 »

btw, after a quick look it appears that magic effects are not the same as other audio on the psx. So it could be that they all are "broken" in PC version.
But that would lead to a different issue. How to tell that the ones in PC version are not what it actually meant to be? PSX sounds the way it is because that is how that particular hardware renders it. PC files , on the other hand, are pre-rendered. What if they used the "right" way to render them.

37

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 19:29:38 »

Lucky for me I don't use FFIX mods, I'd rather take stability/functionality over mods on this game. I hope SS never ports another game again.

Don't wanna to disappoint, but they are officially working on FF12 I mean it is not for PC, but hey... FFX wasn't supposed to come to PC too...
Edit: and their test version works on PC yea, but there will not be PC version. No way there would be one.
The only good part about it is that we may FINNALY be able to have IZJS with Japanese voices. Making "International" versions Japan-only with English audio only... only Square knows why this is a good idea.

38

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 18:58:31 »

Fair enough, I just hope that the process isn't convoluted to fix once it's done, or that a game update doesn't break anything, again.

Making it in a way that will prevent steam updates from breaking stuff is possible. More worrisome is that there are gonna be mods that are incompatible with each other.
If sound mod will ever happen and will not use things like memoria, it will likely be compatible with everything though (except memoria)

39

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 18:43:13 »

*Sigh* I don't know what to do anymore.

If that is what Sharon aims to fix, I suppose just wait...
I think he mostly figured that stuff out. The only problem is he couldn't use audio of a different length. I don't think it is needed to fix things. Replacement files just have to be created to match thee same loops and whatnot and not to be bigger in size (<128kbps without metadata and there we go). Otherwise there probably is some king of value in the "additional" header that has to be modified that shouldn't be hard to find. Or maybe not in a header but in one of the scripts.
Personally I just threw away that additional header since it was not needed to compare sound quality.

40

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 18:06:33 »

It's the only boss to use sandstorm in the game, and sounds absolutely abysmal, I can only hope fixing sounds like this aren't super hard to do. Silicon Studio dun effed up big time. SE should've done the port instead, just saying.

Top that off with the fact a lot of the spells sound wrong, fire, fira, firaga, etc. Sword Rain later in the last dungeon is also off, IDK what else to do to isolate these.

If there are many, there's no need to isolate anything. Just dump everything into the trash bin
But it is still good idea to verify if the actual sound files are an issue or maybe some fancy sound processing happens in-game (which is I'm not gonna do, I have my hands full with backgrounds).
Speaking of which, look at that door here... the "before" image is an untouched PC version. I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled some sounds from the same place they pulled backgrounds from.

41

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 17:38:14 »

Will these sound effects ever be fixed? A good test to try is sandstorm from the Antlion Boss in Cleyra Village. It sounds like a squeaky vacuum cleaner, for example, I have shown two videos for comparison.

They sound like totally different things, not sure where silicon pulled that from
if THAT happens often, it is an issue, sure. But fixing one particular sound shouldn't be really hard.

Edit: SE wasn't even supervising the port, and even if they did, it wasn't the actual director of this particular FF.
On the other side, director won't be "ok" with this kind of port so they probably didn't even bothered to ask him. Cause that would probably double the expenses for this port
I wonder if they "lose" the sources of the assets on-purpose too... as an excuse for them to not be re-used.

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Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 17:16:59 »

Stupid Language Barrier. Sorry for that, Meru. I feel like Bill Murray in "lost in translation". ^^
I'm just curious why the sfx are splitted and sound off (the death animation for example, which could be replaced by the PSX now thanks to the community).
I thought that this was the thing he wanted to do for the SFX which sounded off (like accept and/or cancel sound). ^^

I dunno sorry. I haven't studied what they included or excluded. How the looping done (it is done differently but not sure how exactly) and that sort of things. Few months ago my only concern was the actual sound quality. And at this time I have no time to study it further due to these damn backgrounds eating all my time...

Edit: it is also news to me that something sounds differently (i use sdlib fix from the start). I play the game and haven't noticed it... but then last time I played FF9 was on ps1 years ago... I don't remember such details.

43

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 17:05:01 »

Fraggoso
I think there was some kind of language-barrier issue here. We had similar things before
Also I want to note that while sfx and music may be different to you, they are the same thing. And regardless of what he says in his thread, replacement operation will be the same for both. The only thing is, we can obtain music elsewhere and possibly improve it. We can not obtain sfx elsewhere. Watever he re-makes these sfx by himself, or the whole idea is not viable.

44

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 15:44:35 »

Anyway, I think there won't be enough results to make the test statistically viable and I don't feel like monitoring this thread, so I'll just tell which is which right now. You can decide for yourself if the difference is big enough.

895218C1 is PC, B6209217 is PSX

They were both ripped from the respective sources. Engine, be it bugged or not, does not play any role here.
Psx sample was additionally encoded with aoTuV encoder with approximately the same bitrate as in-game assets (which vorbis devs described as "CD quality", iirc) and decoded back. This is required because game assets are stored in vorbis so encoding-decoding step will have to happen. Although it is possible to obtain the exact encoder that was used for FFIX-PC audio, it wasn't done on purpose since if encoder in test is capable to produce significantly better quality output, this alone may be a reason to make audio replacement viable.

45

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 15:14:38 »

Let's move along, I don't see you helping out at all and just arguing will not help whatsoever.
And no, Sharon don't want to fix the music. Where did you read that...?

I never said he is trying to fix music. I said music is the only thing that is worth fixing. Pls learn to read.

Edit: the word "audio" includes "music" but not limited to it. When I say(type?) "audio" you seem to read it as "music", which isn't right.

46

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 15:01:15 »

I don't know what point you're trying to prove, Meru?
The music is off in the engine. If you can't hear that, it's fine. I on the other hand can't play it without the fixed lib.
The assets on the other hand are good.

The sound effects are a whole other thing as the assets aren't the same across PSX and PC (and they're even sliced in some manor).

The point is. If you can't tell which of the samples I provided is significantly better than another, there is no point in replacing audio in PC FFIX with the audio from PSX.

In other words, I am saying that what Sharon is trying to do is stupid and no "FIX" is needed. Unless there are other sources to take audio from. Such as original soundtracks. But there won't be sound effects there. Unless I am wrong here?

Edit: and no he is not fixing the _engine_, Xenobrain did that, Sharon is trying to replace the actual audio.

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Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 14:51:58 »

Did you rip those straight out of the folders?
The assets are the same (from what I know) it's only that the Engine, when you play the game, upsamples and downsamples the music so it sounds off (in game while playing).

Any comments on how test files were produced (except what I already mentioned) will be made after whatever test is done, or there are not enough votes to make it valid (1-2 votes is not sufficient, given the small audience, I hope for at least 5)

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Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 13:51:09 »

Okay, here we go. FFIX Audio Blind test:

Here are 2 files. Anyone who wants can listen to both. Which one you think is from PSX and which one from PC? Please don't try to cheat your way through and actually listen to it. But as I mentioned before, even if the difference is there, it is not possible to tell which one is actually better.

I will tell which one is which at some later point.
After this, source files for the test may be provided upon a request via PM.

Two important notes:

First, as you can hear, both of the files sound like crap. That's how it is. So replacing PC music with alternatives, taken from, lets say, official soundtrack, is not a bad idea.
But in case of sound effects, you won't find those elsewhere. So replacing crap with crap is stupid.

Second, since audio in PSX and PC has a different loudness, samples were normalized to -23 LUFS accordingly to the ITU-R BS.1770-3 standard. 

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Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 12:21:58 »

I don't have a reason to contact him. I just wanted to know what problem he is trying to solve. If he wanted to tell that, he would probably mention it in his thread. But after reading his thread it feels like he wants to replace audio with the one that will have 2ce the bitrate but will sound virtually the same and make many non-tech savvy steam users believe that it is actually useful.

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Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF9]2016 release

« on: 2017-03-08 11:45:32 »

We're not talking about music, but sound effects.

In fact we do talk about music. You said:

It's like the music: They sound way worse than the PSX counterparts and some are entirely missing.

About music, I don't believe difference can be heard. And even if it does, it can not be said which one is more correct. But there is no need to argue. I'll see if I'll have a time to prepare a blind listening test.