Castle Paradox

Mike Caron · Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2005 8:31 pm Post subject: Play Bams in style

http://ohr.finalfantasyq.com/playbam.zip

This 'aint your grandma's BAM player. This is a fully certified Windows program (No VDMS!), which plays BAMs in a way never heard before: Using Wavetable Synthisis! Or, what's more commonly known as MIDI.

Give it a whirl, I dare you. Everyone in IRC seemed to like it, so... you should to!

Disclaimer: This is not fully tested, and while the odds of something bad happening are virtually nil (it's playing music for Gahn's sake!), you never know. Also, don't run directly it from the ZIP. Playbam needs the GM.IBK file, or everything will sound like a Piano. Cool in it's own way, but not desirable.
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Moogle1 · Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2005 9:57 pm Post subject:

All the instruments play as piano. This is a big problem for percussion.

But it's a great idea. It'd be even better if it had more of an interface.
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LeRoy_Leo · Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2005 10:47 pm Post subject: Re: Play Bams in style

HAHAHA! *plays 1,000 different songs at the same time* THE CHAOS! :flamedevil:

Question1: Shouldn't it close one down when another is opened? If not, I think that would be pretty convenient.

But wow. The fact that I won't need to use VDMS to play BAM is exciting. Now this is PROGRESS, son.

Question2: Is it possible this ability could be programmed into Game.exe it's self some day?
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Raekuul · Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 3:51 am Post subject: Re: Play Bams in style

Mike Caron · Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:20 am Post subject:

To everyone who said that the intruments are screwed: Is the GM.IBK file in the same folder as the program? If not, put it there. It's loacated in your OHR/Import folder, or conviently in the ZIP for Playbam.

Ooh, wait. Oh, dang it! I just realized a bug. It checks for GM.IBK in whichever folder you're in when you invoke it. Like, if you drag a file from /Import onto it, the working folder will be "/Import", and that's where it'll look for GM.IBK. I'll fix that and re-upload it.

To those who want this in the OHR: Not happening. Period. Here's why. In short, the code to make it play midi would bloat the OHR too much. Of course, we could do it if we got rid of some things, like, say, maps.

To those who don't know how to close a window: It's a console program, just like many other OHR programs. As such, it doesn't control the window. If it doesn't go away after, you need to close it yourself, because the program can't.

To those questioning its interface: What kind of an interface do you want? It does exactly one thing: Play bams. I COULD bloat the code with all kinds of GUI things, but that's not the point of it. It plays music. That's all.

Edit: Ok, I've uploaded a new version. It fixes two things: A) It'll always find GM.IBK as long as it's in the same folder as the program, fixing the instrument issues, and B) I fixed a timing bug under Windows XP.
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Moogle1 · Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:24 am Post subject:

Oh, a rewind, fast-forward, and pause would be nice.
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Mike Caron · Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:48 am Post subject:

Rewind is nigh impossible. Fast forward... doable. Pause, definately.

Ok, tell you what, I'll see what I can do.
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msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

Okay, this item could be very key for me. Two questions:

1. Will it work fine on Windows ME?

2. How similar will what I am hearing be to what others are hearing who can hear BAMs playing on their computer, whether by VDMS or not?

You see, I haven't been able to compose a new song for my game in quite a while, because I can't hear what I'm composing, and I'm not Beethoven. I'm really hoping that this could be the solution.

Fenrir-Lunaris · **WUT** Joined: 03 Feb 2003 Posts: 1747

I'm using windows XP, and the quality I hear from this is about the same as midi. Well done!

Mike Caron · Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 9:13 pm Post subject:

Fen: Well, it is Midi. Wink

MSW: Yes, it should work on Win ME. Heck, now that I think about it (and with a bit of work), I could even produce a Linux version. Actually, I will, as this is part of the OHRFB project, which will be fully usable on Linux.

I don't know if I already uploaded it, but I'll do it again just in case, but I made a version of Playbam with a few new nifty things, such as the pausing and fast-forwarding that was mentioned, as well as a playback counter.
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Final Fantasy Q
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Rimudora · Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:50 am Post subject:

It'd be nice if the loops worked as well. The infinite loops work fine, but the "once-or-twice" loops don't.

Mike Caron · Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 7:39 am Post subject:

What? They should. Choruses don't, but they will. Do you have any songs that use loops like that? I'm not sure which ones do...
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Rimudora · Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 8:30 am Post subject:

Here, try this one.

http://www.geocities.com/somiadu/twinkle.zip

You should be able to tell where the loop was, and how it failed.

Mike Caron · Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 8:53 am Post subject:

Ok, thanks. I'll see what I can do.

In the mean time, I upgraded Playbam to be even awesomer: you can play bams straight from an unlumped RPG.

"But," you say, "we can already do that: wander\wander.0!"

"Ah," says I, "But, could it show the title, and automatically navigate through the songs?"

"Er... not as such, no." says you.

In other words, if Playbam detects that the bam is in an unlumped RPG (using Unlump, or from Working/Playing.tmp, etc), it'll read the title from the song-title lump, and enable special nagvigation controls (</, and >/.) which will browse to the next song in that game.

The link is in the first post, as always.

Edit:

Ok, I've uploaded a new version. This fixes the looping (thank you raekuul for the test file!), and also fixes a bug where it would hang when quitting whilst paused.
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I stand corrected. No rivers ran blood today. At least, none that were caused by us.

Final Fantasy Q
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LeRoy_Leo · Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 1:47 pm Post subject:

This is nice. I reccomend it to anyone who hasn't gotten it yet.
Sounds exactly like Midi, except for the percussion, which sort of gives me a headache to hear. Moreso than Bam did, for some reason... The timpany sounds excellent, though. It's the snare which makes me plug my ears, I think.
_________________
Planning Project Blood Summons, an MMORPG which will incinerate all of the others with it's sheer brilliance...

---msw188 ---
"Seriously James, you keep rolling out the awesome like gingerbread men on a horror-movie assembly line. "