Game Emu Player (foo_gep) by kode54, Was “Game Emu Player” subt. “feature request” / Now a catch-all thread Options

[Zulithe]

Author notes:
The latest version of the component is always available from here.

Component source code repository [Change log]
Game Music Emu library source code repository - [Change log]

kode, I like the new Game Emu Player plugin. It uses far less CPU when playing .nsf files than fastalon.

I have a question though, this plugin supports the new .nsfe format but it doesn't support the .rsn extention (which many SPC soundtracks are archived into lately), can this be added? This way a user could playback .rsn files in both winamp and foobar2000 without having to rename or extract the files from the archive. Sites like snesmusic.org distribute all of their soundtracks in .rsn. Its really not much more than a renamed .rar file, I'm sure getting foobar2000 to recognize them would be trivial.

The reason for the extention change is becuase there are some problems getting winamp to play archives without a lot of workarounds, so the author of SNESAmp came up with this simple solution.

Here's the link to SNESAmp if you want to try it out:
http://www.alpha-ii.com/Download/Main.html#SNESAmp

.rsn soundtrack archives can be gotten here:
http://www.snesmusic.org/v2/select.php?view=sets

[kode54]

The difference between MDZ and RSN is that MDZ typically contains a single module, whereas RSN contains multiple SPC files. The API provides a means for extracting a single file from a single archive, such as unpacking gzip files, or pulling the first non-text file out of a ZIP/RAR, but indexing archives would be significantly more complicated.

Writing an archive service of my own to support RSN would require me to reimplement the RAR unpacking code. It would not be possible to use a simple service wrapper to present the RSN files to the existing RAR unpacker since it always checks the file paths for the correct extension before opening them.

Oh, and I rarely rely on file associations to open my files, so I guess that kind of explains away the use of generic archive extensions.


Cutter: Yes, by all means, stop waiting, as 0.8.3 support is probably less likely to happen in the immediate future than any of the things I actually want to do. Which is to say, 0.9 will probably be final before I even get started on that next ADPCM format I was going to add to foo_adpcm. You're welcome to use in_vgm instead. I hear the sound quality is almost tolerable.

[Borisz]

You're welcome to use in_vgm instead. I hear the sound quality is almost tolerable.

Same as Gens I believe, which is good enough. foo_gep uses the Gens core anyway, and fixes 1 effect that Gens would otherwise play broken. So I guess that both of them are "almost tolerable", especially compared to Kega. Unless you are talking about the SMS/CPS1 sound of course.

[kode54]

You're welcome to use in_vgm instead. I hear the sound quality is almost tolerable.

Same as Gens I believe, which is good enough. foo_gep uses the Gens core anyway, and fixes 1 effect that Gens would otherwise play broken. So I guess that both of them are "almost tolerable", especially compared to Kega. Unless you are talking about the SMS/CPS1 sound of course.

Actually, it currently uses a modified MAME YM2612 core. Although it is something on the order of half as fast as the optimized Gens FM core, it is more accurate. I am also looking forward to some corrections to the SSG-EG implementation, but it looks like I arrived at something pretty close. (Although, without any testing, or any real knowledge of FM synthesis, I can't be too sure. It sounds tolerable on the test case, though.)

Actually, what I was referring to was entirely separate from the FM core. Game_Music_Emu is currently the only player implementation I know of which can emulate the YM2612 at its actual clock rate, generating samples at the correct ratio of 144:1, clock to samples, then downsample the result. in_vgm can do this with the YM2413, but not for 2151 or 2612.

I know of no other implementation using band-limited synthesis or plain supersampling for the PSG unit, either, so in_vgm still has that whole aliasing thing.

The rudeness was unnecessary, though. The library is available for anyone who wants to duplicate foo_gep in the event that I don't get my ass in gear and update the 0.8.3 version. I may just do that today.

Hmm, updating that may take some more time than I thought. It looks like Visual Studio 2005 doesn't want to open the old workspace that happens to reference (already converted or freshly made) project files without freezing. Maybe I'll have to do that with 2003 or even 98. I know MSVC6 used to dance the Internal Compiler Error mambo on random parts of Game_Music_Emu, general dislike for certain types of template classes I think.