Lagtrain - chiptune cover (PC-98) + .M/.mp3/.wav (READ COMMENT!!!)

[@gardenerofthesun]

nvm i cant draw IMPORTANT: MY FISH BRAIN MADE RSS WORKING, WAV AND MP3 *WILL BE* WITH BETTER DRUMS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!! FILES UPDATED!!!!!!!! .M: drive.google.com/file/d/1sVAABoB-RYRPgE1ingoioxjIqCpbXCAz/view?usp=sharing .mp3: drive.google.com/file/d/1tXXr2gQ1Bort0ap7fz9SwXtPfY1nilyZ/view?usp=sharing .wav: drive.google.com/file/d/1RnsIs-a7ugWdVcLuhGzT53QHEOt92XT3/view?usp=sharing

[@tahrey]

Not sure how I missed this first time round, much appreciated. Snagged for great justice and liked/commented for bump.

[@PacloverN1]

It's literally impossible to go wrong with this song

[@gardenerofthesun]

It's like Megalovania. It doesn't matter how hard you "screw" around with the song, the result is always somewhat nice to ear

[@nickxenix]

@@gardenerofthesun Falling Metal Lag Train Pipe?

[@gardenerofthesun]

@@nickxenix jesus christ

[@SpringySpring04]

I feel like I'm playing a PC-98 touhou game

[@gardenerofthesun]

Yep, at least because I stole instrument parameters from touhou games :) And, well, exact same FM chip

[@SpringySpring04]

@@gardenerofthesun Awesome, and I just noticed after leaving my comment that your pfp is a PC98 character too

[@gardenerofthesun]

@@SpringySpring04 Kana my beloved

[@tahrey]

Now all we need is the same treatment to be given to the (Nomico) Bad Apple vs Lagtrain mashup and we will have finally come full circle...

[@gardenerofthesun]

@@tahrey It exests! kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zoiwo2Sah7qMm5Y

[@myri_the_weirdo]

I feel like every decade has its song y'know? Like the 2000s was bad apple, 2010s maybe megalovania (or any undertale OST for that matter) and now we're at lagtrain

[@Devan...]

I'm ok with this.

[@the_actual_alex]

if it has 2 colors it can run bad apple, if it has 3 colors it can run lagtrain

[@nottelling8129]

@@the_actual_alexAs long as it can display the whole monochrome range, it can run both Bad Apple and Lagtrain

[@skibidiBus]

Lagtrain is a baller song. Megalovania was overmemed. Bad apple slaps

[@XD-tw4uj]

Bad apple was late 2000's, megalovania was late 2010's

[@snowball03-boop]

I like the dings joining in at the start. Cute and light feel. ^^

[@witherxd3345]

Bro this hits a very specific small itch I've had so hard it knocked me unconscious. Probably one of my favorite pieces of music, I love the crud out of it.

[@gardenerofthesun]

damn, I appreciate that :)

[@southoftheline6066]

Chiptune Lagtrain always slaps

[@Manquant]

THIS IS A CERTIFIED HOOOD CLASSIXZ

[@MsZsc]

it appears the trains from the far away cities

[@manerodawd6640]

seriously, this is so good, my two passions together touhou and vocaloid : ), waiter! there's a vocaloid in my Touhou 5

[@Nachisoubu]

Mmm... fat bass (or drums). Oh wait, it sounds like a Genesis song. That's why I like it.

[@gardenerofthesun]

Kinda both, I guess ":D

[@AtomicEmperor]

​@gardenerofthesun that would be because the soundchips were both made by the same company and shared alot in how they worked

[@tahrey]

@@AtomicEmperor The 2612 is basically an OPNB but without the PSG part (because of the preexisting SN7 in the Master System design the Megadrive built on) and mashing a barebones remnant of the ADPCM into one of the FM channels (bit of a shame but it did cut costs whilst retaining some kind of PCM output)

[@AtomicEmperor]

@@tahrey huh good to know ig

[@tahrey]

@@AtomicEmperor Means you can convert between the MD and systems using the 2608 reasonably well without having to mess with the score or even the code too much. Depending on the music it can be basically 1:1, or you may have to make some allowances for the slight differences (eg in how the PSG part works, the PCM sharing, lack of ADPCM or onboard timer etc). It doesn't look/sound like this uses any PCM, or operates the 2149-type PSG in a way that wouldn't be possible with the SN7, so it may actually be playable on the console without any changes...

[@Emblazened]

amazing work

[@gardenerofthesun]

yo, thanks :)

[@spaghettiking7312]

Cultured content, buddy.

[@gardenerofthesun]

thanks, mate :))

[@akimon243]

music of nostalgia + nostalgic sound = masterpiece

[@heskan]

We makin it out the station with this one

[@shichiro76sv]

Seriously so good!! ❤ Thank you for your hard work!

[@gardenerofthesun]

thanks, I really appreciate it :)))

[@Ali_Alhakeem]

goes hard

[@tahrey]

The demo version sounded decent but this is decidedly excellent. Like I feel you could remove the lead melody and throw a vocaloid over it and people wouldn't immediately notice. On that front, seeing as vocaloids are a type of synth voice, a final challenge could be replacing that monophonic lead with an actual synthetic vocal? Computers with only PSGs, or PCM driven by programs generating fairly simple waves with the CPU, were able to make recognisable speech and even sing somewhat. Dunno if MML has the flexibility to let you try something like that without going absolutely insane (I agree with the song subtitle...), as you'd probably need to either interlace it onto channels otherwise being used for other instruments, split one or two of the 4-op channels into pairs of 2-ops, use CSM mode, or run a background routine to do the synthesis for PCM output, but the possibility is there. (Wait, wasn't vocaloid initially just a bunch of samples that got pitch-shifted anyway? Maybe that could actually be adapted to run on PC98?)

[@gardenerofthesun]

Yeah, the YM2608 has an ADPCM channel, like 256 kilobytes, as far as I remember. Theoretically, I may somehow upload there, for example, voice fragments from the original song. On the other hand, you can tinker with FM operators for instruments and create something similar that would create the sound of vowel syllables, but I'm afraid it might be difficult, I'm still learning this damn thing :D But either way, huge thanks for that wall-of-text-like comment!! c:

[@tahrey]

@@gardenerofthesun hey, that's not too long... at least for me :D From what I remember of the chip, it can _directly_ access that much memory (or 1MB with the options being whether it's 1x256k or 8x256k RAM chips?), but it can also either pull data directly from the main bus, or have it fed to it by the CPU / computer's DMA system somehow (which I think is how the 2612 works?). The direct access is maybe more for a ROM-based instrument bank even? The datasheet helps a bit on that front, though it probably helps if you can read Japanese because the available translations have a heavy Engrish accent and there's some things I can't really decipher. Also the OPNs have one channel per FM bank (so two on the 2608) that can be split into 2x 2-op or 4x 1-op channels instead of 1x 4-op, each with separate key (note) values instead of having to share it like would be the case for the 4-op algorithms that otherwise _look_ like they'd work the same way. So if what you're playing on certain channels could sound the same or similar as a simpler type of FM, or even straight sinewaves, and you need additional voices, you can expand the polyphony that way, and I've seen some videos with tunes on the 2203 that use that idea and sound pretty good. The 4x 1-op mode can also be operated as "CSM" which is supposedly for low-CPU-load voice synthesis somehow (presumably if you can do it with 3 squares plus noise, or the even more primitive setup of the Speak & Spell, you can do it with 4 sines). That is however one of the worst translated and least understood parts (some of the better info comes from people trying to use the same thing on the 2203 as used in some MSX sound expansions) so you'd likely have to experiment a lot and see what happens, but the idea essentially seems to be that you can pre-load new frequency/volume values into each sine channel and then retrigger them all at once, and you shouldn't need even a full 60Hz update rate for a convincing effect? There's like ONE example of it being used in anger that I've heard, which was on Megadrive, and the lack of proper timer interrupts to ensure consistent updating made it kind of choppy and hard to decipher (and it doesn't help that it's in a language I don't speak). It'd be fun to have OPN or even Megadrive vocaloid, but don't feel under pressure to do it, it was more of an idle "this is great, but what if also..." thought. I'm under no illusion that it would be in any way easy, especially for a beginner, and it may mean restructuring quite a bit of the score as already written.

[@SilentSinnerInScarlet]

@@gardenerofthesun Or, have someone with Kaai Yuki’s voicebank recreate the vocal part, split it into short segments, bitcrush the segments, & package them together into a ADPCM (.PPC) bank file (or, better, a PPZ8-PCM / .PZI bank file, like I have done on my VOCALO98 projects). I would do it with my own V4 Yuki & Piapro Studio, if I had time (sadly I already have a schedule of my own for this year).

[@gardenerofthesun]

UPDATE!!! My fish fucking brain took over "not working" RSS. IT WAS WORKING ALL THE FUCKING TIME but my stupid ass never thought of adding RSS ROM dump next to player. MP# and WAV in the """pinned""" comment are updated, difference is FUCKING HUGE

[@iamfromspace6347]

Fire

[@geekazodium]

I love this

[@yt-is-mal]

You are very Based.

[@sukoko840]

❤

[@Spartanhero613]

no drums?

[@gardenerofthesun]

There is

[@Spartanhero613]

@@gardenerofthesun my ears might be shit, all I'm hearing is simulated, bitcrushed drums

[@gardenerofthesun]

@@Spartanhero613 Well, all I got here is these drums on third SSG channel, so, yeah

[@Spartanhero613]

@@gardenerofthesun looked it up, the bit I'm thinking of is the chip's "Rhythm Sound Source". just seemed like an interesting self-imposed challenge if it was intentional

[@gardenerofthesun]

@@Spartanhero613 Kinda right about the challenge! :D But the main problem was that my fish brain never succeeded at making it work

[@noobplaysgamez]

what program is that?

[@gardenerofthesun]

mml2vgm IDE to make this one, player is 98fmplayer

[@noobplaysgamez]

@@gardenerofthesun I cant find an instalation for it mind linking me a website where I can download it? Im like new to this and would really like to use this program

[@gardenerofthesun]

@@noobplaysgamez I guess I should make a tutorial later on that, huh But I should warn you, this is NOT a regular DAW like FL Studio, Ableton or stuff like that, you'll need here to write code, basically. Somekinda *_sheet music but programming_* github.com/kuma4649/mml2vgm - that's that one to write here github.com/myon98/98fmplayer - .M player github.com/rzf45/quick-pmd - separate compiler, optionally (bin/compiler, command line interface) mml-guide.readthedocs.io/ - most important damn thing you can have right now, pretty good documentation for MML

[@noobplaysgamez]

yep Im gonna need a tutorial on this have no idea what to do 😭@@gardenerofthesun

[@gardenerofthesun]

@@noobplaysgamez Well, guess that I'll do

[@elite784]

touhou

[@gardenerofthesun]

indeed :))

[@nightb0x]

sounds like pilotredsun

[@gardenerofthesun]

Huh, that's interesting

[@ignimeta]

This covers just so good it crunches in all the right ways. Ive become addicted to this cover so i tried (and failed) to install mml2vgmIDE ...my code brain yearns to make the crunchy chip noises. se... no pressure but if you made a tutorial i would be so eternally grateful. Thank you very much for the cover im going to download it and make it my ringtone :)

[@gardenerofthesun]

Soon, soon thanks anyways :))