[SilentIce]

A Lunar: SSSC problem! In-depth. Tracks / Save States

A curious issue with a certain track(s) on Lunar has shown up for me. When I load the game using the ISO image, for the Ocarina song Thoughts Far Away, which is also a voice track for a specific scene in the game, it doesn't make any sound for it. But when I load the game using the CCD (thats the change CD file right?), and the game loads, the track is heard when I play the song.

I experimented with DAEMON tools lite and mounted the ISO image on it and tried it that way; it showed all the little files of the game and all in a folder and when I loaded the "cd" onto the emulator it worked, but still no sound on that track. When I loaded the CCD on the DAEMON, however, it opened up windows media player and played 2 tracks. The first track was the Thoughts Far Away that wouldn't play in the game with the ISO image loaded. Also, with the CCD mounted and the game loaded, it played.

Is this simply an issue with the ISO itself? For some reason loading it from the CCD has that track enabled but loading from the ISO doesn't.

Video - P.E.Op.S. Soft Driver 1.18:

RESOLUTION & COLORS
Fullscreen mode 640 x 480 - default
Color depth - 16 bit
No dithering

FRAMERATE
Use Fps Limit
Auto-detect FPS/Frame skipping limit

OPTIONS
Activate Special Game fixes (the one for Lunar)

----------------------

Sound - ePSXe SPU core 1.7.0
No configuration (have tried using Eternal SPU plugin 1.41 with the various options selected and unselected and no difference in the situation).

----------------------
ePSXe CDR WNT/W2K core 1.7.0
--F:-- selected as Cdrom letter.

----------------------
Bios
SCPH1001.BIN

As this is ePSXe, let me make a note to remind that the CD change is fail in this version (things are not supposed to get worse as the number gets higher :s), so suggestions like change the CD aren't going to work, and yes, I know I might try to downgrade the emulator, but i'd rather keep this one and see if a solution or fix for the CD changing issues comes buy (iso changing/CD mounted changing did not work).

 

[shalma]

That's normal behavior.

The ISO/BIN/IMG file by itself does not contain the CDDA track information, which is why it didn't play. The CCD (CloneCD) / CUE contains the time data for the audio tracks.

I thought ePSXe 'Run ISO' auto-searches for CCD/CUE files when you load an ISO (maybe not though).

Can't comment about CD changing with 1.7.0. Be warned there is no 'save point' at the disc swap for this game.

ex. CUE file w/out CDDA
FILE "test.bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00


ex. CUE file with CDDA
FILE "test.bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 00 02:40:32
    INDEX 01 02:42:32
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    INDEX 00 04:04:60
    INDEX 01 04:06:60

 

[SilentIce]

Is there some way to, just, pop it in there somehow? Or otherwise, what do I have to do to get it playing from just loading the ISO.

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

Actually.. it should be pointed out that the ISO format is a Single Track only format, and will not store AUDIO tracks.

 

[SilentIce]

Where is the track sitting than? Theres a 24,501 kb SUB file, does loading from the CCD somehow point it to there?

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

the Sub file consists of Sub channel data, that is, data within data.
the Audio tracks are stored in the IMG file, which which the CCD and SUB file are used to point to audio tracks and data points.

 

[SilentIce]

So then.. the audio track is in the ISO?

 

[shalma]

Depends on the ISO format - 2048 bytes, 2352 bytes, full RAW.
- ISO does imply 2048, which means no redbook audio. You can create 2352 bin and rename as ISO (just to confuse everyone ;p)
- BIN/IMG implies 2352, which is what we want. That has the "audio data" stored in the file but needs the CCD/CUE to tell the CD reader where the audio sits.

Oh now I get what Squall-Leonheart is pointing out.

What's your ISO file size? 614666976 bytes is the redump.org amount - yours should be near that marker.


EDIT:
Tried this out. My files:
game.img / game.bin / game.iso
game.sub
game.ccd
game.cue

Run ISO
1) Load game.ccd - audio tracks loaded + subchannel
2) Load game.cue - audio tracks loaded + subchannel
3) Load game.img - subchannel only
4) Load game.bin - subchannel only
5) Load game.iso - subchannel only
6) Load game.sub - barf

Only the ccd/cue will work for audio.

Maybe try ripping using Alcohol 120?

 

[SilentIce]

The thing is though, there are other voice tracks in the game that play. Why do those play without loading through the CCD, but these 2 tracks dont?

 

[shalma]

Track #2 is pure silence.
Track #1 - the game uses it.. err.. maybe to get around some limitations with playing the vocals and the sound effects you hear with the machinery grinding and teleportation. That's just a lousy guess - it's nice to have a clean high-quality recording though.

The rest of the voice samples are stored in the XA files. It's like the vocals in Tales of Destiny 2, Metal Gear Solid, and plenty such - they're not audio tracks but just 'normal' data.

 

[SilentIce]

I was just mostly curious about the "mechanics" of it..

 

[shalma]

The SPU has its own RAM cache which crunches the data and produces sound effects / voices / background music (BGM). Normally we have to upload data from CPU -> SPU. This means while we can use compression on voice data, we still have that limited memory space to play with. It's good enough for typical (small) voice data like battles.

Then there's movies. Usually the sound track is compiled together with the movie and the Playstation is able to play this on-the-fly. Again no special audio track needed.

Now our redbook track is >10MB - that's way too big to store in the CPU RAM. SPU is still too small.

Tales of Destiny 2 streams the voices (dialogue, non-battle) using DMA. It's fast and doesn't have to store MB of data in the CPU or SPU. It's like movie playing. The downside appears to be that you can't play new sound samples while in this SPU DMA mode (I think.. I'm not 100% confident). So the music cuts out when this happens.

Tales of Phantasia is able to use a software mixer - it takes the BGM + sound effects + voices and computes the results for the SPU to spit out. Really impressive on the SNES.

For Lunar, we have the Ocarina song + the background noises. For time purposes, it's slower to keep a loop going like this: (read from CDROM) + (CPU -> SPU transfer) + (play -small- audio track sample). While adding the BG noises.

If we do the DMA trick, we won't have access to the background noises but we won't have to use the CDDA audio track. This is okay for the Lunar ending outtakes - we just listen to minutes of pure audio data stored in the data track.

CDDA has its own output channel - seperate from the SPU output chip. That way we can play the Ocarina song (CDDA) and combine it with those sound effects (SPU) mentioned earlier. A good example is Megaman X3 / Rayman with its constant BGM music (CDDA) while having a wide array of game sounds (SPU) at the same time.

*whew*

 

[SilentIce]

o.o* Ok, I think thats all the information I need. Thanks for all the quick responses.

 

[SilentIce]

Now i'm curious about save states. Again, fail disk changing is fail. So, I saved a "put in disc 2" save it, and changed the save state files name so that it would load on CD 2's save state list. And it does, it loads to the screen that says "change to CD 2". But how do I make it continue the game. CD 2 is "in". I also tried doing it by mounting CD 2 image on DAEMON tools lite and loading the save state there. Still couldn't make it continue from there. Any thoughts?

 

[shalma]

CDROM does work.

1.7.0 internal CDR + SaPu 1.3 CDR:
- load CD1 to virtual clonedrive
- hit swap point
- change disc -> cdrom
- load CD2 in drive
- press joypad button
- movie started

Enough games require that you 'open' then 'close' the CDROM case. Effectively, change disc -> cdrom simulates that part. Using savestates doesn't do that.

Try loading that savestate though, do the change disc, and press the joypad - see if it works.

Or just press the joypad and test that route too.

 

[SilentIce]

Yay it worked, thank you! =D The farthest I ever got in this game. XD .. However I just used the Blizzard skill and about 7 other voices on the disc played. ;0 So now that i'm on disc 2, i think i'll switch back to the other plugin i was using. =D