Help with Mega Man 2 Sound Engine/Music

Blues1981 · Post by **Blues1981** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:59 pm

I'm about ready to wrap up my long-term Mega Man 2 hack. (As if there aren't enough MM2 hacks already) I was hoping to find someone willing to do a custom soundtrack for me. Maybe using tunes from other MM games or other NES games. Or, maybe someone who has some originals they might want to lend over to my hack. Being in the military, I haven't had much time to work on my hack... that's one reason it's been almost 3 years of working on it.

I wasn't too fond of the idea of joining a forum, as I usually just try and learn things on my own, but I'm really wanting to get this hack done, so I can stop sulking over it!

The hack is of The USA version of the MM2 Rom. If anyone is interested in doing custom music, please let me know.

Post by **Memblers** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 9:21 pm

In case you don't get any other replies, just wanted to say what you probably already know - music hacking is a very esoteric endeavor. Not a lot of hardcore hackers are musicians also. I'm always highly impressed when I see a ROM hack with changed music, even if it's kinda bad.

If you were by some miracle able to get Famitracker or Nerdtracker 2's replay engine hacked in there, I bet there would be no shortage of musicians who'd be interested (even myself). Or if you mean you could convert over an FT/NT2/MCK song yourself, that'd probably go over pretty well too (though they may be shocked by MM2's music engine limits). There are a lot of NES musicians over at the forums on http://2a03.org/, but most of them won't be able to do the hex-editor-style code and data editing.

MetalSlime · Post by **MetalSlime** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:05 am

That's what I was wondering too. Have you figured out MM2's music format?

bucky o'hare · Post by **bucky o'hare** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:50 am

Memblers wrote:I'm always highly impressed when I see a ROM hack with changed music, even if it's kinda bad.

There are a lot of NES musicians over at the forums on http://2a03.org/, but most of them won't be able to do the hex-editor-style code and data editing.

There is this guy Optomon who is quite adept with hex-editing NES music. AFAIK, that's his only method for making nsfs.
Here's a castlevania III hack that's in progress-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3hHTTaJLDs&fmt=18
(you can hear two different tracks in that vid, one an arrangement and the other original)

I imagine he is probably bogged down with that hack, but figured I'd mention him.

kalzone · Post by **kalzone** » Wed Dec 02, 2009 5:40 pm

If you want, I have a hacked emulator that just replaces the MM2 soundtrack with hardcoded MP3 files you could adapt, but there are several caveats.

(A) I was an idiot and hardcoded the paths and points where the MP3s should loop.
(B) I was an idiot and lost the code, and rapidshare took down the copy I posted there.
(C) It requires patching a MM2 rom to mute the music.

However, there's a light at the end of the tunnel--I know all of the addresses of all of the file paths and 'loop points' so they're still really easy to change. It's just annoying. Also, as a result, any time I put in '0' as a loop point, you won't be able to change it, because the compiler switched out push [DWORD] for push [BYTE] and so there aren't 4 bytes available to specify a much larger number.

Also, ridicule me if you like, guys, but I had no idea what I was doing, and no experience with emulators or the NES, so I don't really care.