SVC Chaos, Street Fighter, SFTM - Background Music Select

[Maj]

I use an older version of MAME (0.105) for recording clips to make combo videos. I've figured out how to avoid or disable background music for a lot of games but i've had no luck with these three romsets: svc, sf, sftm

If there was a cheat to select background music in the middle of a match, i'm thinking it would be possible to choose something short like the "Game Over" music. That way it would run out ten seconds into the round and then there would be silence for the rest of the round. This would be tremendously helpful for video editing purposes.

Unfortunately i have zero experience with creating cheats so if you guys could find something that would be awesome!

[Maj]

So is this asking for something impossible or is it simply not interesting enough for anyone here? Does the cheat engine not cover sound emulation?

I've taken care of sf and i don't see myself going back to it anytime soon, but background music muting in svc and sftm would be really nice to have right about now.

[Pugsy]

Using the old cheat engine (or the new one if it's ever finished) to find such cheats is not really an option - you see the whole point of the cheat engine is to find differences. You want Infinite Lives so you search for a location that has decreased by 1 when you lose a life and repeat it to you find the lives location - this technique is used for most cheats you first need to both have something and not have something a sufficient number of times to find a cheat. So to use the cheat engine to find such a cheat would require the level not to be playing the background music as well as to be playing it to be of any use for standard RAM cheat finding.

The only real way to make such a cheat is to use the debugger to find the code in the soundcpu that plays the background music and stop it being called without stopping the sound effects at the same time. Possible, yes very..how interesting it is to do depends on the person doing it, personally I think it's a waste of time - but hey that's just me.

Another option maybe to look at the driver's code and see if there's anything you can do in that to turn off the background music.

[Maj]

waste of time

: (

I'll give you 20 bucks if you do it and it works in MAME 0.105.

Per game!

(svc first please)

Please?

[NotAGoodName]

RE: SVC

I found address 1FC43B which contains the value for what track is playing, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Freezing it has no effect. I guess someone smart enough to figure out the actual debugging use of the debugger can figure out what's writing to it, but I don't have the patience for it.

I mapped out some of the values for the music tracks if it's any help.
27 - Mr. Karate stage
28 - Heaven stage
29 - Hell
2A - Player Select
2B - The very first bit of when the characters start talking to each other
31 - Game's Intro Music
40 - Violent Ken / Orochi Iori stage

[Pugsy]

Was a little bit bored, so what the hell...I'll back pedal a little. NotAGoodName's address was a good starting point.

This seems to work in MAME 0.126...not done any thorough testing

Code: Select all

:svc:20800000:011276:00000060:FFFFFFFF:No Background Music

[NotAGoodName]

Re: SFTM

Damn this game sucks. Interlace artifacts in the sprites and about three music tracks. Speaking of music, I kind of found a way to turn it off. This one weird sound keeps playing. Perhaps it's playing as an actual sound and not bg music? At any rate, it should be good enough. It should at least work for those stages with the music that starts with the stomp beat thing (which is all but two or three of them). I've had too much SFTM to bother testing it any further.

Not in the old .dat format because it runs on the sound cpu and I suck and barely knew how to use that one to begin with. Hopefully Pugsy can convert it for you.

Code: Select all

 <cheat desc="No music">
    <script state="run">
      <action>soundcpu.pb@2F09=00</action>
      <action>soundcpu.pb@2F20=00</action>
      <action>soundcpu.pb@2F22=00</action>
      <action>soundcpu.pb@2F23=00</action>
    </script>
  </cheat>

[Pugsy]

Nice work, though they are not converteable to old format - something in MAME must have changed. I use 0.126 to find cheats whenever possible and all I achieved by poking the RAM was to slow the game down or lose all sound.
Converting the above cheats to old format achieved exactly the same thing.....bizarre.

Code: Select all

:sftm:01000000:2F09:00000000:FFFFFFFF:No InGame Background Music (NOT WORKING)
:sftm:01010000:2F20:00000000:FFFFFFFF:No InGame Background Music (NOT WORKING) (2/4)
:sftm:01010000:2F22:00000000:FFFFFFFF:No InGame Background Music (NOT WORKING) (3/4)
:sftm:01010000:2F23:00000000:FFFFFFFF:No InGame Background Music (NOT WORKING) (4/4)

[Maj]

SvC Chaos works! Many thanks to both of you. You've got no idea how much time you just saved me. Kick down your paypal addresses and i'll send you some moneys.

Clearly the word you guys are looking for in trying to describe SFTM is awesome! Its sole mission in life, carried out with unwavering dedication, is to baffle and astound everyone who ever encounters it. I recorded some SFTM Guile combos a while back and people still ask me about that dumb game.

[NotAGoodName]

Guile is the only good character in the game.

Anyways. Sorry it doesn't work in older MAME. I was working with MAME Plus 0.130u4 and it works fine, but that slowdown and no sound behavior isn't news to me. Playing with certain values, especially north of these, tended to crash the sound chip. I have a feeling that freezing these addresses simply causes a type of fault, so maybe ES5506 emulation has improved.

Try just the first two addresses and see if it still does it. If so, it's probably not going to work that way.

[Maj]

I've never seen anyone even attempt to put together a tier list for that game, but Guile definitely isn't the only interesting character combo-wise. In fact it would be pretty easy to put together 10 minutes of great material - combos, glitches, oddities, whatever.

Personally i like the game because it adds variety to any mix, which is also the only reason i like SvC Chaos. But i think SFTM has real potential to be entertaining if someone puts a little effort into it.

[Pugsy]

Kick down your paypal addresses and i'll send you some moneys.

Don't bother with any for me, chuck it at a worthy cause - either a MAME dumping project or a medical research charity.

[Mohsin]

Pugsy, he owe u like 60 bux

[Maj]

Don't bother with any for me, chuck it at a worthy cause - either a MAME dumping project or a medical research charity.

Consider it done sir. Thanks again for the SvCC cheat. I'll pass it along to both the Capcom and SNK fighting game communities.

And if you ever have any luck with muting music in SFTM, even if it's a month from now, that would make a lot of people very happy as well.