How come no one has made hacks of the KOF neo cd games that fixes the music playback?

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xenphor

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So the arranged KOF osts are definitely amazing but the way they are integrated into the games is really annoying. I believe KOF 94 is the only one where the music plays back uninterrupted. Every other KOF game that has an arranged soundtrack is chopped up, which becomes really annoying. How hard would it be to just hack the games so they play the entire music track like in 94? I'm sure it wouldn't work on real hardware, but who would want to play the later KOF neocd releases on real hardware anyway with the load times? In an emulator you could have the definitive version of the game with no load times and amazing soundtracks.

Funny enough, this actually kind of happens in the current MAME version, where the music will keep playing through the loading screens (until the match loads), but it is considered inaccurate so will probably be fixed someday.
 
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city41

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It might also be possible to hack an emulator to play the CD tracks when playing a cart version of the game.
 
BlackaneseNiNjA

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Sup xenphor. Although not the exact neo cd version, the japanese ps2 kof online collections feature the option to switch to the arranged soundtracks and does not stop the music track during round change. :buttrock:
 
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xenphor

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BlackaneseNiNjA said:
Sup xenphor. Although not the exact neo cd version, the japanese ps2 kof online collections feature the option to switch to the arranged soundtracks and does not stop the music track during round change. :buttrock:
Click to expand...

but does it support 240p? Or at least 480p? I don't see it on any lists.
 
BlackaneseNiNjA

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xenphor said:
but does it support 240p? Or at least 480p? I don't see it on any lists.
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I’m not sure what your exact options are as far as progressive display options go outside of the ps2’s native progressive option or upscalers, but I also want to add that you should avoid the western version of the kof collection at all costs.

If you decide to pick up the ps2 compilations stick to King of Fighters 94 Re-bout (the original version is present on the disc), King of Fighters Orochi Hen, and King of Fighters Nests Hen. The western version of King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match is fine though since it is the same as the japanese neogeo online collection version.
 
LoneSage

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What are the problems with the western PS2 ports?
 
BlackaneseNiNjA

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LoneSage said:
What are the problems with the western PS2 ports?
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Sup LS! Although the western version adds some extras and has some challenge trials, it has a number of bugs and problems. For starters the arranged versions of some of the music is present in the menus, but it is not possible to play with the arranged soundtracks during gameplay. Additionally, there are sound glitches and audio delays present during matches. For example, Terry will perform his burn knuckle attack and the audio will play well after the move has been executed (the dreamcast port of Garou MotW has the same audio problems unfortunately).

The western version of the King of Fighters Orochi Saga features kof 94 - 98 on a single disc, but the compilation is so sloppy I never understood why we didn’t just get the superior japanese versions of the kof collections to begin with. Oh well.
 
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xenphor

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It seems the japanese ps2 version is pretty expensive unfortunately. If it's only 480i I'm not sure it's worth it just for proper arranged soundtracks.
 
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Neo Alec

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KOF '94 plays uninterrupted because there is no team edit and the characters are small enough to all fit in memory at the same time.

Resuming a music track was very rare for titles utilizing red book CD audio across all consoles. I remember at least one game that did it, but it escapes me now. Basically, the game would have to be programmed to hold the time in the music track where playback left off in memory while the game loaded. Most games didn't bother with this. It most likely would have further increased disc access time between rounds while the disc drive seeks the last played time in the music track.
 
city41

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Is it possible for the neo cd to seek inside a track, or must it always start at the beginning of the track?
 
Neo Alec

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I would assume it's possible, based on other consoles at the time. Look at Cosmic Fantasy 2 on the PC Engine. The music is all on one audio track. The system has to seek to a specific time in the track just to play the game's BGM's.

But it doesn't surprise me if no developer ever bothered with it on the NGCD. On the KOF games we have two different tracks for each BGM -- one that starts somewhere in the middle so that the music isn't always starting from the beginning for each round.
 
city41

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Neo Alec said:
But it doesn't surprise me if no developer ever bothered with it on the NGCD. On the KOF games we have two different tracks for each BGM -- one that starts somewhere in the middle so that the music isn't always starting from the beginning for each round.
Click to expand...

According to neogeodev it doesn't look like it's possible to start anywhere but the beginning of a track. Which is probably why SNK implemented KOF games that way.

The CD commands are

neogeodev said:
$00: Read track and loop
$02: Pause ?
$04: Read track and loop (confirmed)
$05: Read track, no loop
$06: Pause playback (mutnat, 0x0600)
$07: Resume playback (mutnat, 0x0700)
Click to expand...


For each command you can tell it which track and that's it. So seems it always starts at the start of the track.
 
theMot

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xenphor said:
So the arranged KOF osts are definitely amazing but the way they are integrated into the games is really annoying. I believe KOF 94 is the only one where the music plays back uninterrupted. Every other KOF game that has an arranged soundtrack is chopped up, which becomes really annoying. How hard would it be to just hack the games so they play the entire music track like in 94? I'm sure it wouldn't work on real hardware, but who would want to play the later KOF neocd releases on real hardware anyway with the load times? In an emulator you could have the definitive version of the game with no load times and amazing soundtracks.

Funny enough, this actually kind of happens in the current MAME version, where the music will keep playing through the loading screens (until the match loads), but it is considered inaccurate so will probably be fixed someday.
Click to expand...

I want this, I want that... why don’t you pull your finger out and fix it you lazy bastard.
 
Neo Alec

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city41 said:
According to neogeodev it doesn't look like it's possible to start anywhere but the beginning of a track. Which is probably why SNK implemented KOF games that way.

The CD commands are




For each command you can tell it which track and that's it. So seems it always starts at the start of the track.
Click to expand...
Interesting.
 
Viewpoint

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Shame that so much bewlshit has to be done to enjoy these arranged soundtracks in the game. I loved the KoF 96 arrange.
 
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xenphor

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Ok, so on my quest to play the kof games with AST I bought the orochi saga japanese version. Now I'm realizing that there is no way to play the original king of fighters 98 with the AST playing continuously!? The dreamcast version has messed up playback and neocd is not any better of course. Everyone says the US orochi saga with 98 isn't good so that pretty much only leaves 98UM with 2d backgrounds, but that is not the original. Am I missing something?
 
bulbousbeard

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It'd be trivial to do this in MAME starting with the cart version (who wants load times, anyway?) and changing it to play the Neo CD music.

This has already been done with dozens of games in MAME (maybe it's already been done for KOF).
 
Azathoth

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BlackaneseNiNjA said:
The western version of King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match is fine though since it is the same as the japanese neogeo online collection version.
Click to expand...

Western PS2 release of UM is inferior; it suffers from the same stupid censorship with no way to remove it.
 
BlackaneseNiNjA

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Azathoth said:
Western PS2 release of UM is inferior; it suffers from the same stupid censorship with no way to remove it.
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Sup Azathoth. Fair point regarding regional censorship. I was referring to the intact gameplay of the series compared to the buggy western version of the ps2 orochi saga collection (94-98). Of course, sadly, the removed bounce etc, was always part of the us region releases (though this was restored on certain english ports such as King of Fighters 95 on playstation 1) and was unfortunately usually the tradeoff for the english text if the original rom is being presented.
 
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