Sylphia Hard Rock version

[ParanoiaDragon]

Well, here it is, the hard rock/heavy metal(technically Progressive Rock) version of Sylphia.  I had been wanting to do a project of taking a shooter & changing the music to be more Lords of Thunder-esque.  I asked for suggestions, & Sylphia came up.  The one cd shooter I don't own(atleast, anymore ).  I went thru the music, remembered a few of the tracks, noted that the game would really benefit from some rock, rather then techno.  Also noticed that the music in the original game was too quiet, so, you won't find that problem here!

It took some time to find the right songs for the right levels, not to mention the 2 cinemas & bosses.  Also added an extra track for the final boss.  Basically, the final boss, in the original version didn't have a final boss song.  It just reused 2 old boss songs.  Well, now, since there were a couple of repeated/clone tracks in the game, I replaced one of them with a new song.  Then Tomaitheous went & changed where the game would seek the last song, & changed it from one track, to a different one so we could use a brand new song for the final boss.

Tomaitheous did all the extra work.  Basically, I went thru all of Vinnie Moore's albums, & matched up the songs to the levels & did some early testing on real hardware to make sure everything was working as far as I could possibly be capable of.  Then,  I laid the rest in Tom's hands, including hosting of the new patched game.

I think that's everything, so, here's the game http://pcedev.net/sylphia/sylphia.rar

I hope you guys enjoy this lil' effort of us Frozen Utopians.  Maybe consider it something to sink your teeth into while we work on our various game projects

Edit-I forgot to mention, I left track 8 as-is, since, it's a clone track, didn't see any point in replacing it, & didn't want to put another extra song on there, incase I may want to do another project like this someday, don't wanna eat up all my resources

[peperocket]

Very good job man ! 

Do you have write and play all songs yourself

I've listen all of them and it's a true professional work !

Let's go to play sylphia now !!!

[ParanoiaDragon]

All the songs in this game are by Vinnie Moore, mostly from his earlier albums Mind's Eye & Time Odyssey, here's a listing of his albums at Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-9526023-0456135?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=vinnie+moore

I do write music, but, none of my stuff sounds THIS good

[termis]

Just played it.   I actually never tried the original version, but this one sounds excellent!  Fantastic job!

The game itself isn't too shabby as well, though it seems to be slightly on the easy side, at least on default settings.  I got to level 7 or 8 on my first try.

The only things I noticed were: The intro music cut off abruptly about 2-3 seconds before the intro scene finished, and the the x-audio batch file didn't run properly because it was looking for an xaudio.dll file.  So I just used another program (dBpowerAMP) to convert the mp3 files to wav files and burned it.  Perhaps using another program than the supplied x-audio.exe file threw off the music sync a little bit?

Still waiting for the official release of Mysterious Song. 

[malducci]

I forgot the DLL file? Damn it

[ParanoiaDragon]

Glad you like!  I think this music fits the setting more.  I did the best I could on the intro music.  Whenever I made it longer then the original file, it litterally cut off, because the cinemas only allow a certain amount of time, before they load to the next part.  It DID fade out right?  It does on mine.

The levels & bosses thankfully didn't require the original length, so I was able to put the new songs in as is.  Infact, originally when I was inserting the new songs, I was cutting them & fading them, so they would be the original length, but noticed that you would get to the end of the song, & then loop it, before the level ended, so, I went & tried using the full songs, & it worked to my surprise!

As for the X-audio thing, yeah, it didn't work for me either, so I haven't gotten the downloaded file to work yet.  But, I have my original file, which Tomaitheous sent me a patch for, & everything works great on it.  I keep forgetting to mention it to him whenever I talk to him.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Oh, there you are!  The current problem I have, is when I run the run me bat file, it says The procedure entry point decoder_version could not be located in the dynamic link library xaudio.dll.

[termis]

Glad you like!  I think this music fits the setting more.  I did the best I could on the intro music.  Whenever I made it longer then the original file, it litterally cut off, because the cinemas only allow a certain amount of time, before they load to the next part.  It DID fade out right?  It does on mine.

No, it actually did cut right off.  I just tried it again, and this happened actually more like 6-7 seconds before the intro fades out into the title screen (just as the comet-thingy starts shooting into the air).  Perhaps I'll try burning another copy sometime.

[ParanoiaDragon]

So......it never gets to fade then.  That's wierd.  All I can think of, is that the song is starting too late.  Are you using it on real hardware or an emulator?  I'm assuming the music file itself, does fade, & doesn't just cut, so, it's gotta be some wierd quirk, where the music is loading too late for whatever reason, though, I did a bunch of testing, & never had that happen.  However, I haven't tested this download, I've only tested what I put together, along with a patch I applied to the iso.

[termis]

So......it never gets to fade then.  That's wierd.  All I can think of, is that the song is starting too late.  Are you using it on real hardware or an emulator?  I'm assuming the music file itself, does fade, & doesn't just cut, so, it's gotta be some wierd quirk, where the music is loading too late for whatever reason, though, I did a bunch of testing, & never had that happen.  However, I haven't tested this download, I've only tested what I put together, along with a patch I applied to the iso.

I'm running on the actual hardware, a PC Engine Duo.  And I just burned another copy, and even used the included xaudio.exe and the batch file to convert the mp3 to wav files (by grabbing the xaudio.dll file from here), but I end up with the same result.  The track doesn't play out to the end, and cuts off at around 2:11~2:12 portion.  When I play the mp3/wav file itself on the computer, it seems to fade out okay.  Strange.

Anyway, the intro track itself seems _perfect_ for the cut scenes.  I can't believe that the music wasn't written for this particular intro. 

[ParanoiaDragon]

That's bizarre, I don't know why it's doing that, maybe Malducci can figure it out, & upload a new version.

As for the intro music, yeah, I just went thru all Vinnie Moore's album's, & that song really fit!  Almost as if it seriously was written for the cinema.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Ok, I just tested the downloaded version, I do notice, that on real hardware, the music doesn't start as quickly as on an emu.  But, the music at the end of the cinema didn't cut out for me, it faded perfectly on mine, so.......not sure what to tell you

[termis]

Ok, I just tested the downloaded version, I do notice, that on real hardware, the music doesn't start as quickly as on an emu.  But, the music at the end of the cinema didn't cut out for me, it faded perfectly on mine, so.......not sure what to tell you

Yeah, I think my Duo just didn't like this particular brand of CD-Rs.  I booted it up on my SCD-ROM system, and once it cut off (in some totally random place in the middle), and once it faded out okay.  So it's definitely the media/hardware combination on my side.   

[ParanoiaDragon]

Ok, that makes sense.  I've been using Memorex as of late.

BTW, what does everybody else that's tried my version of the game think of it?  Questions, comments

[esteban]

I have never heard of Vinnie Moore before... wasn't he one of the musical celebrities who sported a TurboExpress when he was touring? Oh, wait, that was someone else....