I’m guessing it was an alternate name for Cammy that got ditched. It’s right there with the regular four new challengers’ names. It must have been scrapped pretty early, because it only appears once or twice.
Here’s a mockup I threw together showing some of the alternate HUD graphics:
Hmmm, I can’t seem to make one, I’m so bad at photoshop.
Could you show the full loops for Ryu/Akuma’s fireballs?
Sure, I’ve already got the sprites ripped for them, I’ll throw them together into some animated GIFs.
Bumping this 'cos i’m sure people in the ST forum would be really interested in all of this stuff. The unused graphics looks awesome and really odd. And the unused ‘sarah’ is really intriguing either another character or an early name for cammy, either way it’s really interesting.
How come there’s a different, bigger font for the new challengers? is that the case with everyone or were they maybe going to be used in an early version of the intro?
Also, did you get any further with the ST soundset felineki? Anything I could utilise with a PC based music program?
I’m thinking it’s an early name for Cammy, although that’s just a suspicion. I don’t think it’s anything that has ever been mentioned in any publication or anything.
As for the two fonts, the big, italic, all-caps font is for the Vs. screen, the smaller font is for under the lifebars during the match. The New Challengers just happened to have all their name graphics lumped together there.
As for the instrument rips, I do have a full set as WAV files. I’m still not certain I’ve ripped them at the maximum possible quality, but they’re certainly better than some of my earlier attempts. Here’s a .zip with every musical sample from ST, including a few that were never actually used in any of the songs as far as I know. They have loop points placed, so they should be pretty much ready to plug into a tracker or sampler. They already had a lowpass applied to them to remove some of the hiss which was distracting on a few of the samples, but I’m afraid it might have muddied some of the others a bit too much. Unfortunately, I don’t have the pre-lowpass rips anymore, so it looks like I’ll need to rip the whole set again one of these days… ><;
TRIVIA TIME: Many of the SSF2T’s instrument samples came from the Roland U-220 synth. Crash cymbal, shakuhachi, flute, synth bass, synth brass, and guitar power chord sounds all came from it.
gold dust, lol. That’s awesome thanks dude. i just have to work out exactly how I’m going to use them. I think i’m going to have to wait until I get my pc set up so i can actually use my music programs.
Ooh, that’s very nice! Did you use something like Nebula Jukebox to help with transcribing? I’ve played around with it before (as well as Hoot, a similar program that supports a wider variety of games), and it’s really useful.
That I did. That particular song uses all 16 channels, and if you look at it in the tracker, it’ll look kinda messed, but I made sure every last one was in the same spot. I realize now some samples are a bit louder than they need to be, and I might up a corrected version later.
Also, will samplesets for other games follow? Or is this gonna be ST-only? Would be nice to be able to get accuracy for other games as well. :3
I could probably rip some other sample sets eventually. Although I’m still figuring out how to maximize their quality. I did rip the samples from Gradius III recently, although the one that’s supposed to loop (G3brass.wav) doesn’t have a loop point placed yet. Suggestions for any particular game(s) you’d like samples from?
Are there any interesting ones in other CPS2 fighters? I know someone put together a ‘CPS2 soundfont’, but those were mostly Mega Man Power Fighters samples.
Maybe… oh, I dunno, MSHvsSF? Darkstalkers? Up to you, I suppose.
Mind the two month bump, but it occurred to me that the other thing you might be able to do is just teach me how to go about doing my own sets.
I’m sure the old saying applies here and doesn’t need repeating. :3
Sure. I haven’t gotten around to ripping any others yet, but I could tell you about how I did it.
The first method is actual ripping of the original data by opening up the PCM ROMs in a sound editor, trimming out individual sounds, and setting loop points according to values read from the game’s RAM or ROM. The game stores all of its raw sound waves in one or more ROM chips, which are represented by some of the files within the ZIP you download. For SSF2T, it’s the sfx.11m and sfx.12m files.
These PCM ROMs are basically big, long sound files. If you open one up in a sound editor and play it back, you’ll hear a long stream of instruments, sounds, and voice clips, one after the other. When the game plays back sound, the sound chip reads values from the sound code ROM that tells it where the sound it should play back begins, ends, and loops within that big PCM file. The values define these offsets in samples (basically the “pixels” of digital audio files).
You can read these values either from the sound chip’s RAM, or from the game’s sound code ROM. To read them from the sound chip’s RAM, you’ll have to pause or stop the chip while it’s in the middle of playing the sound you want info on. In the game’s sound code ROM, each individual sound will have a definition, giving its start, end, and loop values. Getting them from the ROM is probably more difficult, but it would give the advantage of giving info on any sounds that aren’t actually used in game. I only managed to find the ones in SSF2T’s sound code ROM by virtue of them being neatly organized one after the other. From what I’ve seen, this might not be the case in other games.
This method (extracting sounds straight from the PCM ROM) has something of a disadvantage in that when the sound is played back in another tracker or music program, they won’t sound quite as good as they do in-game, because the game’s sound chip (or emulation thereof) processes them in a certain way. Typically, the sounds you rip will end up sounding duller and muddier than they did in-game. I’ve found that boosting the high end of the equalizer on your final mix will help replicate the original chip’s sound somewhat.
The second method is more “capturing” than ripping. It entails hacking the sound chip’s RAM to force it to play back an individual sound, looping, recording it in a sound editor, then placing loops manually.
The advantage of this was that you were able to capture the sound chip’s processing. To do this, I would find an individual looping sound effect that uses only one channel in the game’s sound test (for example, a dizzy sound in SSF2T). Then I would force values for another sound into this channel’s addresses, and play the sound code. Thus, I would get a constant, looping version of any sound in the ROM I wanted.
This is the method I used for the SSF2T samples I currently have uploaded. However, I wouldn’t recommend it. I used it because at the time, the muddiness of the ripped samples was bothering me, and I didn’t quite understand the processing that the chip does. Doing something to your final mix (like boosting the high end of the EQ, as I suggested) would recreate the effect better than trying to capture the processing within the sample. Plus, you’ll be reading all the value’s you’d need to do the true ripping method anyway. Also, this method entails placing loop points through examination of your recorded sound, which can be tedious. Finally, this method bloats the file sizes of your sounds. So I’d highly recommend the first method.
For a tool to use to find the values you need, I’d recommend Hoot. It’s a sound player along the lines of Nebula Jukebox or M1, but it has a display that shows you all of the sound chip’s values as it plays. Note that Hoot won’t be able to play most arcade ROMs right out of the box. You have to add their definitions to its XML files. Note that these definitions will also show you which of the ROM’s files are its PCM data.
I’ll try to get a diagram up for you soon that will show you what each address defines for the CPS2’s QSound chip. It’s the only one I really understand at the moment.
Ok, do you happen to have a link to the driver itself? Both links you posted went to the same place, and I’m not finding any way to load anything so far.
Oh, my mistake. Here’s the correct link for the drivers. Just copy the definitions you find there and paste them into the appropriate XML file in Hoot’s XML directory using a text editor. I’ll get the diagram for the QSound addresses made soon. It’s been a while since I last worked with it, and it’s starting to confuse me. 
Hello All. I’m new here and this topic interested me, and I was suprised to see where it had gone to. I do a lot of music myself and I have some songs on youtube with sounds similar to CPS2 quality. The suprising this is, it’s a soundfont–a High-Quality General MIDI soundfont!!!
I would be happy to share my video link with you all if anyone’s interested…