Beneath a Steel Sky Audio Restoration Project

[tonyw]

What an HONOR!



I'm never going to close this Browser tab again!

Ooh stop it

I would like to say, though, how fantastic it is that so much hard work has, and is, going into keeping BASS alive. Not just alive, but improved! Awesome.

[sev]

He is.


Eugene

[joachimeberhard]

I would like to say, though, how fantastic it is that so much hard work has, and is, going into keeping BASS alive. Not just alive, but improved! Awesome.

Now THAT'S some approvement, isn't it?

I'm glad you support this eager restoration project!

Joachim

[edweird]

It's great, and very motivating, to have your support Tony.

Edit: also thanks to someone called Benni who PM'd me and can provide midis that he's managed to convert from 8 of the game's tracks, that's bound to speed up the procedure a bit.

[Kurufinwe]

There's a fairly complete collection of BASS MIDIs there, if that may help. (Dont ask me how I stumbled upon those, that was some time ago and I've long since forgotten).

[edweird]

That site seems to be down.. The problem with most midis of the game is that they are fine for listening, but the notes aren't actually in time with midi's bpm, which means there's a fair bit of extra work before they're usable starting points (still good to have though). Benni has manually corrected this in his files though, which is what I probably would have done but now don't have to

Also thanks to lavosspawn who sent me a lot of music from the game. His files made me aware of some some musical cues that I'd previously overlooked which get me wondering if there are more that I've missed. I assume all of the cues are listed (or likely separate files) in the source code.. would it be possible for one of the devs here to list them for me so I know if I'm missing something? Thanks

[sev]

That site seems to be down..

Hmm. worken no problem for me.

Also thanks to lavosspawn who sent me a lot of music from the game.... would it be possible for one of the devs here to list them for me so I know if I'm missing something? Thanks

Heh, LavosSpawn is one of the devs you should ask questions about BASS engine . Ever studied our Credits page?


Eugene

[lavosspawn]

No, there is no list... but I made one for you:

Section 0 (intro): 2 Tracks

1. The intro music
2. Second part of the intro, is played after the helicopter crashed. It always stops somewhere in the middle with ScummVM. I suppose it was made to be longer than the intro, because the Amiga back then would need some time to read the files from the floppies.

Section 1 (Recycling plant): 4 Tracks

1. Death screen
2. Standard music that's played at the start of the game, your BASS1.mp3.
3. Hobbins theme
4. The danger-type music that gets played when guard enters the furnace room

Section 2 (Pipe factory, etc. top level stuff): 4 tracks

1. Death screen, same as 1-1
2. Pipe factory
3. Outside, Power Plant, Security Office
4. Danger-thing, same as 1-4

Section 3 (Belle Vue Level): 3 tracks

1. Outside music
2. Variation of 3-1, is played in Anchor & Travel office
3. Dr. Burke's theme

Section 4 (Ground Level): 11 tracks

1. Ground level, outside
2. Mrs. Piermont's theme (simply stops after some time)
3. Hobbins theme, same as 1-3
4. Bigband: As cool as you (a little louder, loops forever)
5. Jukebox: As cool as you (more quiet, ends after some time)
6. Jukebox: Long beach
7. Jingle that gets played when Hobbins is sentenced to Life Imprisonment
8. Court theme
9. Mrs. Pierment's theme
10. Jukebox: You search but find nothing
11. Death screen music

Section 5 (LINC base): 6 tracks

1. Death screen/collapsing tunnel
2. Danger-type-music that's played in this area
3. Finale music (Outro)
4. Danger music variation, same as 1-4 / 2-4
5. Played on Finale screen with Hobbins and Ken, same as 2-3
6. As cool as you, same as 4-4

Section 6 (LINC space): 1 Track

1. LINC space music

I wonder if Mrs. Piermonts theme in 4-2 is actually used in the game. And there doesn't seem to be any difference to 4-9, other than that it just stops at some point. At least I can't hear any difference

[edweird]

Thanks! That's extremely helpful. Sorry I didn't realise it was you when you PM'd me, I'm not yet familiar with names around here

I'm starting work on a couple of tracks today, I'll let everyone know how I'm progressing from time to time and post tracks when I've finished them. I'm not sure how fast I'll be able to finish them as I have a few other things to work on, but I'm sure I can put in at the very least two or three hours a day so progress should be steady.

[lavosspawn]

I've hacked up a music test menu for BASS, to clear up any possible confusion with the list I posted here earlier.
Here's a windows binary (I hope you even use windows...)

Use it like you normally would to start BASS, it'll bring up a screen where you can select music instead of the normal game.

[sev]

I'll let everyone know how I'm progressing from time to time and post tracks when I've finished them.

I'd suggest you to start a separate thread for this, since this one is primarily aimed to voices restoration from DAT tapes.

Of course, these two are closely related, but I feel that you will want to hear a feedback from users/devs and this thread soon will get clobbered. Also it is possible to split this thread into two, where another one (your one) will deal exclusively with BASS music. What do you think?


Eugene

[edweird]

I'll let everyone know how I'm progressing from time to time and post tracks when I've finished them.

I'd suggest you to start a separate thread for this, since this one is primarily aimed to voices restoration from DAT tapes.

Of course, these two are closely related, but I feel that you will want to hear a feedback from users/devs and this thread soon will get clobbered. Also it is possible to split this thread into two, where another one (your one) will deal exclusively with BASS music. What do you think?


Eugene

I agree, I'll start a new thread as soon as I have a new track done, and post all my updates in there.

And thanks enormously once again, lavosspawn. That's extremely helpful (yes, I use windows ).

[eriktorbjorn]

I wonder if Mrs. Piermonts theme in 4-2 is actually used in the game. And there doesn't seem to be any difference to 4-9, other than that it just stops at some point. At least I can't hear any difference

Her theme is played if she appears in court, but I don't know which of the two is used then.

[joostp]

Update:

I hooked up the tape drive to the dumping rig today and after 'successfully' flashing the firmware, I managed to extract some audio using the trial version of DAT2WAV.

I'll now be moving the SCSI card and tape drive to my linux workstation and attempt to read the entire tape(s) using read_dat.

Unfortunately the Joey voices on the DATs are not final and need post-processing (you can download a sample here).
Any suggestions on filters and techniques to make it sound like it did in the game are appreciated.
Maybe you can give us some pointers, edweird?

[LogicDeLuxe]

Joey sounds like a ring modulation to me. I just tried it with a simple chord.
Actually, you first need to get rid of the noise, as that will get even more noticable when modulated with a chord. Then you can modulate it with a simple chord, for instance 220 Hz base tone. Then it is heavily compressed (though please don't do that with human voice, as this would take the live out of it, and it will sound as bad as most radio stations!).
Then it will sound like this: http://www.gratissaugen.de/files/joey_modulated.mp3
Human voices should have a reasonable dynamic range at somewhere around -14 and -20 dBFS RMS.