MI 2 Mac soundtrack recording issues

[lenocinor]

I know this technically isn't a question about ScummVM, but I'm sure many of you know a lot about the engine. so I hope you won't mind reading my questions.

I am recording the soundtrack to the MI2 Mac port, because the PC and OST rips are freely available on the net, but the Mac port has only a few songs available. I think the MI2 Mac soundtrack sounds the best out of all the ports personally, so I'm trying to rectify that problem.

I have managed to record most of the soundtrack (*mostly* accurately, hehe) through a variety of means, but I'm really stuck on two songs:

1. The song that plays when Guybrush leaves Governor Marley's mansion ("Stealing Elaine's Map"). When you walk outside, the dog starts barking, triggering the second part of the song. But his barking overshadows the music heavily, and I don't know how to stop the noise from playing.

2. The song that Jojo the Monkey plays at the bar in Woodtick ("Jojo the Monkey"). The metronome plays over the whole song, which is a bit distracting, and is not present in the OST.

I started trying to fix the second song first. After a number of different methods failed in-game, I tried using the debug mode along with some research using SCUMM Revisited. (Surprisingly, SCUMM Revisited seems to open the Mac resource files fine for the most part.) Though I found where the metronome noise is triggered in the bar's scripts, I don't know how to use the variable-setting function in debug mode to control that (if such a thing is even possible).

My question to you all is: can I use the debug mode to turn off the metronome and the dog's bark? If so, how? I tried setting a variety of variables using Ctrl-E but none of them seemed to have an effect on the metronome.

If you can't use the debug mode to turn these sounds off, can you hex-edit the data file to do it instead? I know where in the data files to edit but it would be easier to use the debug mode if I could, and I'm not sure if the data files are checksummed or anything like that.

If hex-editing or using the debug mode doesn't work, are there any other possible ways to do this? The Mac uses wave files for the soundtrack, so I can't use SCUMM Revisited for that, and sadly the Mac port of Mac Explorer is missing in action. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[LogicDeLuxe]

The metronome plays over the whole song, which is a bit distracting, and is not present in the OST.

There is no such thing as the OST. You probably found some files someone made of the MIDIs. Doing so, it's not hard to turn of a single instrument like the metronome.

If hex-editing or using the debug mode doesn't work, are there any other possible ways to do this? The Mac uses wave files for the soundtrack, so I can't use SCUMM Revisited for that

Couldn't you just replace the dog with a silent wave file, then?

[lenocinor]

There is no such thing as the OST. You probably found some files someone made of the MIDIs. Doing so, it's not hard to turn of a single instrument like the metronome.

After searching some online to check, it seems that you are right. I guess I thought it came with Monkey Island Madness, but that certainly isn't correct from the info I found online. Sorry about that, and thanks for the clarification.

I guess I was misled because the CDs seemed very professional, and include transitions that are difficult (maybe impossible?) to trigger in-game, so whoever made them must have spent a lot of time putting them together. And regardless, even if only a unofficial soundtrack recording is out there on the net for MI2, I'd like to have one like that for the Mac version too.

Also, the metronome, from what I can tell, is not part of the song itself; it's merely a separate sound triggered at regular intervals, so the MIDIs wouldn't have contained it to start with.

Couldn't you just replace the dog with a silent wave file, then?

I considered that possibility, but that depends on the technical implementation, which is why I asked here. If it expects sounds of a specific length, or if there's a checksum on the files, then simple switcheroos won't work. Also, I'd need to know what frequency the sounds are recorded at, whether they're stereo or mono, etc. to know how to replace the sound.

[lenocinor]

One more bump for help.

[clem]

about the checksum, do you mean ScummVM won't load the game when you change the file? I think there's a workaround for fantranslations...

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418823

hope that helps somewhat,
clem

[lenocinor]

about the checksum, do you mean ScummVM won't load the game when you change the file? I think there's a workaround for fantranslations...

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418823

hope that helps somewhat,
clem

I appreciate the idea, and it would work if I were using ScummVM. Alas, I am using the Mac version on the original hardware (Quadra 840AV), because ScummVM doesn't emulate the Mac WAVs. I would be happy to beta test if any developer would like to work on the Mac sound, though.

I don't know if the original Mac version has a checksum. I'll start trying to hack the Mac data files myself if I don't get any replies here, but I haven't looked into it much as of yet.