Hello, I'm engaged in a project to record the Master of Orion 1 music with a real Roland sound card. I'd like people's help identifying music tracks I don't recognize.
There are 40 songs in Master of Orion 1, which I ripped myself directly from MUSIC.LBX. It turns out the MIDI archive floating around out there is corrupted; what I made is somewhat different. This set of game files contains 2 songs that I have not been able to identify.
Track 04 - Unknown 1 This long piece of music has remixed bits of other pieces of music in the game, so it should sound kind of familiar to any MOO1 veteran. However, I don't recognize this exact piece of music, and this is the second-longest track. It stylistically sounds like it might be the introduction theme, the credits theme, or an endgame theme, but it's none of those three as far as I can tell (it kind of sounds like the introduction theme at first, but it isn't).
The version of Master of Orion 1 I play is 1.40m (unofficial), but to my knowledge that doesn't make a difference. I'll be visiting my game stash in a few days and can pull my floppies out, in case people think these might play in older versions (a quick check of 1.3 didn't show the music any different under any circumstances I checked).
I'm beginning to suspect these never play anywhere, but I'm not sure. Can someone please let me know?
(October 5th, 2013, 16:02)Dark Savant Wrote: Hello, I'm engaged in a project to record the Master of Orion 1 music with a real Roland sound card. I'd like people's help identifying music tracks I don't recognize.
There are 40 songs in Master of Orion 1, which I ripped myself directly from MUSIC.LBX. It turns out the MIDI archive floating around out there is corrupted; what I made is somewhat different. This set of game files contains 2 songs that I have not been able to identify.
Track 04 - Unknown 1 This long piece of music has remixed bits of other pieces of music in the game, so it should sound kind of familiar to any MOO1 veteran. However, I don't recognize this exact piece of music, and this is the second-longest track. It stylistically sounds like it might be the introduction theme, the credits theme, or an endgame theme, but it's none of those three as far as I can tell (it kind of sounds like the introduction theme at first, but it isn't).
The version of Master of Orion 1 I play is 1.40m (unofficial), but to my knowledge that doesn't make a difference. I'll be visiting my game stash in a few days and can pull my floppies out, in case people think these might play in older versions (a quick check of 1.3 didn't show the music any different under any circumstances I checked).
I'm beginning to suspect these never play anywhere, but I'm not sure. Can someone please let me know?
Thanks!
I'm sorry I can't help you with those, since I'm deaf. However, I'm very interested in how you managed to extract the music from MUSIC.LBX. Since I aim to add the ability to play with MoO 1's assets for Beyond Beyaan, adding music/sounds from LBX files would be very nice to have. Note, I don't mean extracting stuff from LBX, then distributing them. Rather, the game loads directly from LBX, so you'd still need a legal copy of MoO 1.
Is SOUNDFX.LBX in the same format as MUSIC.LBX?
Dominus Galaxia, a Master of Orion inspired game I'm working on.
(October 10th, 2013, 10:46)Zeraan Wrote: I'm sorry I can't help you with those, since I'm deaf. However, I'm very interested in how you managed to extract the music from MUSIC.LBX. Since I aim to add the ability to play with MoO 1's assets for Beyond Beyaan, adding music/sounds from LBX files would be very nice to have. Note, I don't mean extracting stuff from LBX, then distributing them. Rather, the game loads directly from LBX, so you'd still need a legal copy of MoO 1.
Is SOUNDFX.LBX in the same format as MUSIC.LBX?
MUSIC.LBX and SOUNDFX.LBX are in the same format. They are NOT in the same format as LBX files from Master of Magic or Master of Orion 2, as you've probably figured out if you've tried to decompile them. I think other Master of Orion 1 LBX files work similarly, but I haven't tested this more than minimally (it's clear that some aren't exactly the same).
The format of the files is:
First 8 bytes: header. There's a slight difference between the two files. I'm not sure what it means, but the first two bytes are different in every LBX file.
Groups of 4 bytes, from hexadecimal addresses starting at 008-00B: File start addresses, in little-endian 32-bit integers. The space devoted to this can go well beyond what 008-00B specifies. In some LBX files (not MUSIC or SOUNDFX), this additional space can have file names and then comments on what the file actually contains. I don't think there are filenames for any MUSIC or SOUNDFX files anywhere.
Files. This starts at 700 hexadecimal in both MUSIC and SOUNDFX, but other LBX files are different. Each entry has a 16-byte header: for MUSIC, this is always AF DE 01 padded with 00; for SOUNDFX, I think it's always AF DE 02. (Both of these end in DEAF in big-endian .) The header doesn't say how long the file is, unlike file libraries from other games; you'll have to calculate that from the start of the next file. After the 16-byte header, MUSIC files are all XMI files; SOUNDFX files are all VOC files.
Incidentally, you should avoid converting XMI files to MID files; you will lose information in the conversion and the file typically gets bigger. (No wonder DOS games most often have music in XMI form!)
Also note what the game calls the races internally: "human", "feline", "silicoid", "saurian", "mentat", "avian", "klackon", "ursoid", "meklar", and "nazgul". Many of the other LBX files obviously contain graphics, but I haven't worked out which format those are in.
(October 10th, 2013, 10:46)Zeraan Wrote: I'm sorry I can't help you with those, since I'm deaf. However, I'm very interested in how you managed to extract the music from MUSIC.LBX. Since I aim to add the ability to play with MoO 1's assets for Beyond Beyaan, adding music/sounds from LBX files would be very nice to have. Note, I don't mean extracting stuff from LBX, then distributing them. Rather, the game loads directly from LBX, so you'd still need a legal copy of MoO 1.
Is SOUNDFX.LBX in the same format as MUSIC.LBX?
MUSIC.LBX and SOUNDFX.LBX are in the same format. They are NOT in the same format as LBX files from Master of Magic or Master of Orion 2, as you've probably figured out if you've tried to decompile them. I think other Master of Orion 1 LBX files work similarly, but I haven't tested this more than minimally (it's clear that some aren't exactly the same).
The format of the files is:
First 8 bytes: header. There's a slight difference between the two files. I'm not sure what it means, but the first two bytes are different in every LBX file.
Groups of 4 bytes, from hexadecimal addresses starting at 008-00B: File start addresses, in little-endian 32-bit integers. The space devoted to this can go well beyond what 008-00B specifies. In some LBX files (not MUSIC or SOUNDFX), this additional space can have file names and then comments on what the file actually contains. I don't think there are filenames for any MUSIC or SOUNDFX files anywhere.
Files. This starts at 700 hexadecimal in both MUSIC and SOUNDFX, but other LBX files are different. Each entry has a 16-byte header: for MUSIC, this is always AF DE 01 padded with 00; for SOUNDFX, I think it's always AF DE 02. (Both of these end in DEAF in big-endian .) The header doesn't say how long the file is, unlike file libraries from other games; you'll have to calculate that from the start of the next file. After the 16-byte header, MUSIC files are all XMI files; SOUNDFX files are all VOC files.
Incidentally, you should avoid converting XMI files to MID files; you will lose information in the conversion and the file typically gets bigger. (No wonder DOS games most often have music in XMI form!)
Also note what the game calls the races internally: "human", "feline", "silicoid", "saurian", "mentat", "avian", "klackon", "ursoid", "meklar", and "nazgul". Many of the other LBX files obviously contain graphics, but I haven't worked out which format those are in.
Thanks for the explanation on the sounds/music!
I've managed to reverse engineer the image format (it's custom format, with 255 colors, and compressed), and made a program for viewing those images. It's open source: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...96&page=24
Now the issue is making modifications to images then re-compressing them back into lbx file, still trying to figure that out, so far it crashes the game...
Dominus Galaxia, a Master of Orion inspired game I'm working on.
(October 12th, 2013, 15:28)Jeff Graw Wrote: Would you be able to make the entire archive of extracted .midi data available for download?
OK, the XMI archive is attached. Realms Beyond doesn't allow 7-Zip (*.7Z) attachments, whom do I ask to make that possible?
If you want it in plain MIDI format, run XMI2MID on it. This will corrupt some of the music. You'll still get something better than what mirsoft.info has, though.
If you want it in FLAC format recorded from a Roland sound card, you can go visit the Roland Lossless Archive at http://www.rmla.co.nr/ ... Master of Orion 1 just went up. You might want to wait on that, though -- a couple of the tracks still sound problematic to me, and I haven't yet e-mailed the site operator about it (he hasn't played the games, so it's not obvious to him if a track sounds bad).
Master of Orion 1 music has been much more of a headache than Master of Magic music, even though the latter has 116 tracks. I was able to identify all 116 tracks, and all of the RMLA recordings turned out well.
... No one still knows where these two tracks come from? I can think of one place where track 4 might play: there's the rare losing ending that you get if enemy spies cause your government to revolt, but that's a difficult one to trigger. Does someone have a saved game where they can test this?
Track 4 is defeat by any means what so ever. I have verified this one. It includes revolt loss. It includes accepting council defeat. And being invaded. I assume being blown to bits makes no difference.
For info, defeat video screen are, your flag with parade if revolt. Enemy flag with parade if its an enemy invasion. Standard throne world if council defeat. I am assuming that having your planet blown will lead to parade too, but i have no saves where it would be reasonable to test.
Track 5 really puzzles me too.
Track 5 is NOT espionage (revolt) defeat, that has same sound as council losing but different animation. (Tested in a remarkably painful fashion. Details include getting my home planet to Radiated by letting an "accident" happen and my opponents not having that tech in a final war scenario. And pressing end turn a lot after all my bases and factories got blown up) This track might be entirely unused. Someone would need to check the assembly to confirm guess.
Edit: seeing all other files, I am really at a loss to say. I mean all sounds that i know are already accounted for. Even the rare scenarios. It might just be unused, perhaps you know some way that i can hear the original "dos" version. One of my friends says it sounds familiar though, but cant identify it.
.) The header doesn't say how long the file is, unlike file libraries from other games; you'll have to calculate that from the start of the next file. After the 16-byte header, MUSIC files are all XMI files; SOUNDFX files are all VOC files.