[Jimmy]

I don't care about my vote rating, but I do care when someone doesn't have the balls to actually respond to me.

[Come On And Slam]

Captain Awesome, on 04 March 2012 - 07:08 PM, said:

I don't care about my vote rating, but I do care when someone doesn't have the balls to actually respond to me.

LOL!

[MrFlibble]

Back to the discussion, is it known why exactly extracting the maps from the new episode is problematic? If they use a different format, would it be possible to reverse-engineer it to convert the maps back?

Other than that, it's a real shame the developers did not care a lot about the materials they had used, and did not take measures to archive them. It would certainly have been great if the original files were still available, but many things have been lost to time that way, unfortunately. Oh well.

[Jimmy]

Well, apparently the files have been backed up to zip drive(s). The guy just couldn't find them, and then he never posted again. The only problem is that zip drives usually die after 10 years or so. (Which they didn't know way back when.)

Releasing them for free could perhaps be a legal quagmire or more work than someone is willing to do. It all comes down to that really, someone has to take the time to find them, get them up, give them to someone who can package them for use.

[thelegend4ever]

Which is a shame since I personally found Plug N Pray on par with The Birth...if not as good. If only we could get a Magnum P.I.G. in PC graphic form, I'd need some new pants, if ya catch my drift.

[MrFlibble]

BTW, I pretty sure everyone knows that, but anyway, since the soundtrack was mentioned, it's all available from Mark Knight's website in MP3 form:
http://www.gamesound.../downloads.html

[Martin]

I'll pick this up for my PS3 if I ever see it.

[Hendricks266]

MrFlibble, on 06 April 2012 - 10:00 AM, said:

BTW, I pretty sure everyone knows that, but anyway, since the soundtrack was mentioned, it's all available from Mark Knight's website in MP3 form:
http://www.gamesound.../downloads.html

And here in arguably better quality than the 128kbps MP3s:

http://hendricks266....c_packs_psx.php

I have an 800MB FLAC package ready to upload but I would exceed the 1 GB quota Duke4.net allots me.

This was converted from the game data which uses Sony XA audio which only goes to 37.8 KHz and is sort of lossy:

Quote

Second, the music isn't just in a conventional WAV format; it's in a funny format called Sony ADPCM. ADPCM is like MP3, sort of; it's a lossy compression format. But, while MP3 uses sophisticated data analysis techniques, ADPCM is shockingly simple. It only works on 16-bit sounds, it operates directly on the WAV data, and it yields a strict compression ratio (which I think is always 4:1). Put simply, ADPCM compresses by storing deltas instead of the full samples (that's the D, for Differential), and these deltas can change based on previous values (that's the A, for Adaptive).

This page rocks for information about the format, and the source of my quote: http://www.momentary...oundtracks.html

I have looked at the data under a spectrogram and it's not noticeably defective like MP3s are, and the MP3s mostly cut off well below 18.9 KHz (37.8 / 2, look up Nyquist limit), so it is reasonable to conclude that these are better than the MP3s. However, if you compare them all, you can see that ignoring the top, the red book and MP3 look almost identical while the XA looks a bit darker, so it is definitely a tradeoff.

*Side note: There are three tracks which were duplicated using standard red book CD audio for no apparent reason and I have included these instead of their XA counterparts.

Here are spectrograms of Chemicals F**k Your Spoon (made using Sonic Visualiser), which happens to be one of the three duplicated full-quality tracks:

128kbps MP3 from website:


XA (resampled to 44.1 KHz for ease of encoding to FLAC, and to show frequency empty gap):


Red Book CD Audio: (note: special case, one of three)


It's unfortunate that Mark Knight's Mac computer crashed and his Zip drive/disk got the click of death, so unless he finds and extracts his DAT tape backup, this is the best we will ever have of the TM music. Ideally I could write something to re-mesh together the MP3 and XA on a sample level to get one step better but I'm not at that level of genius (yet).

[OpenMaw]

Well I got myself a playstation with two controllers, memory card, and all the hook ups in pretty decent condition for 25 bucks off Amazon. It works flawlessly. I also picked up a copy of Total Meltdown for a buck...


...Whoever put Nightmare Zone as the first level of Plug and Prey should kindly go **** themselves! Holy God this map is annoying. I'm fine with challenge, and the PSX version of 3D has it's own quirks which generate a challenge... But this level. Fuck this level hard in the eye socks.


I remember being a kid, playing this level, and getting so lost and frustrated. I figured having grown up, played a lot more games, and gotten smarter it would be an easier experience, but no, this level is just a piece of shit. I can't believe they didn't figure that out with some kind of play testing. I can beat the entirety of Duke3D on PC on Damn I'm Good without breaking a sweat. This is just... Bad game developer!



... Hey, guys, was that uh... Was that "James Rofleian" enough?

[nukemania]

Fortunately, it was nowhere near James Rolfe enough. That amounts to excessive toilet "humor".

Anyway, while I do agree that Nightmare Zone is a bad choice as the first level of Plug N Pray, I don't consider it a really bad map. It takes a while to become familiar, but once you figure out the general layout, it gets fun to play. At least for me.