DKC Atlas Forum

[Simion32]

This patch will blank out music in all levels and boss levels, with a minimal amount of glitches. Quite nice if you would rather listen to other music while playing, or if you want to record sound effects. I will work on getting all sound effects recorded for Qyz.

This patch is for "Donkey Kong Country (U) (V1.0) [!].smc".
To apply IPS patches, you will need this utility: Click Here to get Lunar IPS
DOWNLOAD: DKC1_ZeroMusicPatch_v2.00.ips
Music Modifier Code Locations
Luckily, I was able to easily develop PAR equivalents for this patch, so you can temporarily change the music whenever you desire if you opt not to use the patch. To modify the music replace the byte with the number for the music you want to play.

Code: Select all

Music Type     PAR Equivalent
---------------------------
Cranky:        00EAAA?? (credit to giangurgolo for documenting this one)
Candy:         ------??
Funky:         ------??
Mapscreen:     ------??
Jungles:       B98704??
Caves:         B98909??
Oceans:        B98A85??
Walkways:      B98C17??
Minecarts:     B98C5A??
Mineshaft:     B989F1??
Temples:       B98D60??
Forests:       B98E62??
Treetowns:     B98E1C??
Mountains:     B98B76??
Ice Caves:     B98DC4??
Factories:     B98CE9??
Bonus Rooms:   B98583??
Bosses:        B9858A??
Galleon:       B98FB5??


??   Music
---------------------------
00   Jungle Groove
01   Cave Dweller Concert
02   Misty Menace
03   Aquatic Ambiance
04   Mine Cart Madness
05   Northern Hemispheres
06   Voices of the Temple
07   Fear Factory
08   Life in the Mines
09   Simian Segue
0A   Fanfare Theme
0B   Ice Cave Chant
0C   DK Island Swing
0D   Forest Frenzy
0E   The Credits Concerto
0F   Game Over
10   Bonus Room Blitz
11   Lost Life
12   Bonus Win
13   Treetop Rock
14   Funky's Fugue
15   Bad Boss Boogie
16   Candy's Love Song
17   Cranky's Theme
18   Gang-Plank Galleon
19   Bonus Lose
1A   Level Goal



[Cody]

That's odd...if you visit Cranky with the 'Lost Life' patch, the background music is DK Island Swing.

[Simion32]

That's probably left over from when I was making the patch. I was messing around with music values and forgot to change it back. I'll fix the patch and re-attach it.

EDIT: I fixed that. Interesting: the ZIP is 227 bytes, and the IPS file is only 99 bytes.

[Qyzbud]

Nice, as much as I love DKC's music, I've gotta admire the tranquility its absence will bring. I haven't downloaded this yet, but it's sure to be handy sometime. Thanks also for your sample recording efforts.

I find it puzzling that the ASM address for Cranky's music is so very different to the others... and are you unsure of Candy, Funky and the mapscreen?

Edit: That's odd. Must be due to the zip file header info or something... Makes me ask: why did you zip it at all? Also, just thought I'd let you know... the .ips file within the updated .zip still has 'v1.00' in its filename. I'm sure it's not the old one though, as the file size is a whopping 6 bytes slimmer!

[Simion32]

and are you unsure of Candy, Funky and the mapscreen?

Yes, I put dashed lines there, which I will fill in later if I can manage to find them. I suppose that each non-level music has it's own music code, or something like that. I definitely didn't find a pointer/jump to Cranky's music address while using the debugger. It seems to be called by a different function than most of the other music's.

Makes me ask: why did you zip it at all?

Because it says "The extension ips is not allowed." when when you try to attach an ips file. Probably blocked by a board default or something.

[Qyzbud]

I added .ips to the extension list, so that should streamline things a little.

Your patchskillz are uber 1337, by the way.
However did you learn all these knowledges?

[Simion32]

However did you learn all these knowledges?

Well, I basically taught myself the 65c816 ASM language (thats the one used in the SNES). With a good technical reference, I can hack wonders. I usually only need the reference if the hack involves super-complicated stuff. I only think I used a reference two or three times while making the Z-S patch.

On graphics decompression however, I'll need a reference a lot because I need to know exactly what is going on. I can partially emulate the SNES, and by doing so, I'll be able to have it decompress the graphics using the game's built-in code. Which means, there is no copyrighted code included whatsoever! This shouldn't take too much longer to finish - I only have to deal with some quirks that C++ introduces.

I'll go through and change the ZIP's to IPS, thanks for adding that extension. EDIT: That's weird, I tried to attach an IPS to my first post and it still says it's disallowed. Does that extension have to "take effect" before it can be used or something?

Qyz says: Hrm, no idea. I can't see what more I need to do... or why I should have to do anything else. Will get back to you.
Qyz edits: Okay, I had to set its type to an 'allowed' group. I assumed that just adding the extension would make it allowed.

[Simion32]

UPDATE - Zero Music Patch Version 2

I've delayed this update due to forgetting about it, but anyway...

Now, this patch will stop any music from playing at all, with the exception of non-levels and the map screen.

The only bad side effects are that echoes no longer occur, and that the swimming sound effect in water levels is glitched. Other than that, this should be good enough for a while.

The download link is in my first post in this topic.

[Qyzbud]

I was just about to ask about this.

I tested this briefly, and the patch is working just fine. Good stuff. That underwater 'paddling' sound is odd, isn't it.
Might be a good idea to modify the first line of your first post, though, to reflect the change of technique this updated patch employs.

No luck yet finding the addresses for Funky, Candy or mapscreen areas?

[Simion32]

No luck yet finding the addresses for Funky, Candy or mapscreen areas?

I really haven't spent much time looking for them. I may have to resort to blanking them out directly.

What was done in this version of the patch is, that I managed to successfully blank-out the Jungle music where only sound effects would play. I then switched everything from the "Bonus Lost" over to "Jungle Groove".

I would like to blank out tracks that have echoes, but without removing the echo effect, so the sound quality for those features can be restored. I have already attempted this once with Caves music but it didn't work.

I also tried to blank out the Underwater music, but none of the music's sound effects would go away until so much data was overwritten that it crashed the game.

[BlueTronic]

This will be perfect for blanking out the music so I can play other music for Youtube videos.

Nice patch.

[DKCplayer]

This is great! Now I can... wait, hang on. *Gets tape recorder and pushes play* "This will be perfect for blanking out the music so I can play other music for Youtube videos. Nice patch." *Presses stop*
Well, Kong-Fu already said it.

[dkclover1337]

dkc Player withch Recorder Do you use and How do you add Sound

[Mattrizzle]

Here's my own personal remake of the Zero-Music Patch, which I've been sitting on for years.

DKC Zero-Music Patch (Mattrizzle remake).ips

(1.73 KiB) Downloaded 889 times

ROM requirements are the same as Simion32's version.

Differences from Simion32's version:

• Music is silenced everywhere (including the intro and map screen)
• Proper samples are loaded for all sound effects (e.g. the swimming sounds in water levels, and even ones with problems in the original game)
• Echo reverb is retained for sound effects in levels that normally have it.

The downside to this is that it cannot be replicated easily with PAR codes.

[WesternTanager794]

Cool! Thanks so much, Matt! I was thinking about something like this for a week now! I'm going to use it for my speedrunning! Is it legal? Maybe not. In Diddy Kong Racing, speedrunners disable the music because it makes the game run faster. I'll have to look into that. Either way, both versions of this patch are great!

[Mattrizzle]

Zeroing out the music in this way might cut out some of the time it takes to load a level or transition to a different music track, so I would think it would be illegal in terms of speedrunning. Anything that potentially modifies how many frames a process takes is going to be scrutinized by that community.

It would be best to treat it the same way as speedrunning any other ROM hack, rather than the original game.

[WesternTanager794]

Fair enough, Matt! Thanks for that! I have a suspicion. Is the J versions in games faster because their language is easier to load? (that's the only explanation I can think of, other than they specifically code it differently for the japanese).

[rainbowsprinklez]

Zeroing out the music in this way might cut out some of the time it takes to load a level or transition to a different music track,

This is the whole basis for the funky start glitch in dkc1 1.0 being faster. No music change

[rainbowsprinklez]

Is the J versions in games faster because their language is easier to load? (that's the only explanation I can think of, other than they specifically code it differently for the japanese).

Easier in that it is generally less characters

[WesternTanager794]

Thanks!

[Mattrizzle]

With my version of the zero-music patch, music track changes still occur, but all tracks have their sequence data for all channels replaced with looping rests.