SNESamp Wrapper v0.9.1 & YMAMP v2.5 plugins (was 'Winamp 5.2 bug with .spc files!')

[Kaminari]

Just so you know that the wrapper is not needed anymore: SNESamp 3.32 has been released some days ago.

http://alpha-ii.com/

[DrO]

i've not tried out the new version yet but i think the wrapper is still needed for correct atf support (which is one of the reasons this whole thread appeared as the new SNESamp doesn't seem to have any of the related api exports from it for the atf stuff). whether the multi-user settings saving has been fixed as well with this new version is to be seen. is nice to see SNESamp finally getting some native updates as i know of a number of people who were starting to stop using it since it was losing out compared to other snes related player plugins.

anyhoo, when i get a chance i'll see how much of the wrapper is still properly needed with the newer 3.3x versions of SNESamp and will post back/possibly update a build as needed to drop any unwanted features the wrapper needs with the newer version

-daz

[J_Darnley]

Originally posted by Kaminari
Just so you know that the wrapper is not needed anymore: SNESamp 3.32 has been released some days ago.

http://alpha-ii.com/

Nice, I'll have to do some testing.

[Koopa]

The wrapper is still needed, SNESAmp still has no support for multiple profiles.

Nice to see an update, the new versions fix a lot of bugs, but I hope there will be more updates, but if I'm not wrong, the author isn't interested in coding anymore.

[blm07]

SNESamp was updated to 3.33
http://alpha-ii.com/Download/Main.html#SNESamp

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but with the default ATF setting, I'll see filename (as "smw - 01" for instance) in the playlist instead of "Game - Song Title." I've installed 3.33 and wrapper 0.4.

Ok, for some games all I'll see is the filename, but in others I'll see "Composer - Song Title," which is still wrong.

[DrO]

firstly, i can only repro your first issue if i install 3.33 over the previous install without then re-installing the 0.4 wrapper.

for the second issue, would need to see what your Winamp ATF string is and also which set you're working with to see what is going on though i think all issues come down to the first point (from what i can tell so far)

-daz

[blm07]

I've deleted all the related SNES files and re-installed SNESAmp + wrapper, and I'm still seeing the filename. It only happens on a few games though (such as Super Mario World, Tetris & Dr. Mario, Mortal Kombat).

The default ATF string is
[%artist% - ]$if2(%title%,$filepart(%filename%))

I was using one that was really really long, but I thought the plugins handled what was displayed now? The same thing happens with 64th Note.

[blm07]

I figured out what the first problem was. I have to set the media library to re-read all of the meta data. Problem solved.

The old string works, it may be long, but it works. I must have went back to the default setting cause of that weird filename problem I was having.

btw, this is the string:
[$IfStrEqual2($fileext(%filename%),miniusf,%album%,$IfStrEqual2($fileext(%filename%),usf,%album%,$IfStrEqual2($fileext(%filename%),spc,%album%,%artist%))) - ]$if2(%title%,$filepart(%filename%))

[DrO]

that's the atf string i was using, heh.

and makes sense with the older info in the media library, especially if a re-read happened after installs or something like that when the wrapper may have been disabled.

good to know i've not got to fix anything then

-daz

[Koopa]

DrO's Wrapper is just working fine with latest Winamp and latest SNESAmp.

Have started to manage my spc files in the library. Extended infos will be remapped correctly.

It just won't display the Album Cover. I saved the covers as folder.jpg in the directories of the albums, but for whatever reason, but maybe it's a Winamp limitation.

[DrO]

have never tried spc's with a folder image so not sure if it is/isn't meant to work. give me a complete example set and i'll have a look

-daz

[Koopa]

Got it to work, but it just works, if the files will be saved as folder.jpg. The music files must be extracted as single .spc files in one folder per Game (compressed rsn or other file types won't work).

The folders cannot contain any subfolder. If you respect all that, you're able to get something like this:



If you want to play with that stuff too, here is your test game set.

http://stashbox.org/452515/Donkey%20Kong%20Complete.7z

[DrO]

i'm quite surprised no one else has reported the issue (thanks to ElPenguino in #usf for the notification) with the SNESAmp wrapper and it filling ATF fields with the filename rather than leaving the ATF field blank.

so this means there will hopefully in a few weeks (maybe sooner) be a new wrapper build once i've done some improvements on the handling of rsn's (which i hope will solve your issue koopa ).

i've also fixed an issue with SNESAmp's Alt+3 dialog showing up behind the Winamp windows which is a SNESAmp issue but seems to have been going on for a while so the wrapper will attempt to fix it now (how i love Delphi forms... not).

-daz

[J_Darnley]

Huh? I am experiencing no such problem. Or is this because the metadata is also stored in the library?
[EDIT] Yeah, I just moved an spc file to my desktop and enqueued it and the ATF fields are correct.

I hadn't noticed the second problem though.

[DrO]

the second one i hadn't noticed until it was mentioned. the first one i'd seen a few times, it mainly comes from sets where there is no id666 tag or is missing a large part off the tag and for some reason the id666 reader decided to fill it with the filename off the spc file rather than doing as winamp needs off leaving it blank.

-daz

[Koopa]

I'm glad to read about a possible update, DrO.

[DrO]

possible == definite update in this case is just going to be the fun with those pesky rsn's that needs to be sorted out i think (may even bump the wrapper to a 1.x version if that happens, heh).

-daz

[DrO]

this thread has been too quiet for too long (but i suppose that reflects how much or rather how little the plugin / wrapper is used) but little tidbit of information for one of the things noted and that is about album art for rsn files - the updated wrapper (once i've finished a few other things) will allow rsn's to be handled as single items in them though there are a few restrictions.




the first restriction is that like in the view shown, it'll only show 1 item rather than the number of spcs making up the rsn collection (the screenshot shows 2 as i've got 2 copies of those files inplace due to testing different things).

the second is that not all values which are reported cannot really be merged so i've currently got it showing a <differs> tag (as shown). would like some ideas/suggestions on what to show for these merged values though it can only be a string (is one of those fun limitations of how things work sadly).

other than that, it allows an rsn to be included nicely in the media library with art (if added to the rsn). there will also be unified alt+3 support with the wrapper and a few other 5.5+ client compatability updates (YMAMP will also got similar 5.5+ client updates).

-daz

[DrO]

I've finally gotten YMAMP to v2.5 final status with addition of the following since the last beta:

• Added unified file info editor (requires 5.5+ and the old alt+3 dialog still works on older clients)
• Fixed some quirks with the meta data handling (related to the above implementation)
• Added 5.5+ style language file support (will just show english on older clients)
• Will now work better with Winamp's file association and during the setup process (reports %family% to enable this)

Download can be gotten from here (along with other game audio related downloads).

And the SNESamp wrapper is almost done for the next version btw.

-daz

[Ampnerd]

Does your SNESamp work? Mine doesn't.

[Koopa]

What exactly isn't working for you? SNESAMP and the Wrapper are working fine here.

[Ampnerd]

Winamp ver: 5.572

The plugin itself. I don't understand what a Wrapper is(I'm assuming it has something to do with tag support), but I tried using the original author's version first(3.3.4) from http://alpha-ii.com/ ... then, I tried installing the wrapper over the already installed plugin, nothing else there either.

DrO's YMAMP plugin works just fine, though.

Do I have to manually tweak each SPC file?

[Koopa]

A Wrapper is some kind of loader, between Winamp and the Input plugin. DrO's Wrapper adds some feature, which the plugin lacks, for example better library support or saving files in user data dir.

Take a look here:

http://nunzioweb.com/daz/game_emulation/index.html

Does it detect the plugin for you? Do you see this (under Preferences - Plugins - Input)?


[Edit]

So Plugin and Wrapper are installed, but it doesn't play any file for you. spc is selected under Preferences - File Types? Could you post a list of your installed plugins and attach it here? I can remove it after I got the file if you want.

If you still have trouble to reply to the thread just contact me again.

[Ampnerd]

I forgot to mention in my last post that playback is not working, but the Tag Information Window for each SPC file does. I see the Author and all that good stuff, just without the playback

And, yes: I see the plugin(and the wrapper) installed in Input plug-ins window preferences. Here's mine screen just for vertification(Unless you see something funky)



and this one:




[EDIT]

Originally Posted by Koopa

but it doesn't play any file for you. spc is selected under Preferences - File Types?

I've been using the open function inside Winamp to open them, usually I do it that way just to make sure the plugin works before adding the file extension to the file types list. I can go ahead and try it if you think it'll work.

[EDIT2]

Nah, Still nothing

[Ampnerd]

Ok, I now got my list of plugins attached to this post.

[Koopa]

Could you go to Preferences - Plugins - Output and Select 'Nullsoft DirectSound Output' ?

Does it play the files then?

[Ampnerd]

Ah, I see. It works now.

Darn, though! I was hoping to being able to use the AudioBurst FX System output plugin as it enhances the quality of the sound. I'm able to use it with the other game music plugins

[Koopa]

Incompatibilities between 3rd party plugins really don't surprise me, especially if you use options for 32 Bit output etc.

You may could ask the author of the output plugin, if there is something he can do about the issue, but I doubt that he can.

At least it's playing and btw, nice to see some other game music fans here.

[Ampnerd]

Yeah, it wasn't a total loss ... I don't think there's much I can do with contacting the author of that plugin, as the plugin itself hasn't been updated in some time.

Thanks for your help, btw And ya, game music is what got me into listening to music in the first place!

[DrO]

Finally a new version of the SNESamp wrapper which should bring SNESamp usage up to the level expected of plug-ins in the Winamp 5.5+ era

• Added unified alt+3 editor dialog on Winamp 5.5+ and the fun things that requires
• Re-implemented localisation support for the original plug-ins dialogs along with the wrapper's ones
• RSNs are now able to be handled as contained items in the media library including album support in the library views (see the plug-in's page for more info)
• Fixed %type% returning the wrong value
• Added %family% support (mainly used by Winamp's installer)
• Added winampUninstallPlugin(..) support
• Mapped %composer% to %artist% as they're basically the same thing for spc/rsns
• Improved handling of rsn and spc files in the wrapper when querying metadata
• Other minor improvements to the code and integration with Winamp

Download v0.9.1

I know koopa is happy with this version which has been a while in the making so hopefully someone else will find it useful

More information about what the plug-in is doing with ATF strings and the RSN handling in the media library can now be found at http://nunzioweb.com/daz/game_emulation/snesamp.html Enjoy!

-daz

[Koopa]

You've brought spc playback and managing it in Winamp's library to a new level.

It's just fantastic to manage your SNES soundtracks in the library and use an unified tag editor, to edit the tags and even see album art. Also I can finally present the first complete German translation for SNESAmp.

Many thanks for your work on this, crazy people like me cannot live without game music and now a dead horse lives again.

Since I've some webspace now, I can start publishing my game music documentation soon.

[Tanookirby]

Good plugin. The original file info box had a copy, paste, and clear button as well as an apply button. Could you put those buttons back in?

I also can't seem to save the changes to the times with this plugin.

[MrSinatra]

DrO,

i use this wrapper and the SNES plugin together to listen to tecmo superbowl spc files. love it and it works great.

however, does it or can it in a future version write user defined albumartist tags to the files? how about RG values?

without AA tags, it basically messes up the org of my ML.

i have the same issue (it seems) with the vgm files. its feeling like i can't normally have this stuff in my ML.

[Koopa]

MrSinatra:

I guess you need an additional bunch of informations about the design of game music files.

Album Artist was created for normal audio files, like mp3 or <insert any other audio format here>. It's meant for audio albums, which have songs, where 2 or more artists sing. The main aim for the aa tag is, that you can group all these songs under one album artist.

Game music formats are limited, a game music plugin even has no real 'Album' tag. The plugins re-map the game specific things to normal tags, which can me handled by the library or the unified tag editor.
For example 'Game' will be mapped to 'Album'.

The limitations strongly depend on the format. A sid file (C64 music) usually can not be seek in Winamp.

You can rate your files and the rating will be saved in the ML database, and be happy that at least this is working. But you cannot simply write a rating value in the file. The file formats and tagging specifications are fixed and limited and you cannot simply add something to the file, which isn't compatible to anything.

Game music works completely different compared to normal audio formats.

[DrO]

@Tanookirby: down to how the unified view is done, adding in buttons to do that won't fit in with the size of the dialog which i have to work with. also i'm not even sure how the copy and paste actions are meant to have worked i.e. if it copies all of the tag and pastes back in like that.

with the time editing issue, what file(s) are you trying to do it on and also what is it you're trying to enter as the time?

@MrSinatra: i was just replying to the post you'd raised in the other thread so i'll just paste here what i was going to post.

Originally Posted by MrSinatra

good to know... i used 7zip and extracted to spc files, works great now. however, it seems neither vgz nor spc files support albumartist tags, which is a necessity for me, not to mention ratings and so on.

the ID666 tag doesn't provide any %albumartist% field and from what is provided the only thing would be to map it back to the %artist% tag (which with spc and rsn files is already based on 3 different mappings to cater for missing information so that the ml is always getting something).

vgm's fall into the same thing though it doesn't do any mapping to ensure there is some sort of %artist% provided (from what i remember though i could be wrong) to allow for the 'use artist as album artist' option to work (which iirc you're not keen on).

as for ratings and RG, there is no support for them in any of the game audio tag formats i've come across (which is ID666, PSF, VGM and what YMAMP uses) and to be honest i'm really not keen to start altering the tag format to cope with such things - is only VGM which supports RG (and i'm not sure if it's just track or album or quite what). so as things stand you've just got to make use of the ml to store those values.

the real issue here is that a lot of the game formats were never really intended to work with what Winamp wants to have (based on the ID3 scheme) and so there are compromises like how some of the values are mapped from what they were in the original tag format to what will work better with Winamp.

supporting things like RG or extended features like ratings hasn't happened in the tag formats as most people into this sort of thing aren't interested otherwise i'm sure the authors of the tag formats would have implemented them years ago when they were created / being maintained.

-daz

[Tanookirby]

@DrO: Look at the "Fading and Additional Control" part of the ID666 tag. There's Intro, Loop, Fade, and End. I cannot make any changes there.

[DrO]

@Tanookirby: yeah something weird is going on with that part as it was working when i last tried it (which was about 2 months before the 0.9 release) so maybe i've broken something or the mappings aren't working correctly. will check it out as soon as time allows.

-daz

[MrSinatra]

Originally Posted by Koopa

MrSinatra:

I guess you need an additional bunch of informations about the design of game music files.

Album Artist was created for normal audio files, like mp3 or <insert any other audio format here>. It's meant for audio albums, which have songs, where 2 or more artists sing. The main aim for the aa tag is, that you can group all these songs under one album artist.

just FYI i don't use certain tags for one thing and not another based on what they are, origin of the species, or anything else like that; i use certain tags based on what works best for me. i think most people, even obsessive ones, do that too. some people use the year tag for the year a song was released, others for the year the CD was released, which aren't always the same. people do what they want to.

winamp is very dependent, imo, on using AA tags to sort a collection, esp b/c they don't use comp tags or other sort tags. artist tags alone simply don't cut it, regardless of what it is you are trying to sort, OR if you use the "use artist as AA" pref in winamp, b/c often you don't want the two to be the same.

i'm basically seeing that i can't normally have the game files in my ML, which is a shame, but not the end of the world. but i wish it wasn't so.

Originally Posted by Koopa

Game music formats are limited, a game music plugin even has no real 'Album' tag. The plugins re-map the game specific things to normal tags, which can me handled by the library or the unified tag editor.
For example 'Game' will be mapped to 'Album'.

The limitations strongly depend on the format. A sid file (C64 music) usually can not be seek in Winamp.

You can rate your files and the rating will be saved in the ML database, and be happy that at least this is working. But you cannot simply write a rating value in the file. The file formats and tagging specifications are fixed and limited and you cannot simply add something to the file, which isn't compatible to anything.

Game music works completely different compared to normal audio formats.

well, i gathered all this, but what i was asking DrO is could his plugin, which operates as middleware presumably, basically create ad hoc frames in the game files that his wrapper would recognize for winamps benefit. it seems he has no interest in that, and so c'est la vie.

[MrSinatra]

Originally Posted by DrO

vgm's fall into the same thing though it doesn't do any mapping to ensure there is some sort of %artist% provided (from what i remember though i could be wrong) to allow for the 'use artist as album artist' option to work (which iirc you're not keen on).

as for ratings and RG, there is no support for them in any of the game audio tag formats i've come across (which is ID666, PSF, VGM and what YMAMP uses) and to be honest i'm really not keen to start altering the tag format to cope with such things

thx for the reply, i reckon u've seen my previous post, so all i'll add to that is that the winamp pref you mention above wouldn't do me any good anyway, as i would not want the artist value to be the same as AA value, or changed to be my "wanted" AA value.

i am assuming the vgm files support all RG, but thats mostly a guess. i did RG on tecmo2, and an example in the track tag via view file info was this:

+5.47 dB (Album: +6.01 dB)

so it SEEMS to write the ML values to the tag for vgz anyway.

btw, Koopa says they don't have album tags, and i'm not saying he's wrong, but on import all 3 tecmo games, for both nintendo and genesis had album tag values.

EDIT: something i just thought of, what about transcoding? could i use winamp (or something) to transcode these game files to a taggable format like FLAC?

[DrO]

the vgm plug-ins maps one of its tags to act like the album field Winamp wants (the game name which is how i've done it on the plug-ins i've updated).

the RG support should be complete for the values it supports though i'm not certain if it is following the Winamp preferences for it (i've a feeling it added support for the RG tags but doesn't use the relevant apis to expose them on the playing track - haven't had a chance to look at the 0.35 source code to check).

the vgm plug-in should support the relevant transcoding api - not something the SNESamp wrapper is likely to ever have support for due to how things are with it. so yes i suppose you could transcode the files to flac, wavpack, etc and then get the tagging support required.

could his plugin, which operates as middleware presumably, basically create ad hoc frames in the game files that his wrapper would recognize for winamps benefit.

if the formats provided a proper way to store things then i would implement support. despite acting in the middle for SNESamp, there's no way to add in additional fields to the tag without potentially breaking other players since someone could add it to their sets and then distribute them about - it's hard enough getting the game sets correctly tagged from what i've seen on the different game audio sites without introducing more inconsistencies. ideal world would mean anyone could add anything they want and it would all be handled correctly in any player but alas we know that's not the case so we've just got to live with it.

-daz