Hello Mr. Dicker ! We are reaching out to Williams alumni for article and video interviews! Is there a way to get in contact with you? -- A.T. Gonzalez
Excellent job, dude. You handled yourself professionally, even when he/they didn't. I know how upsetting it can be when you're trying to help someone, and they treat you like you're bothering them. Try not to let it get to you -- your work here is OUTSTANDING.
This is Ahoy-level effort in documentation and preservation. Sorry you had to deal with so much attitude in your efforts to get this game preserved as accurately as possible, the community doesn't deserve people as dedicated as you.
Wow, thank you so much for the compliment! Ahoy was a huge inspiration for this video; in fact, his "Four-byte Burger" video kinda kick-started this whole project. Seeing Jack Haeger's art in Ahoy's video reminded me of Sinistar and that's what got me on this path. Listening to Aphex Twin sample "Defender" also inspired me to make this video as well.
Praise the algorithm, it recommends me a genuinely good video about a game worthy of obsession. And don't take crap from anyone, what you are doing is AMAZING!!
The solution for the audio problem as it exists would be a simple user-facing boolean the user could toggle to either run the stereo code or not, and a note in the ROM's readme about how to position your speakers for the sit-down cabinet. If (boolean == true ) { code; }. It's not any more complicated than that. I can only speculate on why R. Belmont is acting like it's more difficult than it has to be. Either way, the rudeness towards Haze and yourself seems entirely unnecessary. You did some serious heavy lifting for getting Sinistar's sounds working, and that should be appreciated and applauded.
I really hope the issue with the MAME team gets resolved, that's honestly completely unprofessional. This is important, impressive work, thank you for doing it
Wow, the fact that R. Belmont couldn't comprehend the concept of a Left/Right Speaker being rotated 90 degrees is astonishing lmao. ESPECIALLY since you provided the Video/Audio reference between the 2 commits. Sorry you had to go through that :/
Not too bad for your first time doing a project of this magnitude! Glad to have helped, even if it was in a tertiary context. I loved the history of brining Flash pinball and Firepower into it, too. and even Qix, one of my favorite arcade gams gets brought up. I didn't know Randy and Sandy's game developing career went that far back! The audio interview with Jarvis you referred to checks out with something he said at his seminar at Houston Arcade Expo 2019. We bring up the telecode discussion in a video we're working on at the moment. Some of the assembly code discussions will go over most people's heads, but you did great work laying out your case. I like your explanation of how the stereo effect works in the cockpit version of Sinistar. Brining up the unused assets in Bubbles and Mystic Marathon is also very interesting. If I were to critique one thing, it's that I have vision problems and found the Sinistar font hard to read at times. And of course, the response from the MAME gatekeepers is appalling, but that's not your fault. Some of this was also very helpful to a video I have in the works. Thanks for the effort! -- A.T.
Truly fascinating documentary. Award worthy. The end was a tad jarring but I see in the comments that your code was committed to MAME. Congratulations on all of your hard work.
Watched this in its entirety. Fantastic job on everything here: from the analysis, reverse engineering, video production. Williams sounds were always iconic!
I rarely comment on YT, but just had to say thank you for such a well presented and informative video. Always been a huge fan of the Williams sound! Regardless of the MAME outcome, you've done a fantastic job here.
Great video! What a variety of synthesis techniques they used at Williams, in such early days. I loved hearing about their origins and how you can deduce real-life connections and probable goings on by comparing the code between games; reading the ROMs like digital DNA. I've never played a cockpit Sinistar in real life and was unaware of the differences - how fabulous that they slightly delayed the G-wave sounds from the second board to create a more spacy sensation. And then that the randomizers diverge between the boards so the explosions will truly turn your head... ~chef's kiss~ Lovely music and visual production too, it was a pleasant watch for something so technical. Thank you for putting this all together in so much detail!
What a wild ride! So much art is like the Thus Spoke Zarathustra moment with the bone club and human ancestor in 2001 A Space Odyssey, and trying to reverse engineer that moment is super difficult and leads to things like commenting out stereo sounds.
Whoa 8:41 is unmistakably proper stereo emulation, complete with the explosion delay and the firing sound being cut short! A bit of a spoiler for the 3 people who've played a Sinistar cockpit. Also, I feel secondhand embarrassment reading R. Belmont's ignorant interpretation of early stereo. Incredible to hear such cluelessness coming from a MAME dev! Have they never played an environmental cab (the first coming to mind being Discs of Tron?) They all used that same flipped 90° stereo. I can't imagine the frustration you must've felt explaining something so elementary to the should-be "authority" on such topics. I know I wouldn't have had as much patience as you, so kudos, and I hope they grow up and correct their mistakes. A couple final notes/funny stories: I was on WR progress on the 2 machines at my local arcade; just barely breaking 300k. First the upright went down, and then I swear you can't make this up, boogie2988 broke the Sinstar cockpit; cutting my progress short. The owner doesn't have the resources to fix them and there's not another machine for 500 miles. Consequentially, I haven't touched the game in nearly 5 years. Desperately looking for another to conduct some tests and finally achieve WR. A final note, I started conducting said tests last year to either confirm or debunk the claims R.J. Mikal makes in his interview on the Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits games involving a 255 lives glitch. So far, I've recreated 4 instances of the exact scenario he describes for the player to die twice on their last life and it hasn't rolled under. Let me know if you'd like to see a full presentation of my findings, or even if you'd like to try it yourself, I'd love to see that as It's its own rabbit hole. I'm always excited to see new Sinistar content, so thanks a bunch. Cheers!
It was extremely frustrating, especially considering all the research and effort I put into everything, only to get treated like that in return. Even though the MAME dev team has some issues, I'm grateful they implemented the code and with the current version there's sliders now to pan the audio channels correctly, so even though the proper audio routing isn't the default, there's a workaround with those sliders. I'm interested to see your findings. I just looked at the source code and in "WITT/COLLISO.SRC", the player collisions get disabled before even the Sinistar emits its roar sound effect so enemy shots shouldn't affect the player while in the Sinistar's "death grip". I've been in situations while debugging the game where Warriors are shooting at me before getting killed by the Sinistar and that rollover never happened. I think the 255 bug might be a myth, unless it happens in the AMOA build.
That's interesting. When does it disable? I know it gives you 2 seconds to watch the beautiful explosion particle. Maybe during that time you can be shot again? How I've set it up is trying to fly in a way that gets a Warrior to shoot really slowly. If you play a lot of Defender, you'll know how landers will shoot slower the slower you're moving and the closer you are to them. Then, you just follow their shot and wait for the Sinistar to eat you and hope it drifts into you. I haven't gotten one slow enough for me to feel conclusive yet, which is why I mentioned that I had only started. Definitely motivated to pick that back up after watching these.
heya do you think you could make a guide on setting up this version of mame along with how to install your difficulty and plume mods please? trying to restart the grind but cant figure out how to get them working
Great Video. I honestly don't know why your implementation didn't get accepted. I completely agree, that the physical placement of the speakers is what should matter in the end.
Wow! Thanks for going to such trouble to investigate and then teach about this! I was a kid back when these games were new and those sounds are a not insignificant part of my brain. I've been equally interested in talks given by David Thiel about his work at Gottlieb in those years.
Excellent attention to detail and thorough research as always! A great preservation piece for the annals of video game history, love it. Every game deserves a historical piece as thorough as this lol
Just had to stop by and say Thank You. It's because of people like you and your perseverance that we can create a snapshot in time of how the original programmers intended for these games to be portrayed for our enjoyment of the experience of playing them. Bravo 😎👏👏👏 *Casually turns his headphones to front and back
What would be really cool is if someone still had the uncompressed, unedited audio of John Deremus (or the audio/visuals for any other Midway arcade game). It's unlikely, but considering that Nintendo still had uncompressed Star Fox 64 audio sitting on their hard drives, it's also not impossible.
Very cool stuff! I'm an old games programmer, so this was really interesting stuff. Thanks! Do you have a version of this video without the weird ambient background music? It was quite distracting.
Nicely done! While I have spun Panzer Division's "I am Sinistar" at a night club at least once, I rarely have occasion to reference it. This seems as if it may be one of those times: th-cam.com/video/k5Mx029FvOo/w-d-xo.html ;)
I'm fairly certain this kind of mindset in the MAME team is why Donkey Kong's audio emulation has been inaccurate for over a decade, even though they claim it is accurate.
@SynaMax, thanks for this brilliant work and for sending me on a trip down memory lane! -Sam Dicker
Hello Mr. Dicker ! We are reaching out to Williams alumni for article and video interviews! Is there a way to get in contact with you? -- A.T. Gonzalez
Kudos to the programmers who had virtually no time to come out with these games and were hurried and rushed. Truly fascinating.
That guy Belmont lmao.
Powertriping is one hell of a drug.
Excellent job, dude. You handled yourself professionally, even when he/they didn't. I know how upsetting it can be when you're trying to help someone, and they treat you like you're bothering them. Try not to let it get to you -- your work here is OUTSTANDING.
This is Ahoy-level effort in documentation and preservation. Sorry you had to deal with so much attitude in your efforts to get this game preserved as accurately as possible, the community doesn't deserve people as dedicated as you.
Wow, thank you so much for the compliment! Ahoy was a huge inspiration for this video; in fact, his "Four-byte Burger" video kinda kick-started this whole project. Seeing Jack Haeger's art in Ahoy's video reminded me of Sinistar and that's what got me on this path. Listening to Aphex Twin sample "Defender" also inspired me to make this video as well.
@@SynaMax you're welcome, you did an excellent job here!
Praise the algorithm, it recommends me a genuinely good video about a game worthy of obsession. And don't take crap from anyone, what you are doing is AMAZING!!
The solution for the audio problem as it exists would be a simple user-facing boolean the user could toggle to either run the stereo code or not, and a note in the ROM's readme about how to position your speakers for the sit-down cabinet. If (boolean == true ) { code; }. It's not any more complicated than that. I can only speculate on why R. Belmont is acting like it's more difficult than it has to be. Either way, the rudeness towards Haze and yourself seems entirely unnecessary. You did some serious heavy lifting for getting Sinistar's sounds working, and that should be appreciated and applauded.
I really hope the issue with the MAME team gets resolved, that's honestly completely unprofessional. This is important, impressive work, thank you for doing it
Eh, sounds like typical mame team attitude
Disappointing to see Arbee so obstinant.
Wow, the fact that R. Belmont couldn't comprehend the concept of a Left/Right Speaker being rotated 90 degrees is astonishing lmao. ESPECIALLY since you provided the Video/Audio reference between the 2 commits. Sorry you had to go through that :/
If you rotate them 90°, they aren't left/right anymore 🤷♂️
Not too bad for your first time doing a project of this magnitude! Glad to have helped, even if it was in a tertiary context. I loved the history of brining Flash pinball and Firepower into it, too. and even Qix, one of my favorite arcade gams gets brought up. I didn't know Randy and Sandy's game developing career went that far back! The audio interview with Jarvis you referred to checks out with something he said at his seminar at Houston Arcade Expo 2019. We bring up the telecode discussion in a video we're working on at the moment.
Some of the assembly code discussions will go over most people's heads, but you did great work laying out your case. I like your explanation of how the stereo effect works in the cockpit version of Sinistar. Brining up the unused assets in Bubbles and Mystic Marathon is also very interesting.
If I were to critique one thing, it's that I have vision problems and found the Sinistar font hard to read at times. And of course, the response from the MAME gatekeepers is appalling, but that's not your fault.
Some of this was also very helpful to a video I have in the works. Thanks for the effort! -- A.T.
Truly fascinating documentary. Award worthy. The end was a tad jarring but I see in the comments that your code was committed to MAME. Congratulations on all of your hard work.
This is a fantastic informative video. Thank you for doing all the work required to put this together.
Watched this in its entirety. Fantastic job on everything here: from the analysis, reverse engineering, video production. Williams sounds were always iconic!
I am glad to see your change was later committed.
I rarely comment on YT, but just had to say thank you for such a well presented and informative video. Always been a huge fan of the Williams sound! Regardless of the MAME outcome, you've done a fantastic job here.
Great video! What a variety of synthesis techniques they used at Williams, in such early days. I loved hearing about their origins and how you can deduce real-life connections and probable goings on by comparing the code between games; reading the ROMs like digital DNA.
I've never played a cockpit Sinistar in real life and was unaware of the differences - how fabulous that they slightly delayed the G-wave sounds from the second board to create a more spacy sensation. And then that the randomizers diverge between the boards so the explosions will truly turn your head... ~chef's kiss~
Lovely music and visual production too, it was a pleasant watch for something so technical. Thank you for putting this all together in so much detail!
What a wild ride! So much art is like the Thus Spoke Zarathustra moment with the bone club and human ancestor in 2001 A Space Odyssey, and trying to reverse engineer that moment is super difficult and leads to things like commenting out stereo sounds.
Whoa 8:41 is unmistakably proper stereo emulation, complete with the explosion delay and the firing sound being cut short! A bit of a spoiler for the 3 people who've played a Sinistar cockpit.
Also, I feel secondhand embarrassment reading R. Belmont's ignorant interpretation of early stereo. Incredible to hear such cluelessness coming from a MAME dev! Have they never played an environmental cab (the first coming to mind being Discs of Tron?) They all used that same flipped 90° stereo. I can't imagine the frustration you must've felt explaining something so elementary to the should-be "authority" on such topics. I know I wouldn't have had as much patience as you, so kudos, and I hope they grow up and correct their mistakes.
A couple final notes/funny stories: I was on WR progress on the 2 machines at my local arcade; just barely breaking 300k. First the upright went down, and then I swear you can't make this up, boogie2988 broke the Sinstar cockpit; cutting my progress short. The owner doesn't have the resources to fix them and there's not another machine for 500 miles. Consequentially, I haven't touched the game in nearly 5 years. Desperately looking for another to conduct some tests and finally achieve WR.
A final note, I started conducting said tests last year to either confirm or debunk the claims R.J. Mikal makes in his interview on the Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits games involving a 255 lives glitch. So far, I've recreated 4 instances of the exact scenario he describes for the player to die twice on their last life and it hasn't rolled under. Let me know if you'd like to see a full presentation of my findings, or even if you'd like to try it yourself, I'd love to see that as It's its own rabbit hole.
I'm always excited to see new Sinistar content, so thanks a bunch.
Cheers!
It was extremely frustrating, especially considering all the research and effort I put into everything, only to get treated like that in return. Even though the MAME dev team has some issues, I'm grateful they implemented the code and with the current version there's sliders now to pan the audio channels correctly, so even though the proper audio routing isn't the default, there's a workaround with those sliders.
I'm interested to see your findings. I just looked at the source code and in "WITT/COLLISO.SRC", the player collisions get disabled before even the Sinistar emits its roar sound effect so enemy shots shouldn't affect the player while in the Sinistar's "death grip". I've been in situations while debugging the game where Warriors are shooting at me before getting killed by the Sinistar and that rollover never happened. I think the 255 bug might be a myth, unless it happens in the AMOA build.
That's interesting. When does it disable? I know it gives you 2 seconds to watch the beautiful explosion particle. Maybe during that time you can be shot again? How I've set it up is trying to fly in a way that gets a Warrior to shoot really slowly. If you play a lot of Defender, you'll know how landers will shoot slower the slower you're moving and the closer you are to them. Then, you just follow their shot and wait for the Sinistar to eat you and hope it drifts into you. I haven't gotten one slow enough for me to feel conclusive yet, which is why I mentioned that I had only started. Definitely motivated to pick that back up after watching these.
heya do you think you could make a guide on setting up this version of mame along with how to install your difficulty and plume mods please? trying to restart the grind but cant figure out how to get them working
Great Video. I honestly don't know why your implementation didn't get accepted. I completely agree, that the physical placement of the speakers is what should matter in the end.
Wow! Thanks for going to such trouble to investigate and then teach about this! I was a kid back when these games were new and those sounds are a not insignificant part of my brain. I've been equally interested in talks given by David Thiel about his work at Gottlieb in those years.
Brilliant work. So glad that you completed it to the end and published your research. The entire industry owes you.
Excellent attention to detail and thorough research as always! A great preservation piece for the annals of video game history, love it. Every game deserves a historical piece as thorough as this lol
Incredible and wicked goddamn cool! Thanks!
Just had to stop by and say Thank You. It's because of people like you and your perseverance that we can create a snapshot in time of how the original programmers intended for these games to be portrayed for our enjoyment of the experience of playing them. Bravo 😎👏👏👏
*Casually turns his headphones to front and back
Great video and such a huge effort preserving this history and explaining it, deserves wayyyy more views. 🎹🎹🎹🎹🙏
Astounding work, man. Truly
Thank you for your hard work in preserving and accurately representing game and hardware history.
Enjoyed the video! Nice disassembly work!
Amazing detailed work! Thank you!
Wow great presentation and work! Thanks for this!
What would be really cool is if someone still had the uncompressed, unedited audio of John Deremus (or the audio/visuals for any other Midway arcade game). It's unlikely, but considering that Nintendo still had uncompressed Star Fox 64 audio sitting on their hard drives, it's also not impossible.
Amazing work, you did amazing job
thank you for this
Letting data corrupt makes cool noises in some old casio and yamaha keyboards, hence their popularity in circuit bending.
Very cool stuff! I'm an old games programmer, so this was really interesting stuff. Thanks! Do you have a version of this video without the weird ambient background music? It was quite distracting.
Nicely done!
While I have spun Panzer Division's "I am Sinistar" at a night club at least once, I rarely have occasion to reference it. This seems as if it may be one of those times: th-cam.com/video/k5Mx029FvOo/w-d-xo.html ;)
ty
I'm fairly certain this kind of mindset in the MAME team is why Donkey Kong's audio emulation has been inaccurate for over a decade, even though they claim it is accurate.