Nemesis 3 - Gofer's Ambition Episode II / bass drum lost.

Champion (451)

22-09-2013, 02:39

I always thought that the sound of this great konami game is different. Something was not right...
If you are able to switch off SCC and only play PSG you will notice that bass drum is only a 'click'.
Well,maybe Konami liked as is but comparing with Gradius 2 or Salamander the bug seems evident.

This can be fixed searchig the string $09,$00,$0A,$94... and changing $0A to $A0.
Bassdrum envelope type and lenght can be modified:

byte
09 type of envelope
00 envelope freq
0A envelope fine freq

ej: $0A,$01,$40 are ok to me.

Now weaponary stage song and clearly the poison of snake cover will be played rightly.

Snare drum can be 'improved' to salamander definition searching $10,$C1,$B0,$E8 and changing $10 to $42

By [WYZ]

Champion (451)

22-09-2013, 03:06

May be you are thinking that the 'click' is not a bug and only a SCC bass intruments complement....Who knows

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5665)

22-09-2013, 05:07

Interesting. Compared to Gradius 2 and Salamander (and the SCC upgraded Gradius 1), the kickdrum of Nemesis 3 indeed sounds like a fly-fart.

I wouldn't for the life of me know how to change those values, though. I would really like it if you (or someone) could post a video with the results when changing them.

By [WYZ]

Champion (451)

22-09-2013, 11:11

Here is a mp3/mono file comparing a few songs in three parts:

1.- original
2.- Bassdrum patched with $A0
3.- Salamander drumset.

NEMESIS3_DRUMSET_FIX_part1
NEMESIS3_DRUMSET_FIX_part2

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5665)

22-09-2013, 15:37

Thanks! It's an improvement as expected!

By sd_snatcher

Prophet (3646)

22-09-2013, 16:36

What a fantastic finding!!!

And I add that, after seeing many other bugs inside the Konami games (*1), I wouldn't be surprised if this is indeed a real bug. And because Konami worked with libraries, usually a bug in a library will affect all subsequent games. This was the case of the timing bug. It debuted on Twinbee, and affected every Konami game after that.

Just to confirm if that was the case again, I did run a quick check and both Pennant Race 2 and Space Manbow indeed seem to be affected by this kickdrum bug.

They seem to have noticed and fixed the bug when developing Metal Gear 2 and SD Snatcher. From that point all games get the fixed kickdrum, like Quarth and all games from the Konami Games Collection.

*1: I.e.: The famous timing bug, the Salamander's Ripple laser bug, Space Manbow's lamest-boss-ever-bug, etc etc

By [WYZ]

Champion (451)

22-09-2013, 20:50

I've found the same problem in snatcher and pennant race 2 but these cases are minimised in a wide drum set.

By [WYZ]

Champion (451)

22-09-2013, 22:19

Anyway,knowing the taste of konami for the good sound it is difficult to understand. Maybe they was triying to reduce the kickdrum volume and they choosed this method.

By max_iwamoto

Hero (628)

23-09-2013, 06:42

Indeed, an amazing find!

It is also possible that bug was because somebody did a typo: A0h -> 0Ah.

By Manuel

Ascended (19314)

23-09-2013, 09:07

sd_snatcher: can you remind us/me what the 'timing' bug is again?

By sd_snatcher

Prophet (3646)

23-09-2013, 14:52

Yes, of course. The timing bug, aka Turbo Bug, is the bug on the timing routines that allow the game to run at 2x the normal speed (up to 3x on MG2) if there's enough CPU power.
Sometimes the bug manifests itself even without a turbo CPU, as is the case of Vampire Killer when running at 50Hz video.