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Talk:Music in Pikmin 2

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Revision as of 17:43, September 1, 2015 by Neini (talk | contribs)

Phew... Okay, so I've been messing about with Pikmin 2's music files in hopes of understanding them a bit better. DebugYoshi and some other people have been trying to decode the .bms file format, but this time, I just tried snooping around the other files and reaching conclusions. This'll just serve as a bag of notes and... experiment results, I guess?

  1. /AudioRes/BgmList.txt seems to be unused because it is quite incomplete. I'll try tampering with it some time later to check if the game uses it.
  2. /AudioRes/Banks is where the sound effects of the game and the instrument samples are. There's more info on TCRF's Pikmin 2 notes page.
  3. /AudioRes/Conductor.arc has .cnd files. I don't know what they are, but opening them with a text editor reveals English names of instruments lying around, like "marimba", "orchpad" or "Dulcima".
  4. /AudioRes/Key.arc contains a folder for some enemies and objects with .bas files in them. The files are named after the respective object's animations, and because this is in the game's main audio folder, I can only assume that these files map what sounds to play at what points during an enemy/plant/etc.'s animation.
  5. /AudioRes/PSound.aaf is used with other Nintendo games' .bms files.
  6. /AudioRes/PSound.asn is unknown.
  7. /AudioRes/Seqs/Seq.arc stores the .bms files.
  8. /AudioRes/Stream is where the streamed music is. You can listen to this with Winamp and some plugins. Think of it like MP3 files.
  9. /User/Totaka/BgmList.txt is similar to the AudioRes folder's BgmList.txt, but more complete. This might be the one the game actually uses.
  10. /User/Totaka/BgmList_*.txt are files for every area in the game. At first glance, they definitely look like the songs (the .cnd files) that the game should use for each sublevel in each cave. But then you start noticing stuff like how the Emergence Cave's second sublevel should play a metallic sublevel song, according to the US version's files. The only conclusion I reached is that the game does not use these files and must be getting its sublevel music data elsewhere. So I tried changing them. And the game refused to load. So... is it using the files, but ignoring their content? I honestly don't know. Also, to note is that this includes the songs used on newtest too. ...I suppose.
  11. /User/Totaka/ChallengeBgmList.txt is like the previous BgmList files.
  12. /User/Totaka/StreamList.txt seems to be the map between streamed music and its ID. It also includes the volume of each track, but this might be wrong, because the values are crazy. Some tracks have 60, others have 100. Would they really create the tracks with such wild volume changes that they'd need a configuration file in the final game to balance it?
  13. /User/Totaka/trackMap_*_T.txt could be something that relates the .cnd files's instruments with the different gameplay events (carrying treasure, battling an enemy, etc.) tha makes the music change. I have no idea which ones are used and which ones aren't.
  14. /User/Wakai/trackMap_*_W.txt: same comment as above.

Hopefully we can gather some more useful data about the way the music and works in the future. But for now, I'll place this information here so I don't forget. — {EspyoT} 18:45, 17 July 2015 (EDT)

Boss attack stinger order

Hey Scruffy, are you sure that that's the order they play in? I only once took the time to look into it, and that was ages ago, but I think that they don't play in that order. I might just be remembering wrong. — {EspyoT} 08:03, 18 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm absolutely sure of it. I've checked with every boss many times, and every time it started with the one I labeled as 1 and went in sequence to 2, 3, and 4, then repeated. Even when there are two Burrowing Snagrets in one sublevel, the order is still global, meaning if one appears and activates "Short Attack 1," the second one appearing will activate "Short Attack 2," and so on. Scruffy (talk) 11:35, 18 July 2015 (EDT)
Okay, awesome. You can probably add that info too, about it being global. I wonder if it resets between sublevels or caves, though? — {EspyoT} 16:24, 18 July 2015 (EDT)

Secret Testing Range

I think it's worth noting that the music that plays on the second floor of Secret Testing Range is not Metal 2 but rather a slightly different variation of it. --Neini - Talk! - Contributions! 00:59, 30 August 2015 (EDT)

To add onto this, Metal 3 is exclusive to sublevel 5 of the Snagret Hole. A very similar theme plays on sublevel 5 of the Subterranean Complex and sublevel 1 of the Cavern of Chaos, but it isn't Metal 3. ~PikFan23 05:24, 30 August 2015 (EDT)
Um, except it is. Compare this video of CoC 1 to this part of Metal 3. They're the same. In the future, please provide evidence instead of just making claims. --En Passant 13:04, 30 August 2015 (EDT)
checked the BgmList files and it does appear that the files are different
  • snagret hole floor 5: cavemetal_10_4.cnd
  • subterranean complex floor 6/collector's room floor 3/secret testing range floor 1: cavemetal_10_0.cnd
whatever differences there are must be very minimal (if at all) because I've never noticed them --Neini - Talk! - Contributions! 15:46, 30 August 2015 (EDT)
I considered linking to the first video, but I didn't because the sound effects interfere with the music, and I couldn't find any video that had just the music. Anyway, if you listen closely, you can tell that they're different: Metal 3 has some differently-pitched notes compared to CoC 1. It's very subtle, so you have to listen very closely. Also, thanks for looking at the game files Neini, since I can't access them. ~PikFan23 18:05, 30 August 2015 (EDT)
I'll look into the specific musical differences and note them in the article; perhaps recording the two to demonstrate the difference. Thank you for pointing that out! Scruffy (talk) 18:11, 31 August 2015 (EDT)
I haven't had much time to look into this mess in detail, but I'll give my two cents. First, thank you Scruffy for going over yet another ridiculous Pikmin 2 task. If that game weren't so convoluted in its details, we wouldn't have to be frying our heads over this... Second, could it just be a question of the random parts of the song being more prominent on one place and less on another? Maybe they're equally distributed, but the RNG is just messing with us? Finally, I wouldn't trust the game files on this one. I tried to read through the song listings a few times, and I always found something that contradicted what happens in-game. Nothing out of the ordinary for Pikmin 2, sure, but until we can figure out what in the world the files are actually saying, we better not blindly follow them. — {EspyoT} 04:01, 1 September 2015 (EDT)
I've edited the BgmList files before and my understanding of them is that they do affect the music that plays in caves, but certain external factors can bypass it; i.e. the rest floor in dream den is supposed to play the hole of heroes music but a parameter in the cave file for that floor makes it play the rest music instead; this same parameter is used to keep music from playing (for boss floors). for the most part however, they can be edited just fine and will work in game; not sure why it's not working for espyo
  • BgmList_Tutorial/Forest/Yakushima/Last - these contain the filenames of the songs that play on each sublevel of each cave
  • BgmList_BgmTest - although it has the same format as the other BgmList files, this is more likely a reference page for all the .cnd files found in Conductor.arc - this is arranged into Soil (15 entries), Metal (15 entries), Conc (6 entries), Tile (1 entry), Glass (2 entries), Tsumiki (1 entry) and New (11 entries); that's a little over fifty .cnd files; perhaps unused variations of songs exist, or maybe they're just duplicates... at the bottom of this file is a bunch of developer instructions
my theory is that the .cnd files draw information from the .bms (sequenced) files in Seq.arc, so all the "soil" songs are derived from cavesoil.bms, "metal" songs from cavemetal.bms, and so on. on the other hand, however, the "new" songs seem to each have their own unique .bms files. --Neini - Talk! - Contributions! 16:12, 1 September 2015 (EDT)
findings --Neini - Talk! - Contributions! 18:43, 1 September 2015 (EDT)
  1. caveconc_05_1.cnd - nearly identical to Electricity, but with an additional instrument line enabled; a pad similar to that in the Wistful Wild's spiderwort mix
  2. cavemetal_05_0.cnd - the variation of Metal 2 used in Secret Testing Range is actually the normal version; the one used everywhere else is cavemetal_05_4.cnd; most of the other variations have different guitar samples and/or different note patterns
  3. caveglass_10_0.cnd - identical to Yard
  4. caveboss.cnd and iron.cnd - crash the game
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