Topic: Background Sound Effects

[chillyfeez]

So I'm working on the Watery Pass in TfW and I stumbled upon some info that, as far as I know, hasn't been documented yet.

Ever notice that when you enter the Waterfall on the way to Octomamm, that first screen (before jumping down the waterfall) doesn't have music, but just a running water sound?

Turns out, the "music" byte for that map is set at 44. But, songs in FFIV are only numbered up to 37. So I isolated this byte and did some experimenting. Here's what I came up with...

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38 through 3D - NOTHING
3E - PROPELLER SOUND (FADES IN)
3F - THREE GONGS, SHIP WHISTLE BLOWS (I THINK WHEN THE SHIP TAKES OFF FROM FABUL)
40 - A DISTANT CRASH SOUND
41 - A NOT-SO-DISTANT CRASH SOUND
42 - EARTHQUAKE
43 - PROLONGED FALLING SOUND (PERHAPS USED WHEN CID BOMBS THE ENTRANCE TO THE UNDERWORLD?)
44 - RUSHING WATER (WATERFALL)
45 - NOTHING
46 (and above?) - CRASHES GAME
Not a whole lot of useful stuff here, but maybe someone will be interested.

FF4kster doesn't have the ability to set these bytes above the last song (Ending 3), so you'd have to isolate and change the byte manually. For a shortcut to doing this, set an Execute breakpoint to 00/83EF, then enter the location whose music you want to change. 83EF will execute 12 (0C) times. You'll see the Y register increment by 1 each time. When Y = 0007, the byte being read is your music byte.

I imagine these sound effect "songs" can be called via event instructions, too, but doing so would likewise be impossible with FF4kster. Describing a similar shortcut to manually change these would be a bit more difficult, too, because of the way the game loads event instructions.

[chillyfeez]

To confirm the above suspicion, events do call these sound effects as well. The "jumping down the waterfall" event uses "prolonged falling sound."

Come to think of it, isn't there some kind of ticking clock sound in Cecil's room in the beginning of the game just before Rosa shows up? That's not on my list here, but I'll bet it's one of these...

[Bahamut ZERO]

I've been wondering how to set these kinds of "music"s. Thanks for sharing the info!

Though, I'm pretty sure the propeller noise can be used from the "sound effects" section of the editor. Then again, that might be a different sound effect altogether than what you found.. 

On second thought, what I'm talking about is almost certainly a different sound altogether, as what you're talking about is being set AS the music, and not played along WITH it. That became apparent the second I tested the "whirlpool" SE before flying to the waterfall map you're talking about (which I'm really glad you posted this up before I got any bright ideas of changing that map's music).

I wonder if these extra "music"s can be played with the same way one can play with the octaves/tempos of the normal musics. Say you could, and could also have some sort of water droplet graphic auto scrolling in a set direction (which in theory I guess could be set up using whatever method is used to make the Mist cave's BG to layer on top of the map rather than behind and, and having said raindrop graphic be part of the map's tileset) you could  rig up a rainstorm using a tweaked waterfall music (that is, if one wasn't planning on USING that for a waterfall).

[chillyfeez]

I had similar thoughts, too.

I think I will look into it at some point, when I get to a good place to pause production on TfW. It would be good info to add to my music hacking doc.