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After my epic fail with Chris Huelsbeck's own self-remixing Kickstarter, I'm sure as hell not going to miss the chance to pledge to this one:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2059538678/the-amiga-works

It still needs £5000 more, but runs until January.

Support it!  I did, and getting me to hand over money for anything is like getting blood out of a stone.

Discovered yet another one from Spaceman:

"(Wolfchild)end" = "mainmag"

(20121125) => keeping both. Only some sample/loop sizes differences, agreed, but one from a game and the other from SD07.

Success!

Can you merge the contents of this zip with the main JPN archive, please?

Oh, and I noted the subsong #2 (starting at #1) of 'realms intro' is also missing in your archive.

That's deliberate - they overlap.  The offset to subsong #2 is less than the length of subsong #1, resulting in only the last few sequence positions of subsong #1 - corrupt data, in other words.  A lot of Richard Joseph's tunes (James Pond 2, Cannon Fodder 2, Diggers) have the same problem.

I guess I'll ask on EAB... if they haven't deleted my account for inactivity yet!

(Semi-amusing anecdote about broken subsongs: Between the end of subsong #1 and the start of subsong #2 in Virocop tune 8 is sequence data - with all the pattern data still intact - from Virocop tune 7.  Additionally, subsong #3 in both of them is identical.  Lee Banyard must have composed that one in a hurry!)

As I suspected way back when I wrote the very first version of my Jason Page music converter, but have only just now confirmed, the current version of that archive is not complete.

Have a look at this list.  There's Virocop tune 1, tune 2, and so on all the way up to tune 9.  Then there are tunes 11 to 14.  There is no tune 10.

What is particularly aggravating is that UnExoticA doesn't have the Virocop music at all, which closes off the solution I found when I discovered that some of Modland's Richard Joseph tunes were faulty.  No other sites seem to collect these 'exotic' formats.

As for exactly what tune is missing, I confirmed my suspicions by watching the longplay video.  The numbered files are arranged in groups of two, and the two tracks within each group have the same samples.  So tune 1 is the main theme for the first world, and tune 2 is the boss theme.  Tune 3 is the main theme for the second world, and tune 4 is the second world's boss theme.  Tune 9 is the main theme for the fifth world... and if you watch the video (2:18:00 is about right), you'll hear a set of tunes in the background of the fifth world's boss fight which do not exist in my archive.

Can somebody please re-rip the music from this game?  I've come this far, I don't want to deprive my converter of every possible JPN file I can throw at it!

Here's my guide to the inner workings of the RJP format, some twenty months after I first started investigating it.  Much shorter than the JPN one, and much less focused on being a tutorial.

I'll upload it to Modland too.

Hopefully we can all draw a line under this whole sordid episode now...

EDIT: Er, correction, I won't upload it to Modland because the upload folder has gone!  Has the site finally given up the ghost?

There's a tune called 'cyberchrist' by Vortex which I'm rather fond of, but unfortunately both AMP's copy and mine have a rather serious fault in.  Some of the data seems to have been decompressed incorrectly somehow, resulting in a loud squealing noise in the vocal samples.

I've tried Modland too - same problem.

Does anyone have a clean copy of this tune?

The relation between musics is an idea that will need major revamp of the DB. As is, there's simply no way to do that. We do have a 'comment' field available (although not yet displayed and scarcely fed) where that kind of link could go. It's an unsatisfactory solution but at least it's one. This, however, points to the serious lack of "admins" on AMP. I'm basically running things around here, with uneven help from others, when it comes to that kind of things.

The 'comment' field sounds ideal for the job.  And if you need help populating it, I'd be happy to step up...

MOD.bubba.level5 = MOD.bubba.level6

Whoopsy!  I can't believe I forgot that one...

MOD.(Wonder Dog)game complete = MOD.bubba.title

I didn't even know about that one!  Sure enough, they're identical.

This sort of thing is exactly why I chose to focus on Spaceman first, because he really was a terrible one for self-plagiarism.  How can you know which one was composed first?  And does it matter, really?  If someone was looking to download the complete Wonder Dog soundtrack, is it reasonable to expect them to know to look for "bubba.title"?

And that's why I think the AMP database needs a way to relate tracks to each other, to highlight tracks where you probably don't want to download both of them, but they're sufficiently different that you can't justify deleting either.  "mystikal!-vibes" and "system violation" would benefit from this as well.

Oh well, here's a couple from Subject (or Prophet, as he's known on AMP):

"private justice" > "alien inspiration" (slight sequence difference and truncated samples)
=> latter one is gone (converted rip)

"tp5'95" ~ "lifetime" (seems to be a later revision)

"guitarmag3" ~ "upstream.work" (unfinished, with different samples)

"gatecrashing" ~ "gatecrashing4" (dodgy rip, slight sequence difference)
=> latter one is gone (converted rip)

What does DFC mean, BTW?

Well, since we have a sticky topic now...

I propose this convention:

"foo" = "bar": The songs are identical; "foo" seems to be the original
"foo" ~ "bar": One song is a slightly modified version of the other
"foo" > "bar": "bar" is just "foo" with some bits missing

These ones are just on Spaceman's page:

chuck2(endgame) = googoo gaga (strangely, these seem to be the wrong way round somehow?  "chuck2(endgame)" contains the text "goo goo gaa gaa !!!!!" and "googoo gaga" contains the text "the end!!!!")
=> Decided to keep both (slight sample diffs). Fact is that in the game (Chuck Rock 2) this music is a Protracker. I've renamed the non ripped one as "MOD.(Chuck Rock 2 DFC)googoo gaga"

"deja vu" > "rott !"
=> way too many differencies to trash either ones. Still renamed the first to "MOD.Anarchy-DejaVu-1" to highlight it's a converted file

"silicon-sector" = "digital innovation" = "kings of dawn" > "gloc-loader(fin.)"
=> "MOD.digital innovation" is gone. MOD.silicon-sector cannot be deleted as they differ in pattern data (more than a little).
MOD.gloc-loader(fin.) has to be kept as well as it's 30kb different and coming from a game.

"kayoto" = "(Premiere)game completed"
=> trashed NP3 converted one and renamed the other.

"system violation" ~ "mystikal!-vibes" (the position jump to the end in the first position has been removed, but the extended intro at the end is still present)
=>will do nothing for now. Discussion downwards.

"skeleton.menu2" = "qqoo9o"
=> trashed first one and renamed second one

"time-for-loving" > "time" (one of the samples has been blanked, and it's not even an unused sample!  Maybe he had to cut it down for something?)
=> MOD.time is gone. Absolutely identical save for the missing sample.

"big deal" = "wonderdog_preview"
=> latter trashed and first renamed to MOD.(Wonderdog preview DFC)big deal

"system controller" = "digitalinnovation 2"
=> the latter is gone

"hard-magic" = "seeing is believing_intro"
=> the latter is gone

"(Wolfchild)W4" = "w4"
"(Wolfchild)W5" = "w5" (you shouldn't need me to tell you this, really...)
=> w4 and w5 gone .... I know, I know

And, most puzzlingly...

"sunday best" (Spaceman & SuperNao) ~ "(Wonder Dog)title" (Spaceman)
...Apart from a few samples!
=> too many differences to trash either one.

Trans Atlantic at number 1?  Incredible!  Meanwhile Amegas languishes at number 8...

I would have said only Amegas and Cream of the Earth were the really obvious candidates for the list.  I've heard Trans Atlantic and it's a good song, but I'd never have considered it number 1 material...

I think you or someone else mentioned some of the modules in your post before

I see I did: http://amp.dascene.net/forum/index.php/topic,315.msg1660.html#msg1660

This is the first time I've seriously investigated the issue, though.  Another example: the two Stolen Data tunes are also known as "d-funked memory" and "sky drift".  (Also, "stolen data6 tune" and "stolen data tune" are exactly the same as each other, so I have no idea how that ever got uploaded.)

Right now, the database has a lot of files called things like "mod.example", "mod.example.long" and "mod.example.sht".  This makes it clear that they're all alternate versions of the same file.

The problem is, sometimes simply calling the files similar names to each other isn't enough.  The worst offender I've found so far is Nuke (Spaceman on AMP), where a lot of music used in productions and named after those productions was recycled from other songs called something quite different.

To take one particularly mysterious example, the Wonder Dog title music appears to be almost the same as a track called "sunday best" - in spite of the fact "sunday best" is listed as a collaboration with Supernao and Wonder Dog isn't!

I think what's needed is some sort of formalised reference system, to warn downloaders that certain tracks are alternate versions of each other or even exactly the same.

Quite possibly the most duplicated track on AMP is one of Spaceman's called "silicon-sector".  This also appears as "kings of dawn" and "digital innovation", exists in a slightly changed form as "silicon-sector v2.0", and has a shortened version called "glocloader" - which has also been remixed by 4-Mat as "glocloader-51k"!

Next question.

What's the most downloaded file (at the present time) on AMP?

It's very rare to find one which has had more than 1,000 downloads, and when you do it's always something tediously obvious (for example, I was just looking at Mantronix's page and Overload had 1,023 downloads).  Still, it'd be nice to know...

Jason_Page_v3.zip is now on AMP's FTP, size 4,853,002 bytes.

After this I'm going to shut up about RJP and JPN forever.  Honest!  I have vague plans to give the Steve Turner (or "Jason Page Old") format a seeing-to, but I don't expect that to happen soon.

The files in this zip have been less thoroughly tested than usual, so please let me know if you find any bugs.

This archive is mainly uploaded for completeness, because my previous JPN converter was a year old and looking a bit scraggy next to the shiny new RJP one, which had had a lot of changes made to it in that year.  Unfortunately, a lot of said changes weren't applicable to JPN, as it has a range of seven octaves (bye bye to the space-saving and quality-increasing sample recording bypass), and doesn't have fixed-format sample blocks (so long to the elimination of samples duplicated in all but volume).  I did sort of consider making more ambitious changes to make the files smaller, but ended up filing all of them under 'too difficult'.

So, apart from a major restructuring of the inner workings of the converter (satisfying, but not much effect on output), the only significant changes are the fixing of two longstanding known bugs:

Firstly, the way the dynamic sample generator worked in v2 meant that it was very possible that the same JPN pattern could be played twice and produce two different S3M patterns!  This was very irritating, but the fix depended on the above-mentioned restructuring.  So, as well as being neater internally, the converter now produces more correct output.

Secondly, the JPN facility to physically copy 128 bytes of sample data was rather bodged-up until now.  This mostly worked, except for the first world of Fire and Ice.  That one plays properly now.