From: gruel@midiline.la.ca.us (Nick Salvatico)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.audio
Subject: Re: Who made this mod?
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 04:59:11 PST
Distribution: comp.sys.amiga.audio
Organization: MIDILine BBS - Altadena, CA - (818) 797-3285

From: zant0001@student.tc.umn.edu (Eric Zanto)
Subject: Re: Who made this mod?
 
re: (AudioMonster)
 
> One of my favorites by him is Nebulos, from the Silents "Ice" demo.
> Any other exceptional ones by Audiomonster?
 
 I especially like one called Florence (exceptionally good use of guitar 
samples and the only saving grace to Bidon-Dezign's tasteless Haemorroid 
Target demo -- unless I'm misremembering my demos), and another called 
Hysteria.  Others by him (though not as good IMO) are: Melonmania, 70s 
Reprise, Sonic (also from the Ice demo), and Chaos In France (which, from 
what I gather, is supposed to be pretty awful -- and succeeds).
 
 Latest stuff I know of are from the game Flashback.  There are 21 
different MODs, the vast majority of which are what I'd call "spot" MODs 
-- ones that are 1 to 4 blocks long and used for specific events in the 
game.  There are a few longer, more typically sized ones that are each 
pretty good.
 
 By the way I believe I jotted your name down from some MOD or other I 
came across (or was it here?).  Seems you fancy yourself a pretty agile 
ripper.  :)  Okay, I have a bit of a challenge for you (and, no, nothing 
will self-destruct or anything).
 
 Have you ever heard of a demo from Anarchy called Spring Melodies?  It 
is a two disk music demo with around 8-10 songs on it.  Very good stuff 
by NHP and some other acronym I can't recall.  Now, I've done some 
ripping from things in the past, but I don't have any facility with 
system monitors and things like that, just rippers and ram-scanners, and 
some ability to crack encrypted and interleaved MODs and such.  The 
problem I encountered with Spring Melodies is twofold.
 
 First, (and this is something that might not be rectifiable) there seems 
to be a problem with some of the data blocks that have been packed with 
PowerPacker (PP20 in the block header).  I pulled a couple from the disk 
and PowerPacker 4.0a either crashes or yields a huge 2-3 meg result, 
clearly not a good thing.  Also, the demo itself will go haywire when 
trying to unpack and use those blocks, so, they're out I guess (at least 
in the event this is a problem with the distribution disks themselves and 
not just my copy).  However, many do uncrunch fine.  Now comes the second 
problem, the modules, though in standard tracker format for the most 
part, are missing the songdata.  The header info (title, sample names, 
etc.) are intact, but it goes from there directly into the sample data.  
No songdata, and I don't think even the playlist is there.  I assume the 
songdata and whatever else is located SOMEWHERE, but I haven't been able 
to find it.
 
 This music is well worth the effort if it's possible to get playable 
modules.  I think I'll have another go at it myself.  It's been a long 
time since I looked and I may have learned something since then.
 
 Of course, if anyone has any of the modules from this demo, I'd me MORE 
than pleased to get them.  I know there are some coder types around who 
also like to rip -- if for no other reason than the challenge it 
sometimes presents.
 
    o   .
 o .  o   o
   o .   .
  __:__:_
 ( gruel )
  \_____/

-----
gruel@midiline.la.ca.us (Nick Salvatico) 
MIDILine BBS (midiline.la.ca.us) - Altadena CA - (818)797-3285