Getting around the many bugs

Started by DJ Omnimaga, November 02, 2007, 06:33:01 AM

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DJ_Omnimaga

Ok, first of all this tutorial applies to the Playstation version of MTV Music Generator/Music 2000, not the PC version that was released in Canada and USA in 2000. Also when I refers to MTV Music Generator or MTVMG I also refers to Music 2000. MTVMG is the American version of Music 2000, but it is exactly the same game.

Those who messed around with MTVMG for a while may have ran into numerous bugs in the program. Yep, you read it, there is indeed many bugs in MTVMG, unfortunately. Codemasters or Jester probably rushed their beta-testing phase and missed many bugs before the release, which is a shame because the product is awesome. Or they probably released the beta instead of the final version lol but I doubt that. Some bugs might be annoying and even ruin your fun when producing new music, especially when you have your own riffs. However DON'T discourage yourself! Even though Music 2000 has many bugs and glitches, it is still a great tool to make music and those bugs can be worked around pretty easily.

This topic will make you discover those bugs (if you didn't alerady) and will teach you how to work around them.

The note effect bug



So you want to add a note effect in a riff? In the riff editor, when you go in note parameters you can change the note effects and add for example chorus, octaves, reverb, special zapping effects. Pretty cool, eh? As awesome as it sounds, it doesn't works properly all the time, especially if multiple notes with special effects plays at the same time. If you insert a riff with such effects in a area where there's plenty of channels used and play the song sometimes you will not hear the note effect at all, it will sounds glitchy or the effect will cut all of a sudden in the middle of each notes. The glitch will be different sounding depending from where you start playing the song. It is worse when starting playing from the beginning or a long while before the note effect is used. There is no work around this, I never found why this happens, the only way to avoid this is to only use one note effect at once (in other word, only one sound channel at once should use any).

Basically if you are planning to use many sound effects at once in your song, forget about it now, or you will be sorry about the result later.

The sample palette bug



Lolz! Where's my cursor??

Ok, this one isn't really annoying and I don't know why I am even talking about it, but I will do it in case someone freaks out when it happens. Sometimes, when opening the Sample Palette you will not see your selection cursor at all. Nope your Playstation (or emulator) didn't crashed (I hope :blink: ), it's because MTVMG has a bug with positionning of the window scrolling when you open it. Sometimes it will save the cursor position when closing the sample palette (so when you reopen it it's still at the same place) but it will not always save the scroll position. So basically just hold up or down arrow until you see it appears, (you may have to try both, since sometimes it may be at the top and sometimes at the bottom).

The riff volume glitch

Ok, let's say you have a riff which is set to this volume:

And you want to paste the riff one after each other to make the sound loop like this:

You will encounter the riff volume glitch, which is probably one of the hardest bug to work around in MTVMG, especially if you use all channels. Click below to hear how it will sound:
http://www.mtv-music-generator.com/tutoria..._workaround.mp3
Notice how the riff volume of the next riff seems to overlap with the currently playing riff, which can give pretty bad results in some songs, especially for chorus/pad riffs. This only happen if the beginning volume of the next riff is different than the ending volume of the currently playing riff. To get around this bug you must place your riffs like this:

That way the next riff volume settings will not overlap on the current one. Click below to hear how it sounds now:
http://www.mtv-music-generator.com/tutoria..._workaround.mp3
Notice the difference. Now your song doesn't sound as glitchy anymore.
Here is also a video demonstrating it (both avi and wmv format):



The 1000th slot glitch

This is a glitch/bug I just discovered recently. When you scroll right until you reach the 999th slot place a riff here and set BPM as high as possible, then press start to play song over and over and you'll end up on slot 1000th. This is a glitch that you're less likely to run on because I doubt you'll need that many slots for your songs but it is fun to mess around and watch Music 2000 freak out anyway, just try creating a riff here and see the weird things happen, then put notes here. The funny thing is that you can actually put a video riff here.

The following video shows the glitch in action:


Sound memory leak bug - added Dec 22th 2009

Sometimes, when you delete a sample from your song, you will never retrieve the entire sound memory it took. It is some sort of memory leak in Music 2000 that can cause you lot of trouble and wonder: "Wow I barely use any sample and I still ran out of memory?". Well, this can be worked around like this:

Simply save your song, then go in option, clear all data, then reload your song again! You will have more sound memory left. Repeat as needed!


This tutorial is not finished yet, I will extend this post when i finish reading the other bug work-arounds.

pillagemyvillage

ha ha. i remember all these bugs! i remember using the note effects and then the game crashing! very annoying when you're onto a great track and you havent saved it. i have lost many awesome tracks over the years!

DJ_Omnimaga

It even crashed? I think i may have it happen once or twice but I'm not sure anymore. For me I think the CD or the Playstation alerady had a defect cuz MTVMG always crashed in the middle of nowhere (like when closing the riff editor or using the top of menu) every 30 minutes or so near the end before my CD stopped working for good (freezing on title screen). On the emulator with my copy i found on a torrent site I never get those crashes anymore (if i get a crash its the emulator itself that gives me a windows address error and close and it's not as frequent)

DJ_Omnimaga

UPDATE: Added info about the 1000th sound slot bug. Please save your work if you're gonna mess around with this.

DJ_Omnimaga

UPDATE: Added tutorial to work around the riff volume bug (when next riff volume settings overlaps with the previous riff settings)

147 crew

I Remember the game crashing on me loads too, only cos my screen was overloaded with sounds, should try n keep it a bit simpler I guess?! no probs with MUSIC3000...yet...

DJ_Omnimaga

well for me it was usually when I loaded lot of sounds (usually at lower quality), deleting some, readding others over and over, same thing for riffs and sound effects, so when exiting the riff editor or loading a new riff/sample it sometimes crashed. For some reasons it didn't happened to me on the emulator yet though, but maybe that's because I've been used to the software and I don't use a lot of samples anymore.

147 crew

I tend to add a lot of echoes to the sounds I use, also altering most samples to get the best sound, especially the note sample start feature

Not a Number

Bump for content:

(Music 2000, PS1 version)
Whilst working through a new song/remix, I've come across this bug a few times:

For some reason, when editting a user-created riff, there's a random chance (so far it's happened 3 times, and... well, let's say that it's not happening very often) that all of the notes' volume, pan and pitch wave-thingies (can't remember the word) in that riff go completely blank, meaning that the entire riff is cimpletely silent. So far, this has only happened to the shorter riffs (1 bar long) so the only way I can get round it is to remake the riff from scratch.

Luckily, because it's a remix, I'm using a MIDI file imported into FL Studio as reference, so I can go to the bar and make it from there.
I just hope there's no limit to the number of riffs you can make (because they use the same samples), because I'm only just nearing halfway into the song and there'll be a lot more custom riffs to be made now that I'm at the "solo" section.

DJ_Omnimaga

ooh wow I got this happening a few times, even if you set again all paramaters it's still silent so I had to reload from last saved state.

I doubt there are a riff limit though because once I made 6 songs in one Music 2000 memory card file (Dancing Legend, Neo, Trita Trance, Chrono breaks, Neo Trance Remix and Techno Strike) and got no problem.

I also noticed two other bugs:

-Sometimes, when placing a very long note, for example, a string pad note at higher octave than supposed, if you change the note offset to something else than 0 or 1, after a second or so the note will play a different sound, usually an ugly high pitched electric synth, so for some notes you may better just create shorter notes and play them 2/4 times instead of one very long note
-Another bug, a very annoying one, but that you can get used to easily, when you want to set note parameters for a group of notes at once, NEVER START SELECTING FROM THE RIGHT TO THE LEFT! If you do so, after setting the notes parameters they will go back to what they were prior editing. I had this annoying bug happening many times before, thinking my CD was messed up because I was no longer able to change them, but in fact you must always select from the left to the right so it even update parameters at all.

Not a Number

I got this even without changing the octave as such, just the pitch.
Oddly enough, it worked fine when panned to the left speaker, only when I panned it the right it sounded wierd. (Luckily, this was before I discovered Yellow Stereo, so I've kinda worked around it)

DJ_Omnimaga

I added another glitch I discovered earlier this year. See first post, it's the memory leak glitch.