Topic: Descent III Music Woes

[vertigoelectric]

So as it seems, finding a complete, accurately labeled Descent III OST is not so easy.

I collect tons of video game music, and I've had some D3 tracks for a long time, but a few days ago I've decided to clean up those tracks.  They were inconsistently named and I discovered I was missing a lot of tracks.

After a bunch of searching online, I was able to give the files more accurate, orderly names, but I was still missing some tracks.  I could only find "excerpts" or "samples" of those tracks.

I tried finding a way to extract the music from the game files, but the tracks aren't in any of the HOG files and the music.cab file on disc 2 wouldn't open with anything I've found.

I decided to install the game and record the music directly from gameplay.  After some fussy installations, I managed to get that to work.  With the sound effects silent and the music at 100%, I started recording music from the missing tracks/levels.

That's when I noticed that the music in-game does not match the excerpts I downloaded.  I can tell they are very similar, but not the same.  I then noticed that the same is true for several of the tracks, even those that I have in full.

It seems that the artist, Jerry Berlongieri, may have written the music for the game, and then composed "remixes" of many of those tracks to be released to the public (possibly on mp3.com as it seems) as the Descent 3 OST.  This isn't a very uncommon thing, and not a really big issue, but OST stands for ORIGINAL Sound Track, and it is clear to me that the released tracks are not the originals because they don't match the actual in-game music, and you can't get much more original than that (although the released tracks are amazing).

Anyway, this has made it really difficult for me to compile a complete and accurate soundtrack for Descent 3.  The best thing I can think of would be to go ahead and record all of the in-game music and save those as a separate "recorded" soundtrack and keep the downloaded tracks as they are.

Still, though, I would love to be able to find those missing tracks to which I have only found excerpts.  The missing tracks are from levels 5, 6, 13, and 14.

Here is the listing of the downloaded tracks:


I've ordered the track listing based on level and named them based on their mission name (most of them).  I haven't gotten around to doing this with the Mercenary tracks yet.

If anyone can help me find the missing tracks, i would be extremely grateful.


For an example of the differences between the in-game music and the downloaded excerpts, please listen to these two tracks for Level 14:

The downloaded excerpt: http://www.vertigofx.com/public/audio/vgm/temp/L14%20Earth%20Orbit%20-%20Broadcast%20%5bExcerpt%5d.mp3

My recording directly from Level 14: http://www.vertigofx.com/public/audio/vgm/temp/14%20-%20Level%2014%20(CED%20Orbital%20Network%20Transmitter)%20-%20Broadcast.mp3

You can tell that they are quite similar, but they ARE different.  The piano is not playing the same thing.  Other tracks have much more obvious differences, but this is the only one that I have saved at the moment.

[VANGUARD]

The best I can do is this: http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=cat30

I'm no artist or anything; and not very good with extracting music files, etc etc. but I know there are some that do that on here.

i noticed that with Jurassic Park II; number 7 I think, there's a piece of music (in the movie) that I really liked; that isn't in the music CD.

Also, Star Wars VI (Return of the Jedi), I believe it's the scene when Vader dies; and it then goes into showing the Death stars core. The music in the movie was good; but not so much on the CD.

[Scyphi]

NOTE: Vanguard posted while I was writing this.

We actually have had users who have done what you did, and assembled the missing tracks themselves using the in-game music. Downloads can be found here if interested.

Something you need to keep in mind about how music in D3 works is that the tracks played in-game are not whole tracks. They're bits and pieces divided up and scripted to start playing as you pass through certain points in the levels, to provide the illusion that the music changes as you play the game. So to release an original soundtrack, these bits and pieces would have to fitted together to make one single track, and in doing so, I'm sure Jerry Berlongieri made various creative adjustments to make the track interesting, professional, and seamless, like it was always one track, and probably do a couple things with these tracks he couldn't do in game for whatever reason. And I'm sure that when making the game, not all of Jerry's bits-and-pieces tracks were used in all the levels, and vice-versa when being released as a soundtrack.

Second, your recording of track 14 is very incomplete. Sounds to me it only has the first few bits and not the rest of the music that plays over the course of the level. Later in the level, it DOES start playing the music heard in the excerpt.

Third, your current list of track names are correct. It's pretty easy to know, the songs are titled after their corresponding "chapters" in-game.

Finally, the reason you can't find full versions of the missing tracks is because they were never officially released. Exactly why, I do not know. I remember one time years ago on the old PD.com, Jerry made a surprise visit on the forum and commented he had thought about releasing those missing track himself, so they DO exist. However, Jerry has never done it yet. So we have to make do with what we can instead. Because these missing tracks have never been released, there's really no way to tell what they might sound like.

There are slight differences between tracks that were released as an OST and the ones used in-game, but I've noticed that these days, this isn't uncommon at all. For instance, look at the OST for Portal 2; alot of the tracks there are also slightly different from what was used in-game (helped by the fact that Portal 2 used a similar music-playing scheme as D3, with the bit-and-pieces playing only under certain conditions). Rest assured though, the music for both are close enough to being the same, it's not really worth getting worked up about IMO.

Hope this helps.

[vertigoelectric]

Something you need to keep in mind about how music in D3 works is that the tracks played in-game are not whole tracks. They're bits and pieces divided up and scripted to start playing as you pass through certain points in the levels, to provide the illusion that the music changes as you play the game.

I had already considered this as a major possibility, and while it's quite clever for the gameplay experience, it makes recording the music too much of a hassle.

I already had a strong feeling that the level 14 track I recorded wasn't complete.  I did try moving around the level a bit to see if it changed, but it's so hard to control for me I called it quits before I noticed anything.

Thanks for all the info.  I pretty much knew everything you told me, but I wasn't 100% sure about it until you confirmed it.

[Kaiaatzl]

The songs are in "osf" format in the D3 Hog file.  Each osf is for a different "region" of the level (or sometimes just part of a region).

A program called Game Audio Player can play the osfs and convert them to wav (and then you can assemble them with Audacity or some other program like that).
The in-game quality isn't as good as the quality of the released tracks though.  The maximum possible quality for an osf is 16bit, 22Khz, Stereo, wheras the released tracks are CD quality (32bit, 44Khz, Stereo).  That's probably why Autopilot made the remixes (and then he added embellishments).  AFAIK the only ones that have major differences from the game (apart from voiceovers and D3 sound effects layered on top) are Origin Zero and Top Hush.  The Top Hush mix in particular has two parts (the intro and the end) that weren't in the in-game version.  I suppose if excerpts count then the excerpt of the level 5 music is also very different from what was in-game (the synths are not the same).

AFAIK the reason why Autopilot didn't release all the tracks -- it was a CD soundtrack and it had to all fit on one CD (I think that's how mp3.com works).  He was intending to release all the other tracks but only got around to releasing Origin Zero, Top Hush, Conveyor, Successor, and CED Expediator.  I'm not sure why he stopped... but it may have had something to do with PlanetDescent.com going down (CED Expediator was released recently, not long before PD.com went down).

Autopilot did make a release of the level 13 music, but right now a different mix by NUMBERZero (aka Omega) that he made directly from the osfs, is more popular.  Both mixes are in the Downloads section on this site though.

[vertigoelectric]

The songs are in "osf" format in the D3 Hog file.  Each osf is for a different "region" of the level (or sometimes just part of a region).

I extracted everything from the D3 HOG file and there were only a few OSF files, and I did use the game music player to listen to them, but I didn't find anything very useful.

[Alieo]

Which ones do you need that are not on here? I have them all. I see one thing missing though.

I know I loved the way the original speed of Level 12's "Proving Grounds" sounded in-game before the Autopilot remix sped it up. What I did awhile back was take THE Autopilot mix and slowed it down to 120bps (so that every 2 beats is exactly one second to the next 2 beats, just like in the in-game version).

You can find that one here: http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?action=mgallery;sa=item;id=483

Also, the "names" for them are:
Level 1. Contribution
2. Bread and Water
3. Research
4. PTMC HQ
5. Red Acropolis
6. Side-Effects of Progress
7. A New Strain
8. Heat Sink
9. Shotgun
10. Evidence
11. Off Sides
12. Proving Grounds
13. CED Expediator
14. Broadcast
15. Retribution
16. Origin Zero
17. Top Hush

V Merc V
18. (Merc, Level 1) Resignation
19. Failsafe
20. Thirteen Omega
21. Solar Ignite
22. Pink Slip
23. Conveyor
24. Successor

And then, on my personal soundtrack; I have for the rest:
25. Title Screen
26. Level Select
27. Credits
28. MD-1032 Rescued (audio of intro movie)
29. Briefing (audio of the briefing movie clip "Destroyed?! That ship was the only part of the PTMC that I liked!")
30. They Think We're Terrorists (audio of movie clip before Level 5)
31. I've Underestimated You Material Defender (Movie clip of when Dravis get PWNED)
32. D3 Community Taunts (28 minute back to back to back audio taunts from back in the heat.net, PXO days.)

[vertigoelectric]

Thanks for all of that.

Well one thing that is important to me is that I get a truly original soundtrack, meaning that the music files I have match the in-game music exactly (with the exception of equalizations or quality enhancements).  While I'll still listen to remixes, any remix of the music would need to be kept separate from any original music from within the game.  This includes the artist's "official" remixes.

However, with a game like this that has such a dynamic way of presenting the in-game music... it would be very difficult to make such a differentiation.  Because fans can take different parts of the music and sort of 'stitch' them together in attempts to make a track as complete as possible, there is a lot of room for so much variation and I'm not sure how I would decide what to label as "official" for my own personal collection.  I could possibly end up with multiple versions of the same tracks, which would be a bit of a bloat.

I'll take your list and look into this more later on.  Thanks.

[Kaiaatzl]

The songs are in "osf" format in the D3 Hog file.  Each osf is for a different "region" of the level (or sometimes just part of a region).

I extracted everything from the D3 HOG file and there were only a few OSF files, and I did use the game music player to listen to them, but I didn't find anything very useful.

My bad.  They're in D3 and D3_2.MN3, in the missions folder.
Sry about that.
You can open Mn3s with the same tools you use to open hogs.

[Scyphi]

28. MD-1032 Rescued (audio of intro movie)
29. Briefing (audio of the briefing movie clip "Destroyed?! That ship was the only part of the PTMC that I liked!")
30. They Think We're Terrorists (audio of movie clip before Level 5)
31. I've Underestimated You Material Defender (Movie clip of when Dravis get PWNED)

Question for Alieo on these three tracks: do these have just the music, or do they still have all the background noises as well?

[Alieo]

@Scyphi: Nope, it's a stereo quality audio recording of the movies, which entails all dialogues, noises, etc. I WISH D3 had something like D2 had, where the D2 intro movie had this song entitled "Base Return" which contained just the music and none of the conversation of the MD and Dravis while visiting Valhalla. Also has the "Final Mission" song which is the background orchestra music in the video clip of the Level 24 exit of D2. Would be VERY nice to have a "cinema score" of the D3 intro. I love that part of the song in the D3 intro when MD gets pulled away from the sun at the last minute. Beautiful music!

What was the original source of those D2 cinema scores? Did someone make it? If so, can the same be done for the D3 cinema scores? I'd love to have the ones for the D3 intro, and the score to the clip that comes on before Level 5 "They Think We're Terrorists." I'd replace them in my D3 folder at once!

[Scyphi]

Ah yes, the music from the D2 intro and ending, I just about flipped when I discovered those existed. Dunno where they came from, though. I think I got my copies from Techpro, and if so, he got them from somewhere else that I don't know.

I think they were professionally done and released by the original composers, however. Don't quote me on that, I could be mistaken, but given the quality, I don't find it likely.

I would love to have clean copies of the orchestrated music from D3 (the whole lot, intro, middle, and end), as well as D1-for-playstation's music for the same cutscenes. I would also love to have the music from the videos of you jumping into a new system in D2, and the escape videos (as they differ from D1s).

Oh well, one can dream.

Now that we've mentioned the music from D2's intro and ending, I have to go and play those songs from my collection now.

[Alieo]

Have you heard the correlation mixes I made between Game20 and "Base Return," which is the music to the D2 intro cut scene? I also made a correlation between the "Endgame" midi that plays in D1 after beating the game with the D2 Level 24 music from the cut scene where Tycho Brahe is blowing up. Check them out and let me know if you think they're a match:

"Final Mission" from D2 with "endgame.mid" from D1:
http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?action=mgallery;sa=item;id=433

"Base Return" from D2 with "game20.mid" from D1:
http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?action=mgallery;sa=item;id=596