gbadev.org forum archive

This is a read-only mirror of the content originally found on forum.gbadev.org (now offline), salvaged from Wayback machine copies. A new forum can be found here.

Audio > New to GBA Audio

#15795 - delphiniblue - Fri Jan 30, 2004 2:29 pm

Hi

Im a sound designer / music producer in the uk.
I write music/sfx for computer games, but recently i have decided to look at other formats such as the GBA. i belive the music is written in MOD format but that is about all i know lol
Please could anybody give me a quick start guide to help me on my way!

Thank you very much
:)

#15798 - poslundc - Fri Jan 30, 2004 2:56 pm

There is no standard music format for the GBA (as there was on the SNES). It's up to each individual programmer to write their own software library for playing music.

There are also a few music players out there that are quite good and are either cheap or free for non-commercial use. James Daniels' excellent Apex Audio System is probably the best choice if you are going the non-commercial route. Or you can purchase [url=mind.riot.org/krawall/]Krawall[/url] if you don't want to display a logo.

MOD is the most popular file-format to support because it is simple, low-tech, and provides more than enough quality for most GBA games. Most individual GBA music players will have their own quirks, though, with regards to things like how many channels they can support and what special effects they provide. (8 channels is really the defacto standard, and while many players support more than that, 8 is really all you should require.)

If all you want to do is compose music that could be played on the GBA, I suggest you strictly adhere to the MOD format and its limitations, and keep it down to 8 channels, with default panning for MOD (channels 1, 4, 5 and 8 are left, channels 2, 3, 6 and 7 are right). This should make you compatible with most players.

Dan.