#33951 - gbawiz - Tue Jan 11, 2005 3:24 pm
Hello all,
I have been dabbling with GBA music and trying to attempt MOD sound loading.
I was wondering if commercial games use music trackers other than the MOD style. Any ideas?
Also, how are these files incorporated into the rom?
Look forward to your input,
Many thanks
#33955 - poslundc - Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:37 pm
| gbawiz wrote: |
Hello all,
I have been dabbling with GBA music and trying to attempt MOD sound loading.
I was wondering if commercial games use music trackers other than the MOD style. Any ideas? |
I can't speak on behalf of commercial developers, but MOD is sort of the "barebones minimum" for playing music on the GBA. Which is not to say that it is insufficient - on the contrary, a good MOD player is capable of playing the music from most GBA games, I expect - but it requires the most work from the composer and encoder to make their music conform to a rigorous format, and it may be inefficient in other respects as well.
More flexible and complicated formats that extend the limitations of MOD include XM, S3M and IT. (There are others too; those three are the ones that come to mind, though.)
MIDI is kind of a different beast. Although composers love it, it's less friendly to programmers, I believe, and I think might be frustrating when working with the hardware. YMMV.
For the record, I've written a MOD player and find it more than sufficient for my needs. You obviously need to decide based on what you expect your needs to be.
| Quote: |
| Also, how are these files incorporated into the rom? |
They must be encoded by a custom program to convert from the source format to the raw binary data the music player needs. (If you write a music player for a format like MOD that adheres to the file specification as well as the general music-playing specification then you would be able to append the files directly on, although this would usually mean both including extraneous data and losing the opportunity to compress.)
Dan.
#33970 - Mucca - Tue Jan 11, 2005 7:43 pm
Midi was likely used by a large proportion of developers early on, as its the format supported by the Nintendo music player and Factor 5's MusyX. However many moved to other formats like MOD and XM later, particularly when they realised how crap the aforementioned players are. Problem is its difficult to find MOD composers.
#34037 - gbawiz - Wed Jan 12, 2005 10:24 pm
Thanks guys,
I have become familiar with the 4-channel MOD file quality. I just downloaded a few of the other formats you mentioned such as the .XM , .IT and .S3M and was quite impressed at the huge improvement in quality.
Would I have to write my own program which converts the MOD file into a raw format or are there any available on the web?
I guess that this converter would basically pick out the 'juicy bits' and disregard things like sample names, headers and stuff.
#34039 - poslundc - Wed Jan 12, 2005 10:29 pm
People write converters to adapt the music file to the specific needs of their player. You won't find a converter unless there's a player it converts toward.
And if you're writing your own player then you may as well write your own converter as well. It's pretty unlikely that you can learn the intracies of a music format without figuring out how to parse the file while you're at it.
Dan.
#34201 - gbawiz - Sat Jan 15, 2005 11:09 am
I have been looking at the GSF file format for music but quickly realised that they are compressed files which contain the music tracker code, audio sample information and presumably the tracker data also.
The GBA does not store music as GSF in their Roms
#34215 - tepples - Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:23 pm
| gbawiz wrote: |
| The GBA does not store music as GSF in their Roms |
Either that, or every GBA music format under the sun is theoretically GSF. It's an existential question.
WarioWare Inc: Mega Microgame$ uses actual standard MIDI files, albeit not using a General MIDI sound font. PM me if you want proof.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#34307 - yannis - Mon Jan 17, 2005 3:33 pm
As far as I am aware games either use:
1. Midi based composition
2. Mod based composition
3. Proprietory composition tools + engines.
It really depends on the developer and what overheads they have with ROMs, CPU ... etc.
I wouldn't compress samples, there's not much memory in the GBA to try to decompress them on the fly, it's quicker to stream them from the ROM.
#34370 - Mucca - Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:02 pm
Many top games have used the GAX sound engine from shinen. It appears to be a bit slower than Apex (about the same as Krawall), but with excellent features, very good quality, and less ROM usage for sound data. I have no idea of the details of the format it uses. You dont read about it round here coz its really not for homebrewers - you can only use it if they compose your music aswell.
#34387 - Miked0801 - Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:04 pm
| Quote: |
you can only use it if they compose your music (sic)aswell.
|
Which is why we don't use them - too much money...
#34626 - Kyoufu Kawa - Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:20 pm
| Mucca wrote: |
| Midi was likely used by a large proportion of developers early on, as its the format supported by the Nintendo music player and Factor 5's MusyX. However many moved to other formats like MOD and XM later, particularly when they realised how crap the aforementioned players are. Problem is its difficult to find MOD composers. |
Guess what I'm using right now...?
Sappy's only as crappy as you make it. Like tepples said, Wario Ware even true midi, and it rocks!
#34648 - caitsith2 - Sun Jan 23, 2005 7:10 am
| gbawiz wrote: |
I have been looking at the GSF file format for music but quickly realised that they are compressed files which contain the music tracker code, audio sample information and presumably the tracker data also.
The GBA does not store music as GSF in their Roms |
The GSF format is just essentially a rip of a GBA rom, designed only to play the music and nothing else. Most games seem to use the sappy engine. Then there is krawall, apex audio, shinen, and of course other proprietary drivers that I have dealt with. The easiest ones to rip, are those songs that use a function that initializes a song by its number. This includes Sappy, Apex. Shinen GAX, and Krawall use rom pointers, which means that unless the developers wrote their own select by number functions, they are that much more of a pain to rip. Many newer games are continuing to use the sappy engine.