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Audio > Music: Possible Future Opportunities - Coder Needed

#48705 - mantrakid - Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:58 pm

Im posting this here [in Coding] due to the urgency of the request and the fact that it seems like not a lot of people frequent the audio forum... this applies to coders mostly anyway, right? :D

-----

Hey there, I am a musician who traditionally worked in Fast Tracker 2 and now using Renoise to track my electronic/hiphop music. I have a couple questions regarding music on the GBA.

1) Can I hook up with someone (a developer) to create music for your game? I need to work with someone who has a game they have already finished and is willing to take the extra time to put original music in to their software and compile it down to a GBA file. I am trying to get a job at a development studio and this is one of the requirements. (If you help me out, and I get hired, I promise I will not forget your kindness).

2) What format would you need me to provide you as far as music file goes... would a MOD or XM be ok? how does that work?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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#48707 - tepples - Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:01 pm

If you're willing to let me use your music in Luminesweeper in exchange for a credit in the skin file, I could provide you with a build of Luminesweeper using your music. Acceptable formats include anything Winamp or Modplug will play (but I prefer S3M); if you use MP3 or Ogg Vorbis or other waveform codecs, you'll need to provide enough of the loop so that I can see where to add the loop point.

And I used the crosspost button (available only to mods) to let the replies collect in one topic. You're welcome :)
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#48715 - mantrakid - Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:15 pm

I think you for this opportunity! I have a question now, what are the benefits to using say a S3M or XM format as opposed to a MP3 or OGG loop? I think filesize would be one, but how specific does it get? How big should a final music file be, what samplerate? stereo or mono? etc... :D thanks!
_________________
www.neferiu.com
www.mantrakid.com

#48717 - mantrakid - Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:16 pm

also is there an email address or something i can contact you by? even an msn id or phone number to speed up the process? where are you located? Im in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
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#48740 - ScottLininger - Fri Jul 22, 2005 12:56 am

If you can give me a MOD or S3M, I'd be happy to compile it into any of my games and post it or send it to you.

MOD or S3M is desirable in the GB world for a couple of reasons:

1. File size.
2. Lots of people have written nice players for these formats. (I use Krawall)

Scott

You can PM me or send email to scott (zat) scottlininger.com. I'm in Denver, CO.

#48749 - tepples - Fri Jul 22, 2005 1:59 am

Now
Currently, Luminesweeper uses my port of the Toast codec, which encodes .wav files into mono 18 kHz audio at 30 kbps using the GSM Full Rate format and decodes them using a bit over 50% of CPU time.

Later
I plan on adding an S3M player someday once I get some time to write my own Free player. Once that happens, providing your song as S3M (or as MOD, which can be converted to S3M) would let me use an S3M player, which I expect to use less CPU time (and therefore less battery power) than the GSM decoder, in addition to the file size difference.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#48755 - headspin - Fri Jul 22, 2005 2:45 am

Tepples: Why not use the MIDI player in TOD?
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#48758 - tepples - Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:05 am

TOD's music player isn't really a MIDI player, and I have to hand-code the songs using a custom assembler rather than converting them from something more widely used. S3M in particular is widely used, giving more musicians the opportunity to contribute. My programming skill has improved since then to where it can overcome the roadblocks that impeded implementation of S3M.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#48760 - headspin - Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:11 am

You could always write a MOD to "Proprietry format" converter. The MOD format is quite easy to implement and source is available all over the net. It's just that 50% of the processor is quite a wack, what sort of CPU usage does your music player in TOD get?
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#48810 - tepples - Fri Jul 22, 2005 6:28 pm

headspin wrote:
You could always write a MOD to "Proprietry format" converter. The MOD format is quite easy to implement and source is available all over the net.

There is an underlying impedance mismatch between the MOD model and the .8gbm model. MOD uses "periods"; my code tends to use "frequencies" and "MIDI note numbers". MOD has a variable BPM; my code is stuck at 150 BPM, using the "speed" (ticks per row) control to set the music tempo. At the time I created the music engine for TOD M2 three years ago, I wasn't skilled enough at music engine programming to create an engine that matched the MOD model. But I soon plan on making a player that works with S3M, a more widely used format.

Quote:
It's just that 50% of the processor is quite a wack

It's a tradeoff. Some people who aren't doing 3D engines might consider using 50% CPU for audio worth it for arbitrary audio waveforms that potentially include full vocals.

Quote:
what sort of CPU usage does your music player in TOD get?

TOD's music player uses about 8 scanlines for interpreting music bytecode, mixer setup, and mixer teardown plus 5 per channel.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.