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Audio > How much space for music?

#53063 - Flaat - Mon Sep 05, 2005 9:27 pm

Hello,

I have been making music for over a decade, and recently the GBA has sparked my interest. I am about to get into trackers, haven't used them in 8 years I believe. My question is; how much space is reserved for music in a typical game? I just need a goal to what size my music should be at, and right now I have no idea. I recently heard an interview with Bj?rn Lynne (Dr. Awesome), and he had a 400K(bit? byte?) limit for a DS game, so I guess the GBA limit is much smaller?

Also, I've listened to the music demos from people promoting their music on gbadev.org. It's all some kind of techno/demo/dance music. I don't do that. Depending on the type of game, I would like to make atmospheric music (think choir voices and stuff), or maybe rock music. If I can cram that into the small space that would be required, would this seem interesting to game-makers on these forums?

Regards,
Flaat
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#53074 - tepples - Mon Sep 05, 2005 10:11 pm

It depends on how well your game design justifies your need for music. In a game like Lumines or Dance Dance Revolution, where the music is the main draw to the game, music will probably eat at least 50% of the cart and may even be compressed with a generic waveform codec instead of tracked. In an RPG, you may not get a lot of space for samples, but you will get a lot of space for the 2 to 3 hours of music sequences that make up a typical RPG score, so make sure that your music engine can handle songs that share samples.

And yes, I'm looking for music of all styles for Luminesweeper now that it supports skins.
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#53131 - Flaat - Tue Sep 06, 2005 9:05 am

Thanks a lot for your reply. I'll start experimenting a bit with the tracker and see what I can manage to do..
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#55093 - yannis - Sun Sep 25, 2005 2:38 pm

It really depends on the project and cart size. Also depends on the style of music too what samples will be required and how big they will get. Anything with guitars takes up more room just to get the right sounds as samples.

For 4meg cart games, I'd say 350k for music for GBA, and another 200-300k for sound effects.

For 8 meg games, I'd even go 600k for all music + another 400k for sound effects( ie 1meg for all sound).

Some of the projects I've worked on I've done squeezed an HOUR of music in 550k.
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