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Audio > Simple question... how to create a mod file?

#67763 - metroidattack - Fri Jan 20, 2006 4:20 am

I'm trying to do the music for a game a friend is programming. I have been writing music for years, mostly in midi with tab programs, but I have never used mod. Are there programs for mod where you can just pick "instruments" and tab out the music like in tab programs that create midis? I'm not really much of a programmer (though I do that too) so I prefer something very easy to use.

The game is fairly simple so we don't really need to create all our own instruments or anything, as long as I have drums, bass, pianos, horns, strings, etc. and a few others I can work it. The tab program I use only has like 128 sounds or something but it works fine for what I'm doing...

#67771 - Dwedit - Fri Jan 20, 2006 5:47 am

Use Modplug Tracker to create mod files.

http://www.modplug.com/

Mod is a heavily limited, outdated format though. The biggest limitation is that samples must be at a specific rate (8485hz) for the middle C note. Maybe you should look into at least s3m or greater.
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#67796 - kusma - Fri Jan 20, 2006 11:46 am

or you can try milkytracker, a imo really nice "remake" of fasttracker2.
http://www.milkytracker.net/

#67885 - metroidattack - Sat Jan 21, 2006 2:13 am

I have the Modplug tracker program, I just have no idea where in it I actually can just write music. I imported a midi I made into the program and it shows sequence "patterns" but actually WRITING music in there seems like it would be incredibly non-intuitive.

#67889 - jake2431 - Sat Jan 21, 2006 3:30 am

It is. Go to the Scale Trackers website and read the tutorials and stuff. There is a book out there somewhere you can download, but I don't remember where it is. I'm sure someone on scale's forums can tell you. Using a tracker can be very difficult. It is going to take a lot of practice. Not like with say Anvil Studio which is simple.

#68008 - metroidattack - Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:22 am

Well is there anything more intuitive (and free...) ? I'd imagine if I can import midi into mod that it would be *possible* for someone to create software to write directly into mod in an intuitive manner... I just don't know if such a thing actually exists.

#68047 - tvdhoost - Sun Jan 22, 2006 5:43 am

Wow - small world !

As it would just so happen, I just finished digging up some MOD links - man ! it is so hard, because many sites are dead.

For what it's worth :

http://www.modplug.com/mods/handbook/handbook.htm - This is the Tracker's Handbook

http://tack.planetdeusex.gamespy.com/HowToCreateCustomMusic.html - This may or may not be helpful, has insight specific to Deus Ex

http://www.modarchive.com/index.shtml - every MOD ever released or posted on the net, sin against God

http://www.castlex.com/modfaq/index.html - MOD FAQ - has useful basic info, even though it is quite old.

And last but not least :

http://www.un4seen.com/ - home of both XMPlay and MIDI2XM. The MIDI2XM program is the only MIDI-to-module conversion tool I have found that works on a modern version of Windows.... you are using Windows, right ? :-)

Hope that helps. By the way, I am just now downloading stuff to get ready to jump into GBA dev, so I haven't really used this stuff or tracked anything. Still, the links should be okay. Many links concerning the MOD/tracker scene are quite dead....