Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - Super Mario World hacking - About the Music Questions, guys..
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Oddgoo
Posts: 30/85 |
Modules are *.Mod, most of the amiga games used them and there are lots of webpages where you can get them |
blackhole89
Posts: 247/971 |
The reason for SPC being better than MIDI is basically that SPC is more "low-level". In MIDI you can only say, "output tone at volume 123 on channel 456 and pitch D7", while in SPC you can change all of the channel's parametres except for the instrument selection even while a tone aka sample is still playing. SPC, therefore, is much closer to WAV; in fact, you could even use it to output real waveform (by making a "zero" instrument and quickly changing its volume). And, most SPC instruments sound better than their MIDI pendants. |
Surlent
Posts: 477/1077 |
Maybe he meant predefined "packages" with certain instruments/notes which differ from game to game ...
So like custom instruments along with the melody itself - it could be considered as a kind of MIDI with custom instruments - usually impossible, and though I have no clue in ASM or ROM hacking at all.
If it were possible to code a MIDI-like engine with basic instruments, it might be okay.
But even if MIDI usually is a basic format, it just is not possible too; to code the instruments from scratch on; somehow implementing the default instruments would be first of out a pain if the ass even if possible and the output would be too plain - and the result would be not as good; sincs SPC defintively has better qualities than MIDI.
Just compare a video-game MIDI with an SPC, quite obious which one usually is better from quality 
There'S the format miniPSF for Playstation; some soundtrack have relatively low space issues; the FF7 soundtrack is compressed less than 800k; but if unzipped still about 1 meg, and this is much more than these 64k in SPCs ...
So a similar format like "miniSPC" might not be possible. If there is not other data to shrink, you cannot do anything |
blackhole89
Posts: 243/971 |
module import? wtf, explain that please  what do you mean with "modules"? |
Oddgoo
Posts: 28/85 |
hope the module importing could be a reality some day, I dont know if you remember the Amiga computer, but I think the modules that used it are the same, do you remember Cannon Fodder ? The Secret Of Monkey Island? Octamed? |
blackhole89
Posts: 242/971 |
Well, where to start...
- SMW's "program" format: We know it. N-SPC is the format of nearly all Nintendo games (that is, mario series, zelda series and some few others). AFAIK SMW itself is the only exception to this.
- WAV/MP3 import: Forget it. If it were possible, you had found a revolutionary compression algorithm that can shrink any song to 64 KB size. And that offends every elementary complexity rule on the world
- SPC dump import: If the dump is from an N-SPC game, this is quite simple. Means, possible.
- MIDI vs MOD: MIDI is aligned differently. MOD doesn't use stuff like the MIDI ticks and therefore is more like N-SPC (per-track alignment).
- Solar Soundtrack progress: Quite near to release, but well, for now I'm on the last day of a two week spain holiday, that means, I couldn't do anything about it in the last two weeks
- "finding each games SPC code" (Keikonium): Quite easy. N-SPC, and any of its derivates (including SMW), init their SPC program with "20 CD CF" (hex). The two bytes before it indicate the length of the following chunk, that is, for the SPC loader. After the block some more blocks alike this follow, and when you encounter a zero length identifier, you're ready with reading and can build your own SPC dump out of the ROM.
- Solar Soundtrack import methods: You can import from any N-SPC ROM and any SPC dump of those. As I already said, I'm also close to make Squaresoft "S-SPC" tracks importable, that is, FFIV..VI, SoM, SD3, Chrono Trigger and many others.
Have I missed anything?
Have fun,
Blacky. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 1287/8210 |
Hmm, I hadn't thought of the protocol thing. I imagine one could pretty easily hack the programs to use SMW's, but then there's the issue of SFX. 
Well, how versatile is SMW's program? If one knew the format of it and another program, I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to port the data, the question is can N-SPC do the kinds of things other programs would do? (Also you'd have to load new instruments.  ) |
Escherial
Posts: 33/90 |
Hey, speaking of this topic, how's the editor coming along, blackhole? Not to pressure you or anything; I'm just curious on it's progress. |
Squash Monster
Posts: 187/677 |
"N-SPC games (that is, all of Nintendo's) [...] all use a MOD-like format for the songs themself" - blackhole89
The .mod music format consists of samples of different instruments and the notes to play with them. .wav is raw sound data, which would take up far too much space usually. .mp3 is the same as .wav, but compressed. It takes a lot of trickery to uncompress them, and it's definately beyond the N-SPC format. .mid at first seems like .mod, the difference is that a midi file won't have instruments, the system provides its own. It would seem that you could just import those instruments, but midi files use a timing system different from mods. Thus, the .mod format is the only one that could reasonably be imported.
Blackhole knows more about this than me, so maybe he'll have a correction to that.
In my oppinion, however, any form of inport is a feature that should be saved for later. Inporting files really just discourages people from composing their own music, too. |
Keikonium
Posts: 348/-2459 |
I don't understand exactly what you said there Blackhole, mainly because I don't know all that hacking, dumps, SPC language stuff. But would it not be possible, instead of trying to find out the SPC for a specific game, to import midi/mp3/wav/whatever files? That way, say I wanted the zelda theme song (which I do!!), I would have an spc dump of that song, then use the music editor to import it from my computer where its stored in mp3? What I got from what you said was that your trying to open the SMW rom, then click import, pick the SMAS rom and it would import the songs from the rom.
I don't know if I explained all that right, as I don't really no to much about this stuff, but IMO it may be eaiser than having to find each games SPC code. |
blackhole89
Posts: 238/971 |
Well, that was my first idea with spc hacking, too, but that's, sadly, quite impossible. The reasons for that are the following:
- SPC loading is a stinky big amount of code.
- you'd have to change the original SMW SPC code to jump back to the SPC boot ROM on a certain command.
and, what's most important,
- Each game uses some kind of its own protocol for the communication to the loaded SPC "program" through the 4 byte broad bus. You surely can make SMW run an e.g. SD3 SPC "program", but it, in the best case, won't do anything at all first, still in the optimal case, you could make SMW set the song in "SD3 language". But the SFX protocol is hardcoded heavily and you won't be able to adapt that. In the worst case it'll just crash immediately.
Yet, you can shift songs between all N-SPC games (that is, all of Nintendo's) easily 'cause they all use a MOD-like format for the songs themself. And, I'm currently working on Squaresofts "S-SPC" format, which will probably result in a converter and free song porting from Squaresoft games like the FF and SoM series. If I success (or don't) I'll try to find out which format Enix/Quintet (Terranigma, IoG, Soul Blazer et al) and Taito/NoA (Lufia series) uses  but that's still quite far away.
And yes, I'm just busy feeding SMAS-SMW with SoM and SD3 instruments. SPCTool does that for dumps, you just have to remap the result into the ROM 
Have fun,
Blacky. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 1267/8210 |
Y'know, I was thinking a while ago... Each game uses its own music program, and the reason you can't just copy and paste music is because each program uses its own format, right? So why not just load different programs? If you want music from game A, load the program for it. For B, switch to another program. Of course it'd take ASM hacking (and you'd prolly have to hack the programs to allow new ones to be loaded) but it makes sense to me. |
knuck
Posts: 461/1818 |
I SAY THAT SOMEONE IN THIS THREAD IS AN ATTENTION WHORE.
Spoiler:
JUGGLING JOKER |
blackhole89
Posts: 207/971 |
...but it's not less irritating when "oldbies" flood the board with threads like this one. Even if you're a n00b, you still - hopefully - are not stupid and try to look for threads that answer your question, if there is any. If you don't act so, it's the best for you to switch off the PC and head for the next kidsgart first. |
Alaric
Posts: 49/72 |
Not the reason.. I already have a sticky thread!
It's not just to point to the thread below it (as in, it's NOT THE ONLY USE), either, it's possibly telling people that come here as new users that there are already enough threads on the subject.. It gets bothersome, or so I think, to have new threads on the subject everytime there is a newcomer to this forum! |
Juggling Joker
Posts: 227/1033 |
Sounds like someone just wants to be the creator of a sticky thread. Threads like these don't need to exist, ESPECIALLY when the only use they have is pointing to the thread immediately below it. |
Alaric
Posts: 48/72 |
Every so often new people come by...
And many of them post threads about editing the music.. it clutters this place up.. a bit..
Look, there's no RELEASED way of editing music yet (as of 7/11/04). Hold your horses.. and if you want to know what's going on with music editing, go here:
http://board.acmlm.org/thread.php?id=3480
If you have something to contribute, post it there.. or start a new thread IF IT IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH!
DO NOT ask the same question that has been asked MANY times before.. EITHER check out the progress in aforementioned thread, or look at previous threads and see the answers people have gotten...
Thanks.
Maybe this should be stickied? |
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labmaster
