1

Newcomer's Board / Re: Import midi into GBA game

« on: September 11, 2011, 05:37:06 pm »

Ah, I see.  I will test it as well and see how it works.  Thanks.

2

Newcomer's Board / Re: Import midi into GBA game

« on: September 11, 2011, 04:56:57 pm »

http://gbaemu.dcemu.co.uk/agbmidi-1-0a-177564.html

But I can't download it there.

Try here:

http://filetrip.net/f3836-AGBMidi-1-0a.html

Ahh...agbMidi, not agb2midi...No wonder I wasn't finding any results.

Thanks!  I will test and report back.

EDIT: But wait, this is a GBA ROM, not an exe...and when I load it into VBA, it doesn't seem to have any way to actually compose anything, let alone rip samples from a ROM.  Thanks for the link, but something tells me what I need really IS agb2midi.  Or, am I not understanding how I'm supposed to use this?

(The MOD player linked to above also seemed to be the same type of thing...it had some "sample" music that could be played, but no way to compose, import or export)

3

Newcomer's Board / Re: Import midi into GBA game

« on: September 11, 2011, 03:49:13 pm »

To rip instruments and midi, use agb2midi, NOT sappy.
Sappy is old and completely outdated.

You can rip both midis and instruments (in the form of a collection of wavs) with agb2midi. The only problem remaining is the chiptunes instrument, which could be quite simple to simulate.

This would be fantastic if I could get it to work.  But, I can't seem to find agb2midi with a google search.  (only turns up one result, incidentally a different thread I posted about this issue a while ago)

Do you mean gba2midi?  That's the closest thing (with regard to name) that I've been able to find.  The weird thing is that another person's mentioned it in a different thread, and you mentioned the same name twice, which leads me to believe it wasn't a typo--yet absolutely nothing for "agb2midi" comes up on google.

4

Newcomer's Board / Re: Import midi into GBA game

« on: September 11, 2011, 03:16:58 am »

Alright.

I've had 0 luck on this so far (aside from you fine people and your helpful posts ^_^).  I desperately want to be able to do this, but it's seeming more and more like unless I spend lots of time learning about hacking, I'm never going to be able to.

The closest thing I remember getting to what I want was when I used, I believe (it was quite a while ago), sappy.exe to export a midi, and saw that it had an "include samples" (or something similar) checkbox.  But whenever I checked the box and tried to export, it would crash.  It would export a midi if I didn't check the box, and the midi would match the actual tracks from the game exactly, but it would play using my sound card's instruments rather than the game's.

It's frustrating because I just can't seem to get a perfect copy of the instruments just by starting with a generator in Garageband and tweaking settings, despite how extensively I've tried.  I've had a look at the two links on "Music hacking" on the romhacking site, but none of the articles are specifically on Megaman Battle Network 6, and as your site even says music formats vary wildly between games.

I just don't know what to do.  Please help, if possible.

5

Newcomer's Board / Re: Import midi into GBA game

« on: September 05, 2011, 09:04:06 pm »

FYI, you have to register the component after you put it in the relevant directory: run "regsvr32 [path to file]\comdlg32.ocx".  I think in 7 it only works if it's in the appropriate SystemXX directory (which is where you put it).

Ahh...I saw something about that in the link I posted in the first post, but I forgot to mention it kept telling me it couldn't find the file or something.  My comp's 64 bit though so that could be why.  Just for my own info, would I put regsvr64 then or something?

I'm guessing you could probably do things the other way around: extract the samples one way or another, and use them to make instrument banks/sound fonts that you can use in some other MIDI-playing program.  I know nothing of the details, though.

Supposedly, the programmer for the fangame I am trying to write music for "extracted" the instruments library somehow, but it is a "gsflib" file.  I have no idea what to do with it.  I'm currently in the process of googling the answer but if anyone knows offhand how I can use a gsflib file in a midi sequencer program, please let me know.  Thanks.  If nobody knows/responds, I'll post the answer here myself if and when I find it so others can see.  So if I haven't posted...I haven't found the answer yet.

EDIT: Also, @Bregland, thanks for the post but I don't know my head from a hole in the ground when it comes to the stuff you just typed about, at least in the second paragraph.  I think I've seen a link to midi2abg before, but I don't remember actually downloading it.  It may not matter though because as I've just alluded to I have no idea how to do the other things you're talking about. =/

6

Newcomer's Board / Re: Import midi into GBA game

« on: September 04, 2011, 06:45:53 pm »

Oh.

Well then I guess I'm even further from my goal than I thought.

Any idea how I might go about doing this?

7

Newcomer's Board / Import midi into GBA game

« on: September 03, 2011, 06:41:53 pm »

Hi all.

I'm running Vista.  I'm trying to import midi files into a ROM so I can play them using the ROM's sound banks, which I can then record into an mp3 using separate software.  Unfortunately, I can't get Sappy (which I assume is what I need to use) to run.  When I click on the exe, it tells me: "Component 'comdlg32.ocx' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid".  I downloaded comdlg32.ocx and copied it to both System32 and SysWOW64 (my comp's 64 bit).  Still gives me the same message.

Any other way to do this (get my own midi into a ROM, specifically Megaman Battle Network 6, so I can record it being played with the BN6 instruments)?  Or any way to get Sappy working?

Thanks...!

8

Newcomer's Board / Re: Rip GBA Instruments to soundfont

« on: July 19, 2011, 02:04:47 pm »

Thanks Bregalad, this definitely helps.  The other posts do too, but I can't really understand what they're talking about (I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to hacking stuff--all that stuff about memory etc. is gibberish...I know about memory addresses etc. but I've no idea how they correspond with GBA/emulator/hacking stuff).  I read up on the links they gave, and beyond the descriptions of the sounds made by each channel (which I was already familiar with), I couldn't make heads or tails of what would and wouldn't help me.

The bad news is that perfect square waves are hard to reproduce in SF2, because of interpolation. Most/All soundfont-midi compatible drivers will use interpolation and deteriorate significantly the sharp edges of a square wave. Also, the Square Waves from the GBA are not exactly pure square waves but are bandpass-filtered. I'm pretty sure the difference is noticeable by hear. If you only use one square wave sample, the filtering will "translate" as you will go to different tonality, and add the interpolation problem to that and you get some very inaccurate sound.

I didn't realize there would be that many problems with trying to recreate the waves in an sf2.  But, I've got a nice 8-bit plugin for my daw, so if I could at least find the settings for each channel I could recreate them using my plugin (thus avoiding having to build sf2s for those).  Is there any way to discover that, or a site that lists common configurations for various games...or anything that would help?  I can apply a bandpass filter myself and I guess I could play with the settings until it sounds right.

Then I could try to record the samples from mp3s of the games' music.  And would anyone by any chance have a suggestion for a good (preferably free, or very cheap) program to put together sf2s in case I get lucky trying to record the samples?

9

Newcomer's Board / Rip GBA Instruments to soundfont

« on: July 11, 2011, 05:28:59 pm »

Hi there,

First I'd like to say, I've googled this to hell and back, with nothing worthwhile to show for it. =/ And: I originally posted this at emuforums but someone there advised me to ask here.

Anyway, I'm involved with a rather large fangame project for Megaman Battle Network. This is being made from scratch with Game Maker, and I'm the musician.

Right now, the tracks I've written sound similar to the game's music, but not exact. If possible I'd like to somehow take the actual "instruments" used by the game and compile them into one or more soundfonts (.sf2 files).

I'm not experienced with ROMs (hence why I put this in the newbie board) but I'd imagine the sound channel settings (waveform, etc.) and the sample data would be stored somewhere in the ROM and could be retrieved by some sort of program. I was hoping that there would be some way to put those settings and samples into soundfonts so I could pop those into my daw and compose directly with them. I've seen soundfonts from the music of other games, so I'm also hoping that means it can be done with the megaman battle network games as well.

Basically, I want to use actual Megaman Battle Network "instruments" (sound settings/samples) to compose "my own" tracks that REALLY sound straight from the game. Does anyone have any ideas or tips on how to do this?