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Music Engines

DJTiki

DJTiki

top 3 most uninteresting microcelebrities
1,257
Posts
10
Years
    • Well, I'm not too savvy in the Music department. But I do want the engine to change. It always sort of frustrated me that we were stuck with Sappy M4A, when we could easily improve upon it. If the sound of a game be improved, and support for the engine in various tools, I'm all for it.

    But that is the problem, we are too safe with what we have right now. Kind of like A-Map and Elite, we don't have any alternatives, thus we haven't yet tried to go beyond what we can do.
     
    Deokishisu

    Deokishisu

    Mr. Magius
    990
    Posts
    18
    Years
    • Not many people are musically inclined, so it's difficult for us to even begin music hacking. I think that that is the lack of enthusiasm you're running into. Not only that, I find that music changes are largely ignored by hackers, or are saved until last. Unsurprisingly, not many people get there, because they abandon their projects before they are done with everything BUT the music.
     
    ShantyTown

    ShantyTown

    330
    Posts
    10
    Years
    • Seen Mar 29, 2024
    Team Fail said:
    So, I started an R&D thread on a custom music engine, and to my dismay, I haven't gotten much support on it. It got me thinking. Would the Rom Hacking community actually make use of a custom/ported sound engine? Or would you stay within familiar territory and use the Sappy M4A engine you're all accustomed to? I'm mostly wanting to talk about this with PC's Rom Hackers to see just exactly if there is a need for these kinds of things or not. You all do have custom opening sequences and everything going on, but why not change one of the core elements of the game and make it work in a different way than what the developers intended (Not that Rom Hacking, or even ASM is this already, but you get what I mean)?

    Please post your thoughts, as I'd really like to know if there is a need for this or not, and if there is, whether I should consider continuing research into this or perhaps leave this for another time when the need does actually come around.
    Click to expand...

    I think you should definitely keep up this research. This is obviously some really cool stuff you're doing, and just because there isn't a resounding interest from the community doesn't mean someone won't greatly appreciate it in the future. I'm really big on music hacking, and if I was involved in Gen 3 hacking, I can tell you for a fact that this is something I would use.

    Keep up your awesome work.
     
    Urist McHemlock

    Urist McHemlock

    Jack Frost of the Jack Brothers
    603
    Posts
    15
    Years
    • You should definitely keep up the research. A more advance sound engine equals more complex music that sounds great.
     
    Touched

    Touched

    Resident ASMAGICIAN
    625
    Posts
    9
    Years
    • Age 122
    • Seen Feb 1, 2018
    What exactly would the benefits of a new music engine be, apart from more tracks? ipatix has that high quality mixer (and the improved mixer), which is definitely a worthwhile hack.

    But music programming is quite complicated. While I've never done anything for the GBA, I've implemented some DSP filters in x86 and C, as well as Fourier analysis (think Shazam). These things have been complicated, but would be much so if I hadn't been able to use floats. I think that that (the difficulty level), as well as there being this impression that you need to musical to program music stuff is the main factor behind driving people away.

    I definitely would be keen to hack away at internals of the engine, rather than just fiddling with functions on the surface. I'm just getting into GBA hacking, and I've been meaning to check out the music hacking side for a while now.
     
    Wobbu

    Wobbu

    bunger bunger bunger bunger
    2,794
    Posts
    12
    Years
    • I think the sound engine is fine as it is. It's capable of producing music that matches the quality of the Nintendo DS, which is good enough for me. The only issue with allowing higher quality music is that I'd imagine it would take up a terribly large amount of free space. My only issue with the Sappy engine is that it's hard to find enough RAM to play large samples and/or songs with many tracks.

    Really the main reason why I like the Sappy engine is because I've learned how to work with it, but there's only a small amount of stuff that I actually know about it.

    I do support your research of creating a new sound engine, however.
     
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