[Other] Magnius Guide to Pokemon Music Hacking

[DrerAhv]

I've got an issue of my own.
I am trying to import the Myst theme as the title screen theme for Pokemon Ruby. I acquired the midi from the midimole website (I would post urls to show you exactly what I'm talking about, but it appears I'm not authorized to do so.)
I can manage to get the file into .s format easily, but when I try to Assemble the song Sappy freezes.

I've changed the instruments in the song numerous times, and the current setup is Pizzicato Strings, Timpani, Synth Bass 1, and Acoustic Grand Piano. I've tried various different programs and methods to insert this song into the game and so far nothing has worked. Please help.

[ipatix]

Well make sure when converting the MIDI that the file only use these characters:
- "A-Z"
- "a-z"
- "0-9"
- "." , "_"

That should prevent Sappy form crashing.
For the second problem:
On this sound-engine you are limited to 128 MIDI programs and the MIDI percussion-MIDI-channel won't change anything and so program "0 - Acoustic Grand Piano" is usually used as a percussion kit.
When you want to use the piano use the program "1 - Bright Acoustic Piano" , but make sure your voicegroup contains all these instruments.

Hope you understood my English ;-)

[DrerAhv]

Originally Posted by ipatix

Well make sure when converting the MIDI that the file only use these characters:
- "A-Z"
- "a-z"
- "0-9"
- "." , "_"

That should prevent Sappy form crashing.
For the second problem:
On this sound-engine you are limited to 128 MIDI programs and the MIDI percussion-MIDI-channel won't change anything and so program "0 - Acoustic Grand Piano" is usually used as a percussion kit.
When you want to use the piano use the program "1 - Bright Acoustic Piano" , but make sure your voicegroup contains all these instruments.

Hope you understood my English ;-)

Alright, I've tried that.
I'm using the voicegroup offset of 0x43B8A0, which is;

0x43B8A0

01 - Bright Acoustic
09 - Glockenspiel
35 - Fretless Bass
45 - Pizzicato Strings
46 - Harp
47 - Timpani
48 - Strings
60 - French Horn
73 - Flute

My instrument setup, after some fiddling, contains only Pizzicato Strings, Flute, Timpani, and Fretless Bass.
I'm using an empty offset as the Base Destination.
When I press "Assemble that Ugly Thing", I get an error message that reads:

"Run-time error '13':
type mismatch"

once I hit either OK or X on that message, Sappy closes and a new error message appears that reads:

"Run-time error '-2147418105 (80010007)':
Automation error
The callee (server [not server aplication]) is not available and disappeared; all connections are invalid. The call may have executed."

Upon hitting OK/X for that message it closes and nothing else appears.
What do I do to avoid this?

[AlexTheRose]

        If I had the source code I might be able to pinpoint the problem… I know a little Visual Basic 2008/2010, and I think it might just be poor programming that's easily fixable, like a typo in the code that the VB dictionary didn't pick up because the typo meant something else… You know.

        I think that Sappy is, to put it simply, a really sappy program all around. Sappy doesn't work on Vista (which was released in 2006) saying that you need some VB libraries. If you install those libraries, you get another crash, even if you're running XP. So my conclusion of all of this is that improper programming etc. caused the conflict between certain VB libraries (pre-included in some version of the .NET framework) and Sappy that the program can't handle. I also don't think that Sappy is designed to handle plug-in DLLs, so there's no solution there either.

        My answer to all of this is to do a complete re-write of the entire program from scratch, and distribute it as Sappy x.x.x Mark 2 or some such, or at least do a beta for the new release. Other than that, I honestly don't know what to tell people who experience crashes; My Sappy 2005 and 2006 both crash on their own (they'll recognise an unsupported ROM like Red Rescue Team, but still crash when loading Ruby for instance).

[shiny quagsire]

Originally Posted by AlexTheRose

        If I had the source code I might be able to pinpoint the problem… I know a little Visual Basic 2008/2010, and I think it might just be poor programming that's easily fixable, like a typo in the code that the VB dictionary didn't pick up because the typo meant something else… You know.

        I think that Sappy is, to put it simply, a really sappy program all around. Sappy doesn't work on Vista (which was released in 2006) saying that you need some VB libraries. If you install those libraries, you get another crash, even if you're running XP. So my conclusion of all of this is that improper programming etc. caused the conflict between certain VB libraries (pre-included in some version of the .NET framework) and Sappy that the program can't handle. I also don't think that Sappy is designed to handle plug-in DLLs, so there's no solution there either.

        My answer to all of this is to do a complete re-write of the entire program from scratch, and distribute it as Sappy x.x.x Mark 2 or some such, or at least do a beta for the new release. Other than that, I honestly don't know what to tell people who experience crashes; My Sappy 2005 and 2006 both crash on their own (they'll recognise an unsupported ROM like Red Rescue Team, but still crash when loading Ruby for instance).

Most crashes are because of dependencies and other issues, Some people from the Fire Emblem hacking society have come up with this

It's been modified, and works perfectly in Vista, and has some new features.

[hinkage]

I too have the "Can't find file MPlayDef.s for inclusion" error.

>I have MPlayDef.s in the same folder as my .s file to be assembled
>I have the newest version of sappy (that supposedly fixed this problem)

Can anyone help? Thanks

[805587804]

I can hear music hacking into hacking into the music but I can not cycle to how to make it cycle?

[Lorenzo The Comic]

Even though I copied the three ocx files to C:\Windows\System32, I get the runtime errors regardless.

EDIT: Oops never mind... I forgot to download and install Sappy 12 first.

[ipatix]

Just for information: Just copying the files doesn't work because the files have to be registered in your Registry and the Sappy installer does this for you ;-)

[CrystalStatic]

Download links for Sappy and Midi are down. Solutions?

[supershadow64ds]

Unfortunately, no versions of Sappy (That I can acquire) are compatible with Windows 7. I instead use Song Inserter, but I have no clue how to use it. I have a voice group offset I want to use (0x43B8A0) but I do not know the 4 byte header for the Wild/Trainer battle music. Does anyone know these?

[pokemetalhead_96]

I tried converting the .midi file to the .s file, butwhenever I do, the .s file doesn't show up. Help me out here?

[ADLFM14]

Really nice tutorial Magnius but i have a problem when i put my midi file in Mid2Agb folder i open Mid2Agb folder i found no.s file for my midi plz any help and sorry for bad english

[Magnius]

If you're having problems with the VBAL error or just couldn't run Sappy on Windows 7, I've added a link at the bottom of the first post, that will fix that.

Also, the "Rom Tools" link with Sappy and Mid2Agb has been removed. You can now get Sappy and Mid2agb here.

[AquaFred]

hi Magnus
I found a technique for hacking gba music

it's simple with anvil studio without Hexad so I want your opinion on my youtube channel: TheFredWTF
Sorry for my English

[Mr. Luigi Fletcher]

It keeps crashing when I load a rom.

[The_Show]

For those having trouble with syntax error #1002, that just means you are typing the wrong offset in the SECOND BOX when assembling the song. You should type an offset with a lot of free space, as long as it isn't higher than 0x900000. anything higher than 0x800000 should work.