Research: Music Hacking Info from the Fire Emblem Community

[Mr.Pkmn]

Let me tell you: this Sappy version is a GODSEND!

Music hacking's still probably the most complicated part of hacking a GBA game but what the heck, at least the tools are improving.

For me it's the easiest along with scripting. I found more tedious storywriting and mapping :P
Hell, I'll show you what this new sappy allowed me to do!

 

[Mr.Pkmn]

That is seriously awesome! I so want that in my hack, but it's a DS hack. Maybe I could implement it somehow.

Can I haz patch?

If you're hacking a ds game you should probably port directly track and samples from Black/White. Sappy edits only GBA music.

 

[AmineX]

MM kinda cool i finally got what are the 4 last bytes of instrument string are: attack,decay,sustain and release!! very usful thanks!
Still i prefer manual work since i developed my own tools to do that stuff :)
another interessting point is the ability to play song in real mode out put

 

[Mr.Pkmn]

I do know that. But I use Sappy to log MIDI files so I can port them to NDS from GBA. You h ave a stripped-down version (I think) of that song, so it will take up less memory in the .SDAT.

No, I've used the full MIDI extracted from VGMTrans. Why bother of the MIDI when you can copy-paste its files from the rom?

 

[shadowofchaos]

Modifying voicegroups?

Sweet.

Music hacking's still probably the most complicated part of hacking a GBA game but what the heck, at least the tools are improving.

Let me tell you: this Sappy version is a GODSEND!

Hell, I'll show you what this new sappy allowed me to do!

Glad I could help someone by delving into the moonspeak ridden forums. XD


I actually use it more for importing/making new sound effects from other sources.




Importing samples takes up a lot of space though, sheesh. >_>;

 

[Megiddo-san]

I tried using Zahlman's editor to switch the Pallet Town theme with Pallet Town Fame Remix, but when I loaded the rom the song was the same. I received this output from Zahlman's editor.

Also the Fire Emblem theme was the same when I tried the example:
# This sample script assumes you have an Advance Wars ROM named 'AW.gba', and a Fire Emblem 7 ROM named 'FE7.gba'.
# It rips Sonja's theme music from Advance Wars and replaces the opening theme from Fire Emblem 7 with it. The result is saved to 'test.gba'.
# After that is done, it will dump all the instrument samples found in the FE7 ROM to a folder called 'samples', in AIFF format.

 

[Xenesis]

Zahlman's importer currently doesn't support one or two instrument types (I believe they're the split key ones) so it'll skip tracks in a song that uses them.

 

[Megiddo-san]

It did get 3 out of 6 though.

 

[ipatix]

Does anybody know a way to report bugs of this Sappy mod or a person who had been working on this mod?

 

[ShinyDragonHunter]

I've got a tool that searches for the songtable when you load a ROM into it, if people want to, I can post it on here

 

[Link_971]

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[Link_971]

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[Link_971]

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[ipatix]

Since mod 16 I'm having trouble with having "." in filenames.
When using a regular ARM assembler it can assemble the files and it did work for me in the mod 15 of sappy, too.
Is it just me or is this error regular?

 

[MrAPT1]

Can anyone help me with an error I've been having? No matter what Sappy mod I use, whether it be 14, 15 or the latest one, 16, I always get this error. (Ignore that I'm using 15 in the picture, this was taken a while ago)

I don't know why I get this message. I have MPlaydef.s in the right folder, and I've checked multiple times, replaced the file, and still nothing. It never lets me assemble songs from S files. It's quite annoying, and I haven't seen anyone come up with a solution for this yet.

 

[ipatix]

Doesn't it work for all files you want to assemble?

 

[Link_971]

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[MrAPT1]

I have the same problem.
You need to use a Virtual XP or a PC with Windows XP for assembling (it's a compatibility problem between the new Sappy and Mid2AGB).

But the assembler works with this version, compared to mod 15.

Ah, well that certainly sheds some light on my issue. Does such a Midi2AGB exist that's compatible with the new Sappy, or is there any sort of way I can make Midi2AGB compatible on my own then?

 

[ipatix]

Well there is defnetly not another version of mid2agb because this program is (c) by Nintendo and there are no GBA games in development, so why should Nintendo fix this issue if it's caused by mid2agb?

If the problem is caused by the assembler try to use my own one. You can find it in the toolbox ("M4A build in' assembler").

 

[MrAPT1]

Well there is defnetly not another version of mid2agb because this program is (c) by Nintendo and there are no GBA games in development, so why should Nintendo fix this issue if it's caused by mid2agb?

If the problem is caused by the assembler try to use my own one. You can find it in the toolbox ("M4A build in' assembler").

Thanks a bunch, you're a real life saver. I've been using it for a few hours now to assemble my midis and it works great.