in3D wrote:
My original question though, was about the homebrew title MIDI Music Player. I wanted to know how to change the MIDI file that it plays.

OK, that is easy. You will need to convert your Midi, put the converted file into the midi player project and recompile it.

If you don’t have a VB development environment already get vbde (http://www.planetvb.com/content/vbde_preview4.7z) and extract it to c:\ . You will want to download the Midi Player sources (http://www.planetvb.com/content/downloads/tools/GH-MidiPlayer.zip) and put the project into the folder “C:\vbde\projects\midiPlayer”. You can try compiling it by starting vbde, open the example.c and press the compile button (second from the left).

Now you will need to download the Midi Converter (http://www.planetvb.com/content/downloads/tools/Midi-Converter-bin.zip). You will also need the microsoft .net framework installed in order to start the MidiGui.exe (Chances are good you already got it). You can then simply pick your midi file (choose a simple name without special characters for the midi like ‘yourmidi.mid’), and choose the output directory (C:\vbde\projects\midiPlayer\music). Then select the tracks you want to convert, choose a channel and instrument for each track and press the convert button. If everything went fine you should see a new .h file (yourmidi.h) in your music directory.

Some words about the midi: The published version has some limitations. It might crash on certain midis. Try to use tracks that don’t play multiple notes at the same time. The converter might also screw up notes that play very long. I fixed all of this in the new version of the converter. So you might be able to switch to a better version when I publish it.

OK, you are nearly done. Open the .h file that popped up in your music directory. At the bottom you will find two lines that look like this:

//#include “../music/yourmidi.h”
//mp_loadSong_yourmidi();

Copy the first line (without the //) into the example.c next to the other includes. Replace the line
mp_loadSong_the_legend_of_zelda();
with the second line (without the //).

Now compile it and test. If you get stuck let me know.

You can also send me your midi and I can try it with my current converter.

Just out of curiosity, what is the benefit of using GCC 4?

Craby wrote:
Impressive Thunderstruck :] Providing games and boxes for said games, you are a one-man game company 🙂

(For some reasons, having 40Mo of pictures on one page makes my browser crash.)

Thanks. Yeah… somehow the pictures got quite big…

Robert Molander wrote:
Nice boxes..

I want one of those boxes 🙂

For which game? I might have a spare one. Just send me a PM.

in3D wrote:
It seems that everybody complains about VB audio. I for one, love the music of Mario Clash especially. I think the VB would be great for chiptunes, probably better than Game Boy. So, does anybody know how to change the MIDI file that MIDI music player plays?

I’m not sure if I get your question right. I guess you want to know if it is possible to exchange the music in a commerical VB game with something else (like a midi file). First of all, the VB is not capable of playing Midi files. However, the way the VB handles chiptune music is quite similar to how midis are handled. You basically say which note is played for how long on which channel with which waveform. This is relatively easy compared with how music is handled on other systems (e.g. the NES). That said, this also leads to one problem. Pretty much every commercial game has it’s own sound engine, own sound format and so on. This makes it rather hard to exchange music within a ROM as you would have to reverse engineer the specific sound format first and then bring your music into this format.

morintari wrote:
I happen to love VB music I just wish that we could do things to the caliber of commercial VB audio.

Actually, there is not much holding you back from producing commercial quality audio. Pretty much everything is known about the VSU. There are plenty of examples showing how to use the system (including my sound engine). It is just a matter of fine tuning your music/waveforms to sound the way you want it. You just need to be a good musician.

I think there are a couple of commercial games that manage to play PCM music during the game instead of using the chiptune. It would be really interesting how this works. The explanations from Guy Perfect in this thread (http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=5189&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&type=&mode=0&start=0) sound plausible but I never had a look at it myself.

I just finished the first version of my Box template. I’m using inkscape for drawing. I know allot of people prefer photoshop but I was aiming for a free and easy to use alternative.

I started with a scan of one of Tusks boxes to have a proper outline. I then drew every element by hand including the Nintendo logos, the recyling logo and so on. The only rastered images left are the bracode, the ESRB logo (which I took from this template: http://www.thecoverproject.net/uploads/TEMPLATES/NDS/Nintendo%20Handhelds%20Template%20-%20Shenske.psd)
and the Virtual Boy logo (which I took from this thread: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=5260&forum=1).

Eventually, I want everything to be a vector so that high quality prints are possible. You might notice that I didn’t draw all of the lines of background yet. That’s something I still want to do but it will take allot of time.

Fell free to take the files for whatever you want. If you improve something just post an updated version in this thread.

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OK, I’m done building together all of the boxes. I will probably send everything out next week or so. In the end it took me around 20 minutes building one box (cutting, folding, gluing and so on). Most of them turned out pretty good. On some of them I screwed up a little bit though.

I documented everything with photos and will start writing everything down. Hopefully we will see more self-made Boxes in the future then.

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KR155E wrote:
Thanks, guys! That logo is for another website, btw.

What mysterious website are you talking about?

RunnerPack wrote:
Sounds good to me! 🙂

I hope we don’t have to use that particular (and quite expensive) editor, though… There are many free, open-source ones that are quite usable. Many of them are hosted on SourceForge.

Most midis and midi tools should just work fine. You can try by using the converter I published. There are only a few that are not supported by the library I use. Importing and exporting them with notation composer fixes this.

blitter wrote:
Some more info for anyone other than me who may be looking at this:

Running ‘v810-objdump -t’ on the ELF file reveals that the symbol table is correct– in fact, the bogus address highlighted in the screenshot above is nowhere to be found in the symtable. I’m inclined to believe therefore that this might be a linker issue, though the linker script I’m using works fine in gccVB 2, so this is a weak theory.

Also, for what it’s worth, the difference between the bogus address and the one in the symbol table is 16766404 (FFD5C4) bytes– almost 16M.

I’m reading this as well. I have just no idea how to help you. I find it interesting though.

Brilliant. I might use it for my boxes. I wonder what you need that logo for. Probably for a poster…

I was pretty occupied lately so I didn’t had allot of time to work on this. However, I did put some more Boxes together this weekend. The latest ones look pretty good. I also made photos of (nearly) every single step so I can put them into my guide.

I got several requests for the free Boxes (especially the Fishbone ones) and all of them have a name on them now. I just hope I won’t screw anything up, otherwise some may not get one. I’ve 5 more Boxes to build. After that I will send everything out.

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RunnerPack wrote:

thunderstruck wrote:

…

Well, let me know what you think.

Sounds great, thunderstruck! Especially the Zelda tracks; very nice…

How do we get our grubby little hands on the updated files? Also, what about the converted MIDIs so we can compare (and maybe get an idea of what the input needs to be)?

Thank you. I will publish all of the sources as soon as the Midi Converter is done. There are still some features missing there (like replay). I don’t know if Kr155e would like me to uploads tons of Midis to this site. I will describe the conversion process in detail though. However, if you use Notation Composer (http://www.notation.com/NotationComposer.php) you will be able to bring your Midi into a convertible format. Just don’t do crazy stuff like playing multiple notes at the same time on one track.

morintari wrote:
OK as much as a giant leap forward this is. And it is a giant leap for all homebrewers. So I will give you that. However I do think we should all look at the second step. I for one would like someone to study waveforms and make instruments I’m not too sure which instrument you have when you play your midi converter. But I dare say whatever it is I think you’ve mastered it, as far as I can tell. But I think we can go further. I want to hear drums on the VB I want to hear trumpets too. I want to see as many virtual instruments as possible. Hey I may be way off I’m no musician and I’m not a programmer either but that’s the way I see it.

I don’t think it is that much of a big leap. Just some optimization since the last release. Personally, I don’t know anything about music. I don’t know how to play instruments nor am I willing to learn. However, writing waveforms for the VB is quite easy. Just figure out what you want, bring it to the VB format and add it to the voices.h file. If you are willing to invest time into you can learn it for sure. I’m still using the instruments that DanB published back in the days.

I went through the code of my music engine lately and tried to optimize everything a little bit. There was a problem with the fading. I knew I was doing something wrong there so I checked/fixed everything. I did some other small improvements as well. I also optimized the Midi-Converter a little bit but more on a UI level.

I think implementation wise this is the best I can do. Everything else is fine-tuning by using the right waveforms, volumes, octaves and so on.

I tested everything by converting NES music to midi files and then converting the midi files to my VB format. Sounds simple but it is a pretty tedious process and I had to spent $100 on a tool I needed.

I attached a zip file with 3 demos to this post. I think the Zelda music comes pretty close to the original. The StarWars music (I thought Greg might need it) is a little bit off but the source material wasn’t that great either. The SMB3 music also is a little bit of. The notes and timing seem to be right but the some of the notes seem to be too high (or too loud?).

As I said before: I could come closer to the originals by fine-tuning the single tracks. However, that is a tedious job. Also, I’m not really good a listing to music and identifying single notes and stuff.

Well, let me know what you think.

Attachments:

1. test.zip

Wyndcrosser wrote:
let’s all just make sure we’re using the same template, I can’t tell you annoying it is to print off a bunch of inserts and 2/3 of them are different from one another (graphics used, etc.) lol.

Do you (or whoever made the template) have a template for the regular american Box as well?

Only to make my previous statement a little bit clearer: I would like to have a free HQ version of the Dragon Hopper Box as an image file so that everyone can make their own Box. Therefore, I would be willing to fill multiple slots (meaning paying $40 or so). I don’t want 4 Boxes.

Robert Molander wrote:
Virtual Ben i love your remade Dragon Hopper picture.
The back of the box i belive is the more easy part. But if we all can work together to get this done would be fine.

I have talken to My brother about make this work and the payment fore it. He is a real artist so if he do this he have to put away time and other work so he want pyment.

He also work big. So in the end the pickture Will be high kvalite and the size of the picture will let us print stuff as posters etc etc…

But fore now there is the box art.

He want 150 $ dollar to make the art.

So if we got 15 person how want a box there will be 10$ 🙂
So this is fore the art only.

So lets make a intressted list of this.

In the end Uncle Tusk can do the box.

We all have to come to a choice what the box Will look like. But i want a remade picture of the orginal picture.

I really like the idea of having a HQ version of the Dragon Hopper Box. In case the final art will be available for everyone to use for free (!) I will be happy to fill multiple slots:

INTREST LIST
1. Robert Molander
2. thunderstruck
3. thunderstruck
4. thunderstruck
5. thunderstruck
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GameHero

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Fishbone

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Faceball Remastered

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