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Need some help

 
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Bagne
ALL YOUR NUDIBRANCH ARE BELONG TO GASTROPODA




Joined: 19 Feb 2003
Posts: 518
Location: Halifax

PostPosted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:18 pm    Post subject: Need some help Reply with quote

It's been a while since I've visited this net community, and things have changed a lot.

I remember a general help message board for the OHRRPGCE.
Is this it?

Is there a better place to put my questions?

In the meantime, my question is:
When I left off in the game creation process, all my composed music files were in bam format. Now, things are different, and game.exe seems to automatically convert and play my songs as midi.
Consequently, it sounds terrible- the instruments were converted into something that is no longer suitable.
So, is there a way to convert my bam files to midi *and* in the process choose the appropriate midi instruments for each voice?
Also, I remember that the sound of bam instruments varied greatly between different computers (with different sound cards). Do midi voices do the same?
With bam files, it was possible to have subloops within a song, is that no longer possible with midi?
Is there a midi-editing program that works similar to Notate.exe?

I also have a bug to report in the current OHR version.

Thanks to any of my future helpers.
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Onlyoneinall
Bug finder




Joined: 16 Jul 2005
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You can use Stephanie's PC piano. When you choose to convert to midi, it will allow you to choose the instruments.
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TwinHamster
♫ Furious souls, burn eternally! ♫




Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 1352

PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You would probably want a link to go with that, wouldn't you?
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Bob the Hamster
OHRRPGCE Developer




Joined: 22 Feb 2003
Posts: 2526
Location: Hamster Republic (Southern California Enclave)

PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 8:13 am    Post subject: Re: Need some help Reply with quote

Bagne wrote:

I also have a bug to report in the current OHR version.


Is it already listed here? If not you can report it here
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PlayerOne




Joined: 07 Sep 2005
Posts: 143
Location: UK

PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 11:53 am    Post subject: Re: Need some help Reply with quote

Bagne wrote:

So, is there a way to convert my bam files to midi *and* in the process choose the appropriate midi instruments for each voice?

At some point there was a command-line version of the conversion process. I'm not sure if it's actually distributed anywhere, and even then you'd still need to take the midi file into an editor such as Anvil Studio to change the instruments.
Quote:
Also, I remember that the sound of bam instruments varied greatly between different computers (with different sound cards). Do midi voices do the same?

I'm afraid not. MIDI implementations vary quite a lot in quality. They should at least be recognisably the right instruments.
Quote:
With bam files, it was possible to have subloops within a song, is that no longer possible with midi?

The midi file format itself doesn't support that kind of looping, but Mike Caron implemented a cunning workaround using special system-exclusive events. These can be added by any decent midi editor, but are a bit fiddly and only supported in the music_native backend, which is currently the default for Windows but might not always be, and I can't remember whether it works in Linux or not.

Adding the extra events won't break anything, but you should probably write the music in such a way that it isn't absolutely necessary that the subloops work.
Quote:
Is there a midi-editing program that works similar to Notate.exe?

I don't know how Notate worked, sorry. Happy

The best compromise between file-size and sound quality would probably be a mod format, such as XM. That's something I might look into if I ever get my motivation back.
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TwinHamster
♫ Furious souls, burn eternally! ♫




Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 1352

PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Is there a midi-editing program that works similar to Notate.exe?


Actually, there is.
It's called midi maker. Unfortuantely, you have to upgrade the trial version after 30 days or else you won't be able to export .mid files.
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Me
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Joined: 30 Mar 2003
Posts: 870
Location: MY CUSTOM TITLE CAME BACK

PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 1:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anvil Studio's free version works just great for MIDI composition. It isn't the same interface as Notate.exe but it isn't hard to get the hang of it.
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msw188




Joined: 02 Jul 2003
Posts: 1041

PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I also wanted to warn you that it is NO LONGER POSSIBLE to have infinite loops in the middle of a song. Thus, there is no way to have a song with an intro section that repeats infinitely without repeating the intro. For me this was the worst thing about the change to MIDI.

Also I'd recommend going the Stephanie PC Piano route for conversion. I didn't, and the MIDI's that come from straight command-line conversion are horrible to try and edit. That conversion puts all of the music onto one track with a whole slew of 'events' (computer triggers) that control the different voices and such. Worse yet, there is no musical organization; what was a down beat in notate ends up somewhere around 13/16ths of the way through a measure in Anvil (I made that fraction up, but you have to see it to believe how screwed up it looks).

In any case, I think that this message board (along with the plotscripting help board) is probably the best place to post OHR questions that I know of. This is not the old general helpMe board, but it has kind of taken over that function, I'd say.
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PlayerOne




Joined: 07 Sep 2005
Posts: 143
Location: UK

PostPosted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 6:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ah yes, I forgot I had cheated with the tempo. The converted files won't be in a friendly format.

It ought to be possible to do a better conversion from Notate, I might look into that if I can find some time.

Another advantage of mod files is that they are pattern-based and (I'm fairly sure) can loop back to an arbitrary point. The downside is that the editors are quite unfriendly (in my opinion), and that you tend to need to find/make your own sounds. I was initially opposed to making anything too high-quality, since I wanted to port OHR to less capable platforms, but since there are already wave sfx now, I guess that boat has sailed.
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Bagne
ALL YOUR NUDIBRANCH ARE BELONG TO GASTROPODA




Joined: 19 Feb 2003
Posts: 518
Location: Halifax

PostPosted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Awesome, thanks everyone.

I reported the bug-
And now I just found another- it may be related, but I don't know how to reproduce it. I'll report it too, it's the same as the "Wrong midi voices while importing songs" except it happened in-game only affected one of the song's voices.

Is there a tutorial on how to use the Anvil dealie?
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