HOW MUCH DO Y'ALL LIKE MIDI?

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Do you like the sound of midi in an Rpg Maker game? I don't mind it myself, but the last time I used midi in a game I learned that there were players who disliked it enough to kill their speakers with an axe, and I don't want that happening. The sound effects are more important than the bgm anyway. (the game is a dungeon crawler)

Yet...due to the fact that RMXP does a poor job of looping any bgm that isn't midi, I am finding myself seriously considering going with a midi soundtrack again.

For example, this bgm by NICE GUY. Would you enjoy listening to it? Would you not notice it? Or would it actively annoy you?
KingArthur
( ̄▽ ̄)ノ De-facto operator of the unofficial RMN IRC channel.
1217
I have a huge collection of MIDIs that I listen to on a regular basis, so personally I love MIDIs and I would love hearing some in an RM game (including mixed together with MP3s and OGGs).
Well, the answer is our era. Me personally, I don't mind midi, but it is hard for people to digest midi, when you can take the bgm linked in your opening post, and make it sound like this:

this bgm EXTREME

I created that by going to this midi converter website, putting in your midi file, choosing from a select group of soundfonts (Merlin Vienna in this case), and letting the automated program do the rest.

I mean, it is an amazing song, regardless of the style, but many people appreciate the musical innovations of our time, and would rather music stay in that realm if possible.

To help with looping (mp3s), what you need is music in an ogg format. How do you do that? Simple:

Take your mp3.

Go to an ogg converter site, like this one, place your file to be converted, and voila!

You now have a high quality, perfectly loopable, ogg file.

Now, you can take every midi song you have ever loved, and make it more appealing to the ears of those who stumble upon your game.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Even if all you do is convert your midi to an ogg or mp3, it's going to sound way better than it did as a midi. RPG Maker games are low quality enough already without using horrible file formats for the music; if you can increase your music's quality, then do so.
True, but then you get into the realm of huge game file sizes. Except for 10 or so songs for key moments/fights in my game, the majority of my soundtrack is in MIDI to cut down on file size. Its around 50-55 megs as it is.
author=Darkflamewolf
True, but then you get into the realm of huge game file sizes. Except for 10 or so songs for key moments/fights in my game, the majority of my soundtrack is in MIDI to cut down on file size. Its around 50-55 megs as it is.
Well if that is the case, I would at least have a separate music file for people to download. Have the original game come with the midi songs, and if the player so desires to swap it, they have the option of downloading the external music pack, and transferring it into the game data.

But, for many, that would be more effort than they are willing to exert.
Actually, I think midis are unique and should be used more often. Midis are great not just for small file size, but also for a unique experience, as it sounds very different from mp3/ogg, since midi is more of piano-like music (synth sounds) and more geared towards mono than stereo.

If you want a unique, old-school music experience in your game, then midi is definitely the one for you. Sure, mp3/ogg are definitely better in quality, but the experiences between midi and mp3/ogg are very different.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
You would need well over 150 mp3s for your game to be anywhere even remotely approaching "not tiny" file size

edit: 150 not 1500. 1500 mp3s would be approaching 3 GB which is most definitely not tiny. 300 MB is still pretty tiny though.
Thanks, especially for the links to those online converters! I've been doing things the manual way.

RMXP won't loop ogg from a loop point, though. Which means you either have to cut out the intro part of a song, or use some kind of script workaround, but you still wind up with other problems from my experience, like a time delay before the loop picks up. (If anyone knows a solution that really works smoothly, I'm open to hearing it) Thinking about it, I'm not willing to give up the intros to songs, so I guess I'm leaning towards raw midi as things stand now.

author=flowerthief
RMXP won't loop ogg from a loop point, though. Which means you either have to cut out the intro part of a song, or use some kind of script workaround, but you still wind up with other problems from my experience, like a time delay before the loop picks up. (If anyone knows a solution that really works smoothly, I'm open to hearing it) Thinking about it, I'm not willing to give up the intros to songs, so I guess I'm leaning towards raw midi as things stand now.


Or, that means you get songs that loop from beginning to end completely. In other words, a song that starts with an "intro", but loops, making the "intro" another continuation of the song.

Like this one:

Song with what I consider an intro that loops perfectly when an ogg.

Either way, unless you have a composer that knows what they are doing, you will have to do some extra work if you want oggs/mp3s to loop, and loop seamlessly with an intro.

I purposefully make my music loop from beginning to end (since most people prefer that), and that may be what you'll have to do in order to get your songs to loop to you liking.

But that is hard to do when the music isn't your own. :/

P.S. - No one use that song please. It is music for a game I am composing for.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
I personally love midis, plus they're easy to edit.

But it pisses me off how the way they sound cna change depending on the sound card you have...

I get the clear impression that people don't really like midis generally, they seems to prefer the sound quality of mp3 or wav, for me the problem with those formats is that mp3 don't loop right and both of them take too much space.

I guess it depends a lot of your background, people that played a lot of games that used midis will have no problem with them, but newer generations are used to sound perfect musics in their games.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
This thread is officially the first time in my life I've ever heard anyone suggest that MP3s "don't loop right." I'm not even sure what that means. They get to the end and then they start over, I'm not sure what else you want them to do? I mean I know there are formats that can jump to a custom point in the middle of the song when they reach the end, but midi isn't one of them.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
Your comment implies that I'm stupid, I didn't like it.

You can make midis jump into the middle of the track after they reach the end and it loops great, and you get a song with intro and loop: RMN Article

When I say that "mp3s don't loop right" I mean that both RPG Maker 2003 and newer makers have a second or so of silence before repeating the track after it reaches the end, it sound unprofessional, you quickly forget about sound quality when the music stops for a second showing where it loops, it can break immersion.

You can use wavs but they take too much space, even if they loop with no interruption (due to the way they load).
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Me saying I don't understand you sounds like I'm implying you're stupid? I'm pretty sure I was implying I was stupid. That said, it is definitely always safe to assume I think every single person on earth is stupid.

I never realized you could loop from a custom point like that with midis! Very interesting. GOGP suggests in the comments that the same thing is possible with MP3, but doesn't explain how; I wonder if that's true.

I've always assumed that when there was a moment of silence when the song loops, it's because most MP3s are created with a moment of silence at the beginning or end. It's really part of the rpg maker software? Huh. I will need to test that when I get home. And also see if .ogg does the same thing. If true, it will save me a lot of time deleting the moments of silence at the ends of all the songs I'm using.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
author=LockeZ
it is definitely always safe to assume I think every single person on earth is stupid.

That's something I can agree with! Safe bet :p

You can also loop mp3, but in RPG Maker 2003 you need a patch for the application to read the file (I think cherry has such a patch: cherry Disharmony Audio Patch), to loop mp3 go here: Gapless looping MP3 tracks

I remove all silent spots from the start and end of the mp3 files, but RPG Maker 2003 loads the file when it plays (sometimes causing lag depending on the file size) and then after it finishes playing the file once it loads it again, I think that's what causes the silence. I know that because I use mp3 in one of my projects.

I'm not sure how it works with Ace.

Maybe ogg works better, I'll try it one day and check.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
Couple things:

- In this day and age size should be a non-issue, especially in the case of mp3s which aren't that large anyway. It's not like you'd be packing a shedload of lossless files.
- I'm of the opinion that you should never skimp on music anyway, as it can often make or break games.
- If you HAVE to use MIDIs, make sure all your music uses the same format; lack of musical consistency's the worst thing.
My special non-midi songs are actually WAV, where rm2k3 handles perfectly in terms of looping. When it 'reloads' the music file, there is no pause, probably because of the wav format, its able to do this. But to compensate for possible excessive space, I decrease bit size to the point where it still sounds awesome but uses less space than a straight convert from MP3 would deliver size-wise.
author=m4uesviecr
Well, the answer is our era. Me personally, I don't mind midi, but it is hard for people to digest midi, when you can take the bgm linked in your opening post, and make it sound like this:

this bgm EXTREME

I created that by going to this midi converter website, putting in your midi file, choosing from a select group of soundfonts (Merlin Vienna in this case), and letting the automated program do the rest.

I mean, it is an amazing song, regardless of the style, but many people appreciate the musical innovations of our time, and would rather music stay in that realm if possible.

To help with looping (mp3s), what you need is music in an ogg format. How do you do that? Simple:

Take your mp3.

Go to an ogg converter site, like this one, place your file to be converted, and voila!

You now have a high quality, perfectly loopable, ogg file.

Now, you can take every midi song you have ever loved, and make it more appealing to the ears of those who stumble upon your game.
Oh

my

god!

Thank you!!
Given that this is a community of people who make games using tools inferior to the freedom of straight programming (C++ or VB), it's odd to see people complaining about the horribleness of midi vs mp3.
Besides. Good music is good music. I've heard lots of amazing midis, lots of shitty mp3s, and vica versa. My personal preference is midis out of a nostalgic desire for that type of sound, but I won't compromise project integrity over it. You use what fits.

Thanks for the heads-up about the article, iddalai. You're a bad enough dude to rescue the president.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
We use shitty tools because they're easier, not just because we like to make things shittier. Midi isn't any easier (or harder) to use than MP3. The amount of time and effort is exactly the same. So it's just a matter of quality.
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