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pmprog
Account closed
Registered: Nov 2005
Posts: 54 |
Gameboy VGM File Conversion?
I've got some VGM files for Gargoyles Quest from the Gameboy, and I found a tool that converts VGM to MIDI and spent some time trying to convert one of the tracks into GoatTracker. I'm really bad at using GoatTracker, and well, just music in general (Just listen to the two SIDs I've got listed next to my profile).
Going back to the MIDI conversion though, there seemed to be lots of odd notes that you don't "hear" in the tune (which didn't help my attempt to re-sequence it). I have looked at the Gameboy's audio system before, like I said, I don't really understand the audio generation side of things, but it doesn't sound like it's got any features the SID chip doesn't.
VGM files for Gameboy tunes just run at a clock rate setting Gameboy registers, pretty much in the same way the C64 sets SID registers (at least that's my understanding, I could be totally wrong). I was wondering if it would be possible to write something that read the register writes from the VGM and did a translation to SID register writes? or am I grossly oversimplifying it in my head?
http://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/articles/Gameboy_sound_hardware
http://vgmrips.net/wiki/VGM_Specification |
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Jammer
Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 1289 |
Theoretically every conversion is possible ;) Just mind Gameboy has 4 channels hence you truncate the note data. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11111 |
also the noise channel is really different to the SID. and then there are custom waveforms too... |
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4mat
Registered: May 2010
Posts: 63 |
I had a look at adding Gameboy to the player we used in "Fuji". (it does VGM format for the SN76489 chip, that in the end we didn't end up putting any songs in for hehe) You can probably get away with using a triangle wave for the 3rd channel on older games, but as it's really a waveform on hardware you'd need a nice sample buffer to cover a lot of different tracks accurately. VGMs are fairly easy to parse into a nice (smaller) format, there is a tool suite around called VGMTools (I think) which can convert files into 50/60 frame chunks, which makes it easier to write a converter as you know exactly when the next set of notes will play. |
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GH
Registered: Sep 2014
Posts: 77 |
Stick to Midi conversion and spice things up
in Goattracker is what I would do :D |
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pmprog
Account closed
Registered: Nov 2005
Posts: 54 |
Found SIDWizard which looks like it has some nice tools for converting MIDI files, so going to have a play with this first. |
