200324
TL;DR - YOU CAN MAKE GBA MUSIC WITH MIDI BUT IT’S WEIRD AND TIED INTO A SPECIFIC GAME SO IT MIGHT BE HARD TO ALLOW ON BOTB
I want to call to attention 2 things I noticed with the beloved new GBA format. For one, all the tools listed on the lyceum page were trackers or sequencers (that’s fine in and of itself, you get what you get with these things sometimes). But the second thing stands in contrast to that; from what I know, the Fire Emblem hacking community primarily uses MIDI to create GBA songs. They have a tutorial listed here: FE GBA Music for Beginners
My main question is this: is there a way we could open this up as a means of submitting GBA music, to facilitate people who prefer MIDI over trackers?
The reason I ask is because of the issues that are involved. Based on this guide, it seems like the only unique filetypes generated for GBA insertion are .s files, which aren’t mentioned in the submittable formats, and it sounds like to playback the audio you would need to use either a tool specifically for FE hacking, or insert the song into the game, the latter of which feels pretty out of the scope of BotB. I also don’t know if it’s just as simple as converting the .s file straight into a .gba file somehow, or if there’s a nicer solution that avoids this mess.
Point is, I think it would be great to allow this MIDI method of GBA music creation that a lot of people use, but I don’t know how one would make it work with BotB’s rules on playback for submissions and what can be converted to what. I would like to hear others’ input if they know some stuff I don’t, since I’m at a loss here.
I want to call to attention 2 things I noticed with the beloved new GBA format. For one, all the tools listed on the lyceum page were trackers or sequencers (that’s fine in and of itself, you get what you get with these things sometimes). But the second thing stands in contrast to that; from what I know, the Fire Emblem hacking community primarily uses MIDI to create GBA songs. They have a tutorial listed here: FE GBA Music for Beginners
My main question is this: is there a way we could open this up as a means of submitting GBA music, to facilitate people who prefer MIDI over trackers?
The reason I ask is because of the issues that are involved. Based on this guide, it seems like the only unique filetypes generated for GBA insertion are .s files, which aren’t mentioned in the submittable formats, and it sounds like to playback the audio you would need to use either a tool specifically for FE hacking, or insert the song into the game, the latter of which feels pretty out of the scope of BotB. I also don’t know if it’s just as simple as converting the .s file straight into a .gba file somehow, or if there’s a nicer solution that avoids this mess.
Point is, I think it would be great to allow this MIDI method of GBA music creation that a lot of people use, but I don’t know how one would make it work with BotB’s rules on playback for submissions and what can be converted to what. I would like to hear others’ input if they know some stuff I don’t, since I’m at a loss here.