This is ridiculous

[RickyRombo]

Honestly this is what REALLY should be added to the FAQ

[MJK]

drop the midi support (do people still use midi files for game music?)

Yes, it's still very important format e.g. for mid/low-end mobile phones (J2ME)! The max. jar size can be something like 750Kb on many phones, and while an empty app is pretty much 300Kb already, there's really no possibility to use any other music format than midi. So midi support definitely should not be dropped.

[Nifflas]

Ah, I didn't actually realize that, I sometime forget about the Java build types.

The best soltion could possibly be to have the 32 sound channels and a single music channel, while permitting any format to be played on both the sample and music channel (apart from .mid files which for technical reasons have to go into the music channel only).

[Crash86]

Agreed that OGG is better for game music.
Anything beyond that and WAV, (like MOD files), is for extensions to handle.

If you don't like MIDI, why not change your machine's soundfont?
This is very difficult with 64-bit machines though, which is a pity because apparently Win7's MIDI wavetable is even worse than XP's.

[Christian_Wheel]

"Midi vs. Samples" is a leftover term from the original KNP. Back then, MP3's, OGG's, etc were practically nonexistent. Pretty much all commercial games used MIDI music at the time.

[UrbanMonk]

I love midi and mods.

Don't ever remove them.

[BackStaged]

Midis and Mods don't be dropped, that is a true reality.

But.. Ok, then in MMF2, labelized "music" can be read only .mid files is.. a joke (seeing the year is 2010..., in 2010, many games use other format than .mid files)

So, ok Nifflas, i'll encode all .mp3 i have to the .ogg format.

ps: i don't have any musicians, i create my sounds and musics in Fruity Loops Studio", but actually it doesn't support .ogg format, that is why i said it's a "loss of time".. perhaps with their last updates.. or perhaps with the Producer version.. But i don't have theses versions, i have only Standard Fruity Loops.

So. Perhaps you use an another software for creating your musics guys?

[Crash86]

Why not just rename the option to "Play MIDI file" if that's all that "Play Music" addresses.

That kills the illusion that you can't use OGG for your music.

I mean, if it costs a truckload to licence MP3 capability, then it's unavoidable. What other formats do you suggest? WMA is good but not that many people 'use' it. That's why unofficial extensions are such a great sidestep around the problem.

And you can't expect MMF2 to handle MOD tracker files without extensions either because it's a huge minefield area. Even MODPlug doesn't get it right all the time, and that's all it does.

Other than presumably MP3, what does Fruity Loops export to, out of interest?

[Jaffob]

I would definitely not remove support for modules. They are very useful for games, as you can download thousands of them online, and also are very small (many are about 50KB). Extensions such as ONU do play them better than MMF does, but using ONU requires the modules to be external to the application. And really there's no reason to remove a feature that already exists, it not like it's hurting anyone.

I think that Play Sample and Play Music should just be combined into "Play Sound." Play Music is rather useless IMO. I used it for about the first month I used MMF and haven't used it since. MIDIs are way too uncommon to need their own actions for, so having Play Music as an option will only lure new users away from Play Sample. I also think that Play Sample is a rather poor naming choice, and could somewhat confuse new users also. Just combining the two into "Sounds" would simplify everything.

[Nifflas]

If you don't like MIDI, why not change your machine's soundfont?

The real problem is that they sound different depending on system, hardware, or software synthesizer. I can't really ask anyone to load a specific soundbank or use a specific GM synthesizer. However, I suppose .mid support have to be kept for the sake of the mobile java build types.

And you can't expect MMF2 to handle MOD tracker files without extensions either because it's a huge minefield area. Even MODPlug doesn't get it right all the time, and that's all it does.

Why not? It does play them already, the player is quite accurate too, as long as you try your modules with your MMF2 application and make adjustments accordingly to deal with possible quirks (and I haven't noticed that many, perhaps some minor stuff with e.g. the note retrigger command).

It's actually nice enough to be really useful, the main flaw is that it doesn't follow the pattern jump commands (this is an issue for two reasons; first that you can't create a song with an intro that will be skipped when the song loops, and second it seems like notes are cut off when the song loops even if there are no note-offs at the beginning of the song). Second, it'd be great if MMF let the user decide which interpolation method to use. Chip music for example usually sounds better with zero order interpolation.

ps: i don't have any musicians, i create my sounds and musics in Fruity Loops Studio", but actually it doesn't support .ogg format, that is why i said it's a "loss of time".. perhaps with their last updates.. or perhaps with the Producer version.. But i don't have theses versions, i have only Standard Fruity Loops.

So. Perhaps you use an another software for creating your musics guys?

I use Renoise which doesn't export to .ogg either. A lot of music software doesn't even export to mp3, it's normally not the music software's job to export to the format you want, you get a dedicated encoder for that. BonkEnc is one. Just launch, drag & drop, should take 30 seconds or something. Alternatively, get any command line .ogg encoder and create a "send to -> ogg encoder" option for when you right click a file, that way it takes 10. Nothing to change your music program of choice over, nor a reason for CT to support a proprietary audio format.