This is currently a Work In Progress—content is still under development.
¶ Music
This guide details what I needed to know about making music and bringing it over into Super Metroid.
This guide will not teach you how to make a good song, nor any music theory.
¶ Things you will need
- OpenMPT
- mITroid (github.com)
- A copy of the Super Metroid soundfont
¶ Steps
¶ Composing the tracker file
- Open OpenMPT
- Drag the SM soundfont over into the navigation sidebar to add it.
- Create a new project (IT).
- Set the number of channels to 8.
- Add the sound by selecting it and dragging it over into the Instruments tab.
- Mash the QWERTY keyboard to get a feel for the instrument and how it sounds
- In Patterns, make a song.
- In Comments, add the Pattern index to be used when looping the song.
- Save resulting IT file.
What's a Pattern index?
A song can be made up of multiple patterns. A pattern index might be considered as a page in sheet music since you can only fit a limited amount of track data per pattern.If you want to loop the track from the beginning of the song, you would in the comments write 0. If you had a looping point by pattern 2, you can write 2 in the comments, and when the song finishes it would start from that pattern.
¶ Tips
- While you have 8 channels to compose with, be aware that game sounds use some of these channels. You may want to restrict the number of channels you use.
- The most critical notes should play on the lowest tracks as sound effects will use Channel 8 first, then work backwards (P.JBoy, mccad00 2022-01-20).
- Supposedly a good way to check for sound channel overlap is to set off a power bomb, then spam missiles, all while a door is opening.
¶ Exporting an engine appropriate version
- Use mITroid to load in the IT file.
- Save the N-SPC data somewhere you can remember.
¶ Bring the converted sounds over
- Open SMART and import your project.
- Open the music editor.
- Click the Plus button and select option to import from NSPC.
- Find your NSPC file you created and load it.
¶ Change the music of a room
- Load in the room you want to change the music for.
- In the left sidebar, go to Room Data, and set the Song using the Music control.
- Set
SongSetto the new entry in the Music Collection list (e.g.4B). - Set the
Songof the room to the available song. You can open the new song in the editor to look at the header data and see what songs are available. - Save to XML
- Load the room and test it.