[OUTDATED] Elibian Nights

[General89]

Well, music is one of my primary focuses at the moment. Working on importing tracks from FE6 and FE8 (mostly FE6 though), and I've got a few songs from the SNES generation as well. Here's a video collage of some of the transplanted tracks.

hi, can I ask you about Promoted Solider in Raven Tale, I feel it like Emp in FE8, is it right? and about map, I feel I had seen it in FE6

this char, he is so strong that cant defeat him alone, I must use all of Raven's men to kill him, and 100 xp, he made me remember the monster in FE8, always give 100 xp :)

and about grow rate of all, very bad, where is my favorite char Will, he is so useless in this new gamewhen I played FE7 he is a good char with good stats at all

[Fia]

While I love to hear a bits of FE4 in this hack... I couldn't help but think the sound is a bit awkward? xD;

Or maybe that's just me. >w>

[Celice]

No. It's missing depth and detail. It sounds like a crappy MIDI, which shouldn't quite be happening if it's being converted properly from an SPC dump of the original track. If it is, and it still sounds bad, it's a sign of a lack of polish to the end-result of the raw conversion, which could be because Arch doesn't care about making it sound better, Arch can't make it sound better (for lack of musical ability or know-how), or some other probably justified reason. There are a number of tutorials, in English, French, and Japanese, which go over how to "tune-up" MIDI conversions from the original game, but most of them center on fixing the port yourself, correcting things which were lost in translation.

Even porting music from other GBA games will have the same problem, because the process of translation is forceful--it takes the direct measurements and attempts to transplant them from one place to another. This isn't so much an issue for the Fire Emblem games on the GBA, because they all three share the same sound information (for the most part). It's raw, is all.

EDIT: It sounds like there's a complete lack of balance to the port. When Daigasso! Band Brothers got its MIDI importer setup, that was the biggest issue--all the musical instruments and timing were unbalanced and direct. There was no emphasis of noise, like in the original, because they were lost in the brute-force conversion of the music. Sadly, balancing of this type takes effort and time if you want to get to sound just right, and individual attention. So for each song that wasn't copied from FE6 or FE8, it would have to be looked over and edited manually to sound right, or else leave it at its existing quality.

Even FE7if has this issue. Though, that hack had almost all of its music, including the, what, 150 additional songs, for the most part, fine-tuned over a long duration of time, probably by more than one person. And is full of Live-a-Live awesomeness :D

Edited June 10, 2011 by Celice

[Nanami Touko]

Celice, please note that MIDIs inserted into GBA FE can only have 8 tracks to function perfectly, have to be either inserted manually (which barely works sometimes) or by using Zahlman's music editor, which isn't finished and isn't perfect, and by pointing to Blazer's music patch, unless someone wants to manually take the time to repoint all of the instruments to GBA FE instruments inside the rom.

Inserting it manually and repointing are probably two things that would take Arch way too long, and while the MIDI isn't the best thing ever, it's not complete Garbage, so I think he'll be fine with it for now.

Edited June 10, 2011 by seph1212

[Celice]

That first bit is irrelevant, because the SPC700, without any fanciness, could only have eight distinct channels played as well :P So channel limitation couldn't be part of the problem... it's just dealing with the after-effects of a brute-force conversion which leaves that hollowness in the sound.

coincidentally the binary uploader was given some document on MIDI transplants today, but, it's all old news it looks like. Maybe, it might be worth a look, but since Zophar's Domain is listed in the readme... that thing is at least seven years old D:

Edited June 10, 2011 by Celice

[Nanami Touko]

Well, then yes, that first bit is irrelevant. The other parts depend on whether or not Arch wants to spend that much time getting the music to sound perfect.

I seriously wish GBA FE had the sound system of GBA SRT. 12 tracks for theme? Yes please.

[Arch]

Celice, I've been using what's on the binary uploader for a while (and for all the SNES transplants, which have eight tracks). The faults come from the instruments, since the SNES MIDIs are exactly the same in composition as the actual songs in SNESFE.

[Celice]

Are the instrument intensifiers also coming from the MIDI? That is the issue usually lost most in translation when trying to import MIDI files which have gone through conversion. If you compare your port with the original sample, it's quite easy to see it's more than just different instruments (which is part of it, though not a large one). Your port is flat throughout. There's no division of emphasis for the notes, instruments, and the other things, like the echoes, duration of sound, and all that other jargonous stuff. The instuments aren't the issue, as much as it's the overall impact not being given to some over others.

compared with yours, which sounds like you switched out the strings for horn,s but tried to keep these strange drums with the horns

EDIT: Since this forum plays youtube embeds wonky, skip to 1:00. It should be doing that by default, but, meh. Though, on the whole, the GBA his a horrid-sounding thing in the first place, which can make fine-tuning pretty useless altogether. It's usually easiest to compose something originally, where you can tune as you go, than try to fix something that's already complete.

EDIT2:

6E4D54: DrumSet
6E4F94:Drum1 6E4F94: Drum1
6E51D4:Drum2 6E51D4: Drum2
6EC814:Trombone 6EC814: Trombone
6F478C:Bass 6F478C: Bass
6F4E80:tinpani 6F4E80: tinpani
6F8A14:? 6F8A14:?
700B88:Trombone 700B88: Trombone
7059DC:High Orchestra 7059DC: High Orchestra
70BD08:organ? 70BD08: organ?
70E3C4:Trumpet 70E3C4: Trumpet
715874:? 715 874:?
71BBF4:Orchestra 71BBF4: Orchestra
723788:hamonicash 723788: hamonicash
727B44:Organ 727B44: Organ
72D908:Flute 72D908: Flute
72AC9C:Flute 72AC9C: Flute
72B458:Flute 72B458: Flute
7302B0:? 7302B0:?
7367C0:? 7367C0:?
73CD20:trumpetish 73CD20: trumpetish
742FBC:Piano 742FBC: Piano
749AB0:? 749AB0:?
74F14C:Chorus 74F14C: Chorus
75EA18:French Horn 75EA18: French Horn
7604A4:Violin 7604A4: Violin
76BF4C:Hamonicash 76BF4C: Hamonicash
76F0C8:Flute short 76F0C8: Flute short
76FEDC:Viola 76FEDC: Viola
773F70:? 773F70:?
7ABD48:? 7ABD48:?
7D0C18:Guitar 7D0C18: Guitar
7DECB8:Xylophone 7DECB8: Xylophone
804A28:Chorch bell 804A28: Chorch bell
805FFC:? 805FFC:?
86A380:? 86A380:?
866290:Drum? 866290: Drum? 

This is probably incomplete, but I'm sure you have a reference list of the instruments available to you, right? If not, you can find one at the livedoor.fe_mars wiki, and other places.

http://wiki.livedoor.jp/fe_mars/

Edited June 10, 2011 by Celice

[Arch]

*Saves that info*

I don't think the MIDIs sound horrible, and I've got a lot of other work to do. I'll try my best to find time and tweak the instruments to get the songs to sound better. FE7if's MIDIs took a long time and a lot of work to get just right, which certainly isn't encouraging on my end.

Anyways, I've got some screenshots to share. Since I've sorta hit a dead end (Tale 7 is lacking graphics, and it's hard to force myself to work on a chapter without all the graphics in place, and I don't have a map for the second part of Tale 8), I went back to do some fine-tuning on Tale 2. Script improvements, the removal of the justice motif Raven =/= Batman, and various difficulty/party tweaks. The images also conveniently showcase new weapon/item icons: Elixir's replacement (by LordGlenn), the new Quick Axe (by Camtech), and Tonic (a super-Vulnerary).

Edited June 10, 2011 by Rodimus Supreme OVERTROLL

[Caliban of Sycorax]

Wyvern Knight!Heath? Pretty awesome. Is Vaida going to be reclassed too or is she going to stay a Wyvern Lord, for variety? or is she...

Also, is Raven's cloak darker than the last time? It looks darker.

New icons are also awesome.

[Book of Ereshkigal]

Am I crazy or are those FE8 style colors?

Or maybe it's been like that the whole time...

Edited June 11, 2011 by L95

[Nanami Touko]

It's been like that the entire time. Every mug in EN uses FE8-esque colors.

[Book of Ereshkigal]

I wonder how I didn't notice that :l

[Arch]

Heath is the game's only Wyvern Knight, otherwise they're just annoying enemies with that +15 crit boost.

And regarding the colors, Raven's cloak hasn't been changed. And yes, I've always used FE8 color.

[Caliban of Sycorax]

So since FE8 skills don't exist in FE7 without massive ASM work, you're giving the Wyvern Knights +15 Crit. That's pretty cool. Makes Heath more useable, but makes the enemies more annoying.

I guess it's me not having played in a while, the coat just looked darker.

[Anouleth]

You also changed the name of Vulneraries.

[Arch]

I also changed the amount of HP they heal (thus making them an improved, new version of the Vulnerary, A.K.A. the Tonic).

Edited June 11, 2011 by Rodimus Supreme OVERTROLL

[Caliban of Sycorax]

Will they be like FE10 Vulneraries now?

[Anouleth]

I also changed the amount of HP they heal (thus making them an improved, new version of the Vulnerary, A.K.A. the Tonic).

You could have called them Concoctions like in FE10.

[Celice]

Or he could have called them tonics.

who's drawing you these icons? they'z r spiffy

Edited June 11, 2011 by Celice

[Nanami Touko]

yeah I'm with Celice.

I see no need for him to name them after something from another FE game, instead of calling them something not FE.

[Blademaster!]

So are there now more than two healing items?

[Radiant Dragon]

I see no need for him to name them after something from another FE game, instead of calling them something not FE.

While there's no real reason to keep the name, the consistency would've been nice.

[BwdYeti]

> actual wyverns in Elibe

all of the rage

[Lord Glenn]

While there's no real reason to keep the name, the consistency would've been nice.

Consistency can't exist when the source and locale never had it to begin with. Plus, Concoctions healed 40 HP in Radiant Dawn. I doubt the Tonic is going to heal *that* much. IMHO, it would only serve to mislead the players into thinking that it healed that much in EN.