For clymax’s projects, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube or Twitter.
Future Teams
We are continually on the lookout for contributors to form new teams to take on translation or modding projects for Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, SaGa, and other games. See the linked post for some examples.
Covering respinners, as opposed to repatchers, for the Reddit community.
Respinners are internal, as opposed to external, randomizers for video games.
This is in a world where the vast majority of randomizers are repatchers and not respinners, which can make it very difficult to find respinners to play.
Coverage to include showcases direct from the respinner scene.
I always thought the Zozo background music (Slam Shuffle) would be a perfect fit for the desert town
Ashura’s Tower and the fight with Ashura always had me wanting the Saga 1 tower and boss themes
A Haniwa’s Contingency: I loved this mod, and it was the first time I really felt like the game HAD to have extra music. The sprites from other games had me wishing it had the battle themes from the other games.
I also felt like the final area would be so good with Xagor’s Lair music from Final Fantasy Legend 3.
Gathering Information
The itch was there, but I honestly did not have the slightest clue where to begin. So I asked on the FFL2 gamefaqs board. Although I received a great answer from Tehtmi, I was a bit out of my depth.
It was clear I needed to learn more about disassemblies as well as how gameboy handles music. So I set out to create my own disassembly of Saga 2, which was garbage. I also played with Saga2Edit (made by Tehtmi) and used that disassembly to learn more about how the audio engine worked.
I checked out other disassemblies for project such as Pokemon and Link’s Awakening. I was able to learn a bit, but I still didn’t feel any closer to being able to bring in any new music. The big break through was when I discovered the Embers of Mana mod and linked up with the Mystic Editor team.
Getting Somewhere
Breakthroughs
I cannot overstate what a break through it was discovering the Embers of Mana mod. This was huge for a few different reasons
It has a completely custom sound track, so it was clear they knew the audio engine. Embers of Mana Soundtrack
It has almost the exact same audio engine as Final Fantasy Adventure. It even has a tool to extract the music from Saga 2, seen here
It is very well documented with how to use the audio engine, what notes it can play, and even has maps of how sound waves are effected
Getting My Feet Wet
Now that I had a way to create music, it was time to get to work
Typing out every note by hand was not for me, so I created a script to convert sheet music to mml for the Mystic Editor. If I have decent sheet music, I can export it as xml from Muse Score, then run my script to convert it to xml
I discovered Musescore can actually generate very good sheet music from a well made midi. Midis are lists of notes and lengths, so there really isn’t anything up to interpretation
Now I have a way to take any well made midi and get the notes into the sound engine. Although at this point I have no clue how to work with the instrument settings as evidenced by this old Chai Kingdom version
I kept learning how things worked, as well as what dutycycle, vibrato, and volume envelopes were. I was slowly getting better. I spent quite a bit of time on the Magus boss theme, and eventually got it to a decent place
But that still didn’t feel good enough. I kept having to ditch the drums for every song, and it was really bugging me Luckily for me, the Mystic Editor guys came through again. I noticed an old post where one of them just casually tossed the Saga 3 engine into Final Fantasy Adventure.
After a couple weeks, switching from wla-dx to rbgdis, and a lot of swearing, I was finally able to get it in
In addition to bringing in the new engine, I also discovered that the sound effects from Saga 2 and FF Adventure all appear to work perfectly in the Saga 3 engine. So now I have drums and a much larger sound library. Now it is time to start creating some real music
Creating Real Music
Learning the Engine
Now that I had my engine, it was time to start creating something actually decent. I was able to make a decent version of some stuff, but I was still having issues making the track as good as I would like
I was finally able to get my Desert Town theme into the game
This version of Mount Sabre from Crystalis sounds weak, because I tried using vibrato to imitate multiple instruments, which didn’t work
I was also running into issues with certain tracks being too harsh at a high pitch.
Updating the Engine
I started trying to understand how vibrato, volume envelope, and the wave tables really worked. I tried making a few different settings of my own along with lower volume variations for backup instruments.
I still don’t completely get how to make my own instrument settings, but I’ve been able to trial and error my way into making some decent ones.
I was able to use my new volume envelope settings along with what I learned to more effectively layer instruments
I added my own vibrato setting that has a more intense quiver to try and make the jaw harp sound in Shadow’s Theme.
I was able to somewhat imitate a cuica. The key was changing the dutycycle from $00 to $80 and going down an octave for the second note.
I also experimented with other volume envelopes for drums as well as using channel 1 to add a thud and echo for snares
Improving the Tunes
With some more experience, I’m now able to make better music. Some of these are still works in progress, but I’m definitely able to add music I wasn’t before
I was able to get Lonely Town from Soul Blazer sounding pretty clean despite having the violin and flute playing at the same time
I was able to make the Final Fantasy town music sound (at least imo) better than it sounds on the NES by having it sound like actual instruments
After learning more about how the drums work, I’m finally able to attempt adding some tracks from what I consider the best sound track on the entire gameboy
Where to Proceed
Shifting Goals
The original idea was simply to get the music from Final Fantasy 1 and 3 into the game. Once I discovered I could add my own tracks, it grew from there into becoming the Saga 2 Jukebox Mod.
But with the sheer amount of music from the games along with the custom tracks, it felt like a complete music overhaul was in order. At this point, I have
Honestly, the real end goal is to have an engine people will want to use for mods and other projects that has an extensive library of all kinds of music, and is most of all easy to create music for. I’ll be sharing my work along with videos and other documentation on how to make music for it in the future. I also plan to
Have an mml format that is more readable than the note macros in the assembly
have presets for different instruments like flute, violin, harp, etc that will set vibrato, dutycycle, volume envelope, and wave table
Update my script for converting sheet music so people can use it to get their own music into the engine
Update my melody tester so you can easily cycle through preset instruments with a melody to see how they sound
