Good music and sound effects are what can set your game apart from the others. NESmaker uses ggsound as its sound engine, which works quite nicely together with text files, exported via tools like Famitracker and Famistudio. There are a few caveats though; not everything Famitracker and Famistudio supports, is supported by ggsound in general, or NESmaker’s implementation specifically. Are you getting errors upon importing music or exporting the ROM file, or do things sound off after exporting? Here are some of the most common errors, and a way to help you fix them.
There are quite a few things to take in consideration when writing music for NESmaker projects. I could sum them all up here, but I would never be able to do a better job at it than CutterCross did on the NESmakers forum. If you want to know everything about this subject, please make sure to read this post and you’ll be up to speed in no time. Here’s a really quick and short summary for reference:
- Don’t use the volume or effect columns in the pattern editor, those are not supported by NESmaker’s implementation of ggsound. Use instrument envelopes instead.
- An exception is the Bxx effect, which only works if you convert your Famitracker txt file to asm outside of NESMaker.
- More notes take up more ROM space, so if you get “Value out of range” errors when exporting your ROM, please look into those.
- Make sure your sound effects end with a full note stop (preferably a silent instrument even), or they may have too much impact on the music.
- Don’t go overboard naming your songs and instruments: to be safe, use only letters, and make sure your sound effect track names start with sfx_.
- Don’t use DPCM samples unless you’re totally comfortable with modifying the NESmaker core.
- Really, just read the post mentioned above if you’re still having problems.
I would recommend using the ft_txt_to_asm converter found in the forum resources, as it has a better compatibility across NESmaker versions and supports more functions, like DPCM samples and the Bxx effect.
Can’t find what’s wrong?
I have written a small web application which can help you find what’s possibly wrong with your Famitracker txt file. It analyses its content, calculates its total file size and shows you what’s wrong or what may need some touching up. It doesn’t fix the file for you, but it does point you in the right direction by pointing out which track, pattern, instrument or note may need to be modified.Check out the FTM Checker and give it a try!