Music Implementation: Some/all tracks lagging (FE Builder)

[DarkDruid7]

New to these forums and to FE hacking or any hacking for that matter. It’s funny how I used to do some sprite recoloring and portrait edits for projects some 20 years ago when I was a teen, and now there’s all these tools available now. If anyone is old enough to remember the Nsider forums and General_Banzai’s Brainchild project, I was involved in that. In the end, I don’t think it went anywhere though, even though we were fairly organized with our own forums, teams, and everything.

Anyway, that’s enough of me being nostalgic. I have a music question for you guys regarding implementation. Bear with my lack of technical understanding as I am a musician first, and a game maker second.

I’m having trouble with some tracks in my MIDI files lagging behind other tracks when implemented in the game. I use the sound room for playback. I know there are other ways, but the sound room works for me right now.

I followed XPGamesNL’s tutorial on Youtube and searched some of the older posts here and wasn’t really able to find my answer. Midifix4agb is used by FE Builder GBA now and not Mid2agb or Midi2agb.

I have all the necessary patches downloaded, this is according to what is said is needed in the tutorial. I’ve got NIMap2, drumfix, etc.

When I go to import a midi file, the default is shows a checkbox for Midifix4agb. There are two more checkboxes (unchecked) for trimming.

Then there is a tab called “Old option,” and there are a few unchecked boxes. I suppose I haven’t tried all of them. I’ll probably do that again after typing this post.

There is another tab toward the bottom that you can click, and it seems it’s for mid2agb. There is some text that reads:

“mid2agb is not set.
Please set mid2agb’s path from the Options screen.”

Also, I have the reverb for everything set to 94 and priority set to A. Vol levels are all fine. And I think that’s about all I can think of.

Are there any music implementation experts here who can help with this?

Before asking, make sure to search! Press the in the upper right to search.

• Hacking method:

• Base Game:

• Steps to reproduce:

[SaltySoul]

My immediate thoughts are that there’s either an issue with how the MIDI is formed, or some issue with how FEBuilder is importing the MIDI. I have not used FEBuilder’s MIDI import functionality as I am already used to a workflow of MIDI editor → Mid2Agb → Sappy. It’s worth noting that midfix4agb is not intended to replace Mid2Agb or midi2agb, it’s for post-processing MIDI files so they (ideally) sound nicer when inserted. If you do not have Mid2Agb or midi2agb set up, perhaps FEBuilder is using some less than ideal fallback.

Obtain one of those two programs and set it up within FEBuilder, and see if that fixes the issue. midi2agb is an open-source reimplementation of Mid2Agb, and can be found at https://github.com/ipatix/midi2agb.

If that doesn’t fix the issue, you could try replicating my workflow by using midi2agb to create a .s file and importing it into the game with Sappy. If that doesn’t work, please send an example MIDI with the issue and I’ll investigate. If something was unclear, let me know.

[DarkDruid7]

I have midi2agb, but I don’t know how to use it. There’s no .exe file. The readme doesn’t say much either.

Link to Midi2agb screenshot on my desktop h ttps://imgur.com/a/QsRU4Pj

Edit: Well, I’ve been able to acquire Mid2Agb. Let’s see if I can do something with it.

Edit2: It seems by using Mid2Agb (by dragging midi file onto the .exe app) my tune sounds a little nicer when I upload it. Still some issues with some lag. Trying to work out what the cause of it may be.

Edit3: I feel like Mid2Agb should work directly with FE Builder. With the message showing, “mid2agb is not set. Please set mid2agb’s path from the Options screen," it would seem that there should be a checkbox in the option tab when uploading for mid2agb in addition to the default midifix4agb. Do I have to have the program files/folder for Mid2Agb moved to someplace in a FE Builder folder so that the option appears in FE Builder?

[File2ish]

It looks like you downloaded the master rather than the actual mid2agb file.

On the github click the v.0.1.9 under releases then download the zip folder. The exe is in there, unzip to whatever directory makes sense to you.

From there go to settings in FEBuilder and point it to that exe file directly. With the exe referenced you’ll get the mid2agb option when importing midis. When the directory for mid2agb is set you’ll get a tab saying “Import with mid2agb” on that bottom section.

[DarkDruid7]

Brilliant! This seemed to do the trick. It’s just as you said–I downloaded to source code instead of the application package. I then set the path in settings and now everything sounds much nicer. Just need to do the fine tuning now. Thanks a bunch.