quote: C. Berry(sic), I didnt understand most of your retorts. But I dont like it when someone says something like:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Midis cant pan as well as Trackers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes they can.

Why say that? You didnt back it up and you cant. MIDI has one panning effect and MODs have 3.

Panning is panning; you can place the signal to the left of the stereo image, or to the right. If you''re lucky, you may be able to move it forward and backwards too. But that is it. Saying ''MOD has better panning than MIDI'' seems a bit vague because, unless somehow MOD''s do a doppler shift or perform a series of delayed attenuations to mimic diffuse reverberation, I''d say that MIDI can pan as well as MOD. In fact, I''d say better. With MIDI ( I''m thinking Logic here, but every sequencer worth its salt with have analagous features ) I can hand draw the panoramic envelope, don''t have to spend ten minutes entering explicit hex values. Which is easier to understand, a visual envelope, or a string of hex values?

quote: Trackers can indeed play any sound in the world; as can any sampler.

was that supposed to be a retort also? ur just repeating my point.

Repeating your point, and amending your incorrection. Don''t forget, MIDI != GM, and MIDI != SoundFonts.

quote: Sorry for being so blunt, but I think some people on this forum are exagerating and making up facts and I dont see why.

I don''t think they are. I don''t care enough about what anyone else uses to make up features and specifications. If you use MOD, fine. I''m willing to admit I know little about MOD''s, but I do know my audio and I have yet to see any significant advantage that would make me transpose my working environment over to MOD. With DLS, the only possible gain MOD had has effectively disappeared.

Thats ok, but I think its rather obvious that were talking about General MIDI here. No standard MIDI players work like those highend MIDI Keyboard Synths do. And no Games use MIDI in any other way besides the General MIDI standard specs which I am trying to argue, are very limited.
We are talking about MIDI vs MOD in regards to Games. Nothing Else. If u want to create an Mp3, u can use whatever u want. Use a microphone even. But that is not the subject.

quote: No standard MIDI players work like those highend MIDI Keyboard Synths do.

But they do. The General MIDI specs define that ( at the very least ) any consumer MIDI module will adhere to define ceratin parameter change, control and expressive parameters to allow all this. Granted, a £10 Soundblaster with onboard FM isn''t going to rival a Roland JV-5080 in terms of sheer sample quality, but the base functionality is the same.

quote: And no Games use MIDI in any other way besides the General MIDI standard specs which I am trying to argue, are very limited.

General MIDI is limited, but you are wrong in assuming that this is what people use for games. The standard way people use MIDI in a game soundtrack is to sequence the track using external synths / samplers. Black And White''s soundtrack? That is how that was done. Pretty much every composition on any Wip3out game? Sequenced under MIDI. Just because the final result isn''t a .mid file, doesn''t mean that the MIDI protocol isn''t used.

My arguments against MOD are as follows :
* Poor resolution
* Horrendous sequencing method ( ticks and hex *ugh* )
* Uses a lot of CPU for playback ( a moot point because any MOD can be mp3ed or ogged, but this removes ease of looping / jumping that the MOD format has )
* Only one or two parameters per channel
* Limited channels
* Limited instrument design
* Can''t use MOD to control any external musical equipment ( eg, with MIDI I can automate my mixing desk, use SysEx control of effects )

Advantages of MOD
* Free ( although you can get free MIDI sequencers and soft-synths )
* Always sounds the same on any system ( As does DLSised MIDI )
* Small size ( As are DLSised MIDI compositions )

I would like to hear / read more about that dls in midi. what does that do? Also can someone pls explain me the layering that you all talk so much about.

I have found some advantages in fruity loops, that has come up with some of your arguments.

- its very visual. no hex and so on.
- it lets you use mididevice for input.
- it is improved structure for patterns.

Things it doesnt:

-I dont know about much details in any format lol. So i dont know. In fact i feel though that some of the many features in mods arent included. Not all of midi either, but it doesnt matter. Im stuck sort of in the middle of this fight and its funny. Im just learning the prog.. and have allready found out that it has tons of features like midi and mod. Good musicdeveloping systems are nowadays easy to find. Some are cheap, some are expensive. Most of them are very good.

Im pretty sure i would use midi more if i had a decent keyboard or something like that. Notes in midis are a great benefit. I would also consider mod with its looping for a game. I think though that it would be easier to make several tunes to make audio in game more dynamical. Im not any expert but playing statical mp3 / ogg or something uses least resources, right? Try to tell the enginedevelopers and ai-designers that your state of the art dynamical wonder audiosystem for the gameworld takes 75% of the computers processingtime. It doesnt seem likely to work out.

In my experience the most compromises made in developing a game is made in audiocomplexity. Look for example the default values made in many games... Sounds rarely play any significant role. There might be many features, but they are left to wait for faster computers in the future. Well, just an opinion.

More of this naive fight over two formats...

Id like to hear your songs! Why the hell do you argue about which one is better when both formats have great masterpieces. I love music and i dont give a fuck about how its made. Play the toiletseat if it makes a great song. Music has been made for thousands of years and today the possibilities to make interesting sounding music playing alone is better than never. I will use my time trying to learn the use of as many techniques as possible. So far all my attempts to create decent music with computer have failed. Maybe i suck or maybe i havent tried hard enough, only time will tell (at least i know im very musical and can sing too ). But what i have found out is you cant blaim the instrument! It can be aguitar, drums, a keyboard or a tracker, the goodness of sound and music is up to you and your skills.

Im pretty sure that good skills in any format result in better composition that poor skills in any other even better format. So practise, make good music. Learn your device as well as you can before you blaim it for the bad music Trust me m8s i KNOW what im talking about, lol.

I have tried to do pieces with, mod, s3m, it, modplug, GM, fruityloops and have found out (so far) that for me the easiest way to start is with Fruity loops. Its visual and has many effects that help me make my crappysongs sound better. When i learn all of its features and understand better electronical music i decide what to do next. it can be many things and i dont have to stick with one format. I can combine them and use the best features in both or all of them. Jippii!! Long live the computer!

All the writers here have a point worth listening. I dont get angry if you cry for my text, or if you get angry. What does it matter? You are right, im right, right? So lets just talk about good features in the format we use. Lets try to find ways to go beyond the lack of features (most of the things that cant be done depend on the lack of imagination and skills) and use our time to make GOOD music to make the world a better place...

Thanks for reading this,
Xewren

P.S I would let you hear my music if i would have anything complete. My only finished audio piece can be heard in:

http://www.geocities.com/omatsivut/

It was made with cool edit (its a GREAT program too) alone for a game developer that never replied to me, maybe that tells something about it. Read more in the page... what did YOU think of it? HUH! This post got too big, hehe.

Urgh. here we go.

I have not found ANYTHING that Impulse Tracker can''t do (except maybe real-time effects like chorus etc. - but if you write it to individual WAVs and then mix those, this becomes an obsolete point) that I need it to do. and most of you are forgetting one of the huge advantages of MODs vs. wave-written MIDI of any description - FILESIZE. MODs can be tiny and still be great to listen to (although obviously for better quality, the filesize rockets).

Anyway, IT supports loads of MIDI commands, so WTF are you all moaning about? You can combine both formats (kind of) in IT.

Rant over.

Ugh, Im sorry, some people are refusing to stay on the subject.
I started out asking if there was some way to play Mod Files in games. (I know theres a way, now how is it done?) But no one wants to talk about that. They''d rather talk about how thier highend MIDI studios can make better or worse MP3s than the Mod Freeware. I DONT CARE, why are we stuck on this topic? Start a new forum about which makes better MP3s.
Someone made a comment that MIDI is better for games. I said no it wasnt. I am now sorry for saying that.
Everything I have mentioned up to this point I am trying to relate to the usability and efficiency of these formats in games. Others keep bringing up the fact that, hey , u can also modify the wavs in cool edit! Thats off the subject and Id like it to stop. Some of you (JAXX and CB) are confusing the hell out of us by talking about the MIDI potential of highend studios. I though you were talking about General MIDI. If your not, then say it.
If you dont want to talk about mods and mids in games and only about mp3s and keyboard synths(where the hell does that relate to games?) then by all means, start your own forum.

u know what? ur right,
Im going to include a gigpiano in my game.
I dont know why I didn think of this before.
Thx man