Disclaimer : I do not know much about technical stuff about consoles so please inform me then laugh at me if I said anything horribly wrong or stupid..... I see a lot of ROM hacks in which music from other games into their ROM hacks. For example stuff like this : Or this ROMhack which used ripped music from other NES games like Challenger : So my question is something like this : Is there some sort of NSF player that can play NSF file but then somehow change the music chip it plays back to? (Say make Megaman 2 music use Castlevania 3 instruments.) Kinda like this : Hope someone gets my question..... >.<
Actually, I do get what you're saying. You want soundfonts. (At least, that's what I've heard them called.) Here is a video of OOT music played using WW sounds. You are looking for something like that, right? Try contacting the person who uploaded the video. There's also this guy: https://twitter.com/ne_austin That's the twitter account where I found the link the the above video. He might know something, too.
Rom hacks where one game uses another games music are a bit more tricky, but if all you want to do is play the music using different instruments then it's certainly doable. First of all, you need a program that allows you to edit the MIDI files extracted from the game. I know "Fruity Loops" works, but I don't know of any others offhand. Then you need to obtain the MIDI files from the game of your choice. To do this you'll need to download a program for each system you're trying to rip a game from. NES: Use NSF to MIDI. Not 100% perfect, but unless you want to transcribe the song by hand, it's as good as you'll get. Genesis/Mega Drive: Use VGM2MID. Seems to be a near perfect conversion from what I could tell. SNES: Use VGMTrans. Not all games are compatible but most of the big name titles are. SPC to MIDI can convert basically any SPC file to midi, but the conversion is lackluster and it seems to have issues when importing to Fruity Loops. N64: Use N64Miditool. A very high number of N64 game are compatible. PS1: Use VGMTrans. This one is a bit more complicated. If the game uses streamed music, it's definitely not going to work. Even if it uses sequenced music, finding it can be a real pain. Sometimes they're simply located in one of the folders in the ISO, other times it could be encrypted and compressed inside another file. I know Crash Bandicoot works, but I don't remember any others. GBA: Use GBAMusRiper. Needs Java and has no GUI, but it's pretty simple if you've ever used a command prompt. Conversions sound near perfect from what I can tell and it also creates a soundfont to go along with the game. Once you have the MIDI file you want, open it using the program of your choice. As for the instruments, that's up to you. You can google "(Name of game) Soundfont" and use sounds from that particular game, find a soundfont that emulates sounds from 8-bit or 16-bit consoles in general, or you could use a completely different soundfont altogether. Sorry if I made it seem complicated. It's fairly straightforward once you start to get familiar with it. If I am not mistaken, you can import NSF and MIDI files into FamiTracker, which is probably what that person did. Once imported, you should be able to change the instruments to make it sound like a different game. He likely used MIDIs converted from extracted ZSEQ files from OoT in combination with the WW soundfont he created. You can read about the MIDI extraction here: http://www.hcs64.com/mboard/forum.php?showthread=39165&showpage=0 If you don't feel like searching through all the posts, you can get the converted MIDIs here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mb6ksh13riqbs65/oot.7z?dl=0 and https://www.dropbox.com/s/j2oms5kjxrj9upb/missing oot midis.7z?dl=0
Fun weird fact, and a horrible, horrible topic derail, I learned about MIDIs in my old 6th grade music class, and got to make simple ones back on those old school Apple computers. Yea, I know I'm young. Still, it instilled a great appreciation for electronic music formats before the whole MP3 blitzkreig and the format becoming known to the general public, and I love hearing the MIDI sounds. Now back to your regularly scheduled topic: God damn I love MIDI music.
