Please don't be harsh with me if I missed something in my attempts to find out if this question has been answered definitively in the past.
Has anyone developed, or worked on developing, or is currently working on anything similar to LSDJ for the NES/Famicom? There seem to be a lot of people who have the dream of hearing their music coming out of an actual NES, from an NES cart. The existence of LSDJ (and things like Cybertracker for c64) makes me surprised that there doesn't appear to be anything like it for the good old Family Computer.
Nullsleep's tutorial for putting your .nsf's on a cart, simple though it may be to the person who is comfortable with non-GUI's, is rather overwhelming to someone (like me) who has never had any experience with computer programming. I kind of look at it like how every person who plays guitar is not necessarily a luthier. Anyway: a Famicom-native tracker. Exists?
NerdTracker and Famitracker make NES playable music. There's no reason you can't put it on a cartridge and listen to it.
ppmck exists too and I fell in love for it's simplicity and flexibility not long ago.
There is no reason you can't put your song on a cart unless it uses a special mapper for additional sound, in which case you cart should run with the special mapper in question.
I've seen some nsf that uses FDS, MMC5, VRC7 and N106 chips at the same time. There is absolutely no way to hear them out of a real NES.
What I was trying to express initially is that the reason I wouldn't be able to do it myself is that the tutorials that exist for how to accomplish it might as well be in Thai. Just figuring out how to use a basic tracker was a challenge and a big accomplishment for me. As Nullsleep says in his tutorial, part of the joy of getting into NES stuff (and I guess anything, really) should be figuring it out for yourself to an extent. And I agree with that notion by and large (it's how I learned how to play guitar, among other things). But the thing is, it's not like I haven't tried, or wouldn't try. With some things, it's like I don't even know how to begin to try. I've never been the type of person who can just read about something and then be able to tackle it and nail it. I've always been a hands-on learner.
What I was trying to say with the guitar-luthier relationship is that no one expects all guitarists to be able to build their own guitars, and that's generally accepted and okay. I've been hoofing it up the learning curves for Famitracker and MML recently, and I've still got a long way to go at both things before I'm anything but a hack on either. I understand that I'm on the NES Development forum, and I thought it was a reasonable question about something that it seems reasonable to suppose should or could exist. The reasons I can't just throw my .nsf's on a cart myself are to me the same reasons I'd have to take my car to a mechanic if it had a problem, or go to a surgeon if I needed surgery. I already knew about PC trackers and MML, but that wasn't the question. Anyway, I guess this means the answer is "no."
Famitracker can make .PRG files, you can slap on a header and play it with a powerpak.
I just take a hex editor to the .PRG file, type in "NES" 1A 02 00 00 then more zeroes until the header is 16 bytes long. It plays in all emulators (except ancient versions of nesticle), so I have no doubt it would work on a powerpak.
I'm also surprised that nobody (besides Software Toolworks) has made a MIDI player for the NES.
Dwedit wrote:
It plays in all emulators (except ancient versions of nesticle), so I have no doubt it would work on a powerpak.
Does the resulting PRG allow you to select multiple tracks with the controller? If so, any files that use DPCM might have problems...
Dwedit wrote:
I'm also surprised that nobody (besides Software Toolworks) has made a MIDI player for the NES.
Probably because MIDI is a comparatively space-inefficient format compared to the tightly compressed music representations that commercial games and NT2 use. In addition, most extant MIDI files (other than those on vgmusic.com) aren't authored for anything like the NES; for instance, they use a lot more than three notes at once.
Prizmatic Spray wrote:
Anyway, I guess this means the answer is "no."
Hey, don't be sad!
http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=3880
After you play around with it you'll find the answer to your question is "kinda".
Enjoy!
I literally meant a MIDI player... Send the midi events through player 1's controller port, and if the user has a Miracle plugged in, they would hear the song.
Bregalad wrote:
I've seen some nsf that uses FDS, MMC5, VRC7 and N106 chips at the same time. There is absolutely no way to hear them out of a real NES.
Actually there is a way:
http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~tns/tnshfc2.html (but dunno if FDS works)
Interesting. Too bad it's all in japanese.
As it seems there is no actual MMC5, VRC7 or N106 on the board, I assume the sound is emulated by a FPGA anyway so it's not that much better than having it emulated on a PC.
It looks like there is a
separate version that allows you to plug in actual carts with the sound chips onboard. Pretty crazy!
Prizmatic Spray wrote:
Has anyone developed, or worked on developing, or is currently working on anything similar to LSDJ for the NES/Famicom?
Apart from quad's Famicom Music Sequencer and the sequencer from the Japanese game Dezaemon I know of no way to create music directly on the NES.
However, I do think this concept has a big appeal not just to me and started working on a LSDJ kind of tracker for the NES a few days ago which I'll eventually use to compose the soundtrack of the game project I'm working on. Don't expect any results too soon, though, if at all.
Ikinari Musician for Famicom
Family Composer for Famicom Disk System
[VGMUSEUM.COM: HOTLINKING IS NOT ALLOWED.]