How to create original music for Sonic 2?

I would like to put original music from an electronic keyboard into Sonic 2, but whenever it loads the result, all the sounds in the game go blank.


I have tried many programs, and failed many times. Could anybody assist me?


Thank you.

 

Uh, you said Sonic 2. Did you port the Sonic 1 sound driver first?

 

Yeah, as SOTI said, XM2SMPS converts it to Sonic 1 format, meaning you will have to either Port the Sonic 1 sound driver, or Convert the music file to Sonic 2 format first.

 

I attempted to use the pointer fixer, and it failed. Could somebody please link me to a tutorial with an example conversion done right.


Thanks again.

 

Okay, first off... You need to know that you can't just put different music on Sonic 2 easily like on Sonic 1.


Why? Well because the Sonic 2's music files are compressed... So, that's why before porting any music... You have to first port the Sonic 1 Sound Driver... You can also put new music without porting the Sonic 1 Sound Driver... But it's much harder in my opinion...


After you ported the driver then you can start putting your "original" music in your hack... Use MPT to edit and convert MIDI files into XMs.


Then use XM3SMPS or XM4SMPS to convert the XM to SMPS format... And that's pretty much it...


Also, MID2XM is a bit tricky to use... You have to really know what your doing if you use that program to convert MIDI into XMs...

 

If you want to add music for Sonic 2, you have three choices.


First of all, Sonic 2 Final and Beta uses the known SMPS Z80 sound driver format. Of course one aren't identical between the other. So:


1 - Make your song in the SMPS 68k format then convert it into the SMPS Z80 using the same way as the Sonic 3's. Swapping bytes and calculating for the header pointers so converting the coordination flags and etc, But some voices doesn't work in the same way as Sonic 1, so they will need to be converted for be listened perfectly. Don't forget to compress the song before put it in your Sonic 2 game.


2 - Make your song directly in the Z80 pointer format for Sonic 2. Of course that XM3SMPS and related tools will be not capable to write Z80 songs because the programs would be in need of know the location on the bank where the song is stored. So, this choice should be discarded if you don't know how to write Z80 songs from the scratch.


3 - Using the first proccedure i said for make your songs in SMPS 68k then converting the pointer values for the Z80 manually (or using the ErikJS's Music Pointer Fixer). Just for remember, you MUST convert the voices, and you MUST use songs smaller in size than the ones you have in your Sonic 2, otherwise the game music from your Sonic 2 will be completely crashed because the Sonic 2 Final's Sound Driver is Z80, it work with banks and absolute pointers.


Also, the best tool for convert MIDIs into XMs is OpenMPT (it means to Modplug Tracker). You can easily download it in the internet by search for it in Google. If you get broken/fucked up tempo in your songs, use Anvil Studio (or some MIDI editor) to reduce the tempo of it a bit before open it in OpenMPT.

 

I think that I am failing at something in there. I had a working, albeit large, xm file, and I converted it to a Sonic 1 SMPS, then ran the Pointer Fixer, then truncated the data to 1 kb. Where am I going wrong?

 

Personally, I would port the S1 sound driver over to Sonic 2 using this lovely little guide, like I mentioned earlier.


Unfortunately, I can't help you with what your doing wrong with the conversion, since I honestly CANNOT get my dyslexic mind around how that program works, (not to mention the fact I give up on stuff quite easily though) but, keep trying!

 

Thank you for your help.