FF8 mod a la FF7Music?

[modoman]

I'm curious: would hammering together a PSF-based tool similar to FF7Music be at all feasible for FF8?  The qualitative difference between PSF and traditional MIDI reproduction with soundfonts was tremendous for FF7; I can't imagine that it would be any less amazing with FF8.  Do the weird characteristics of some of the FF8 music scripts (custom parade voices, etc.) make such a task unapproachable?

BTW, a (possibly superfluous) "thank you" to Ficedula, Neill Cortlett, and anyone else responsible for making FF7PC more enjoyable with FF7Music!

[Aaron]

That would probably be possible, though it might be pretty hard to get anyone to actually start working on it ...

Anyway, FF8 uses a DLS file to begin with (kind of like a "software-based" soundfont solution), so changing instrument sounds is not very hard (even with the voices, etc. in some songs).  In FF7, you could only do this if you had a sound card that supports soundfonts, or by changing the music to something other than MIDI via FF7Music.  You should check out Samuel Slight's FF8 DLS here, if you haven't yet -- It may not sound exactly like the PlayStation version, but it sounds pretty nice.

[modoman]

Hmm.  Too bad about the lack of interest.  It seems like a lot of the grunt work ought to already be out of the way with FF7Music out and stable.  I'm using Sam's DLS and replacement .sgt's already, and they ARE an improvement over the default.  However, ffsf doesn't even list the old FF7 soundfonts that I used once upon a time now that FF7Music is out, which highlights the improvement that FF7Music offered over soundfonts.

*wishes he'd picked up some coding experience back when he had more free time -- CURSE summer classes!*

Ah well...guess I can't help it if FF8 didn't become terribly popular.  Too bad.  I'd rather mess around with FF8's endgame than FF7's...Tally up one vote for a soundcard-independent FF8 music modification, wouldja?  

[Aaron]

However, ffsf doesn't even list the old FF7 soundfonts that I used once upon a time now that FF7Music is out, which highlights the improvement that FF7Music offered over soundfonts.

Actually, I'm the one who's pretty much in charge of what's listed on FFSF at the moment...  There actually were never any FF7 soundfonts listed, I added the FF7 section when we decided to put together a FF7Music + HE "package" for using the PSFs with FF7PC (FF7Music has actually been around a bit longer than PSFs... the best choice before that was to use MP3s) -- you can see that the announcement is one of the more recent news posts.  I meant to add more FF7 soundfonts, but... just never got around to it.

[modoman]

I wonder what page I went to to find a soundfont for FF7 back around 2001 or 2002.  I thought it was FFSF, but I must have been mistaken.  My bad.  I DO distinctly remember messing with a FF7 soundfont before FF7Music was around, though...

[bulk_4me]

Any chance you can open-source the FF7 -> Winamp Module or provide more information on how to perform this, I am interested on porting this to Windows Media Player.