FF8 music patch?

[#Sen-chan#]

Okay well...it had been a long time since I last played my FF7 PC game, but I finally decided when I did to put in the Restoration Patch and the FF7Music patch. Let me tell you, it roxored my soxes (Or however you say it to sound cool :p). I showed my mother and she thought it was just awesome and it takes a lot to impress her.

However, her favorite game is FF8, rather than 7. I thought I'd look, but I didn't see any patch for FF8, that I did for FF7 that would replace the midi music to the mp3 that, for example, comes with the OST. Is there one and I'm just missing it or is there something that prevents this? I saw a few sound extractors, but nothing like what the FF7Music patch did.

[Cazador]

I'm Pretty Sure There Is No FF8 Music Patch.

But It's A Really Good Idea 

[Jari]

Sadly there is no mp3-instead-of-MIDI-patch for FFVIII - at least I'm not aware of such thing - but seeing that it was FF8 which got the whole music replacement business started, there are couple of soundfonts and DLS' for it.

Here.

They should sound better than the quite bland MIDI it comes with, anyway.

I believe that the DLS' are far more recent, and should be lot easier to get working - especially if you don't happen to have a Live or Audigy as your sound card.

[stormmedia]

Well I started a project that will makes the sound of the midi realy better.... however it's not finished yet.... and for the momant it takes a good computer to run it....

If you are interested here is the thread:
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=5553.0

But I released nothing for now I just made some samples

[#Sen-chan#]

Sadly there is no mp3-instead-of-MIDI-patch for FFVIII - at least I'm not aware of such thing - but seeing that it was FF8 which got the whole music replacement business started, there are couple of soundfonts and DLS' for it.

Here.

They should sound better than the quite bland MIDI it comes with, anyway.

I believe that the DLS' are far more recent, and should be lot easier to get working - especially if you don't happen to have a Live or Audigy as your sound card.

I used to have an Audigy 2 card, but neither Mom and I have that anymore when we got much better sound cards after Creative f***ed us over >< When my mom tried to update her drivers, it fried her speakers physically! And she loves the livin' crap out of those Monsoon speakers.

Anyway, thank you very much. I'm still unsure, however, which to download...

EDIT: Please give me instructions as to how to install these soundfonts? There was no readme in anything that I downloaded. Also, whenever I try to use any of the configurations, I get this error "Access violation at address 773012BA in module dmime.dll. Write address of 00000056". o.o I'm running Windows XP SP-1 and I just installed FFVIII (haven't even put in any patches, not that I think I need to. I don't think it's a problem with the video card at all...)

My sound card is  CHAINTECH AV-710 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card (Love this card to death, much better than the Audigy 2 IMHO).

[Jari]

Without a Creative card you probably want to use a DLS instead of soundfont.

I think that there are two ways of doing this... it's "only" been something like six years since I last touched FF8 - that's why I'm not sure at all.

Anyway, the Final Fantasy VIII Configurator claims to be able to manage soundfonts (probably DLS files as well) and the .sgt files (those would be the songs themselves in MIDI format).

And if that fails, it would seem that there are instructions for manual install on the FFSF page; check the right column. The part about DLS is under the heading "Windows 2000 and other soundcards".

I suppose that Samuel's DLS might be a good one to start with. Grab the big file (smaller ones are updates) and the SGT package (it has modified songs) as well. And then... eh... install.

Good luck.

Seriously though, I hope that someone with more recent experience might explain this bit better.


PS. As for that error... no idea what that is about, sorry.

[#Sen-chan#]

Without a Creative card you probably want to use a DLS instead of soundfont.

I think that there are two ways of doing this... it's "only" been something like six years since I last touched FF8 - that's why I'm not sure at all.

Anyway, the Final Fantasy VIII Configurator claims to be able to manage soundfonts (probably DLS files as well) and the .sgt files (those would be the songs themselves in MIDI format).

And if that fails, it would seem that there are instructions for manual install on the FFSF page; check the right column. The part about DLS is under the heading "Windows 2000 and other soundcards".

I suppose that Samuel's DLS might be a good one to start with. Grab the big file (smaller ones are updates) and the SGT package (it has modified songs) as well. And then... eh... install.

Good luck.

Seriously though, I hope that someone with more recent experience might explain this bit better.


PS. As for that error... no idea what that is about, sorry.

So if we don't have a creative card, we shouldn't mess with the soundfonts? Okay. I did find some "instructions" with the configurator, though that tends to give me trouble as well. However, the configurator won't load any of the DLS things.

I got Samuel's to install and all, that seems okay (My mom really liked the improved one on the FFSF page, but I have no idea how to make *that* work as I keep getting an error, even though it could be because I tried to patch the already patched Samuel's one...and it can't be the read only error since it wasn't read only).

I'm ignoring the error that I got for now, as I've got too much to do to worry about that (including a botched Christmas present for my sister). I wish I could get that orchestral version that I found on FFSF, since that is right up my alley, but since the configurator just won't load that, I don't know what to do.

On a side note, could someone PLEASE tell me how to exit FF8? >< It doesn't have a 'quit' option like ff7 does...and I do admit that I haven't actually PLAYED FF8 except once on the PC, since I'm more of a 7 girl, so I can't remember what key combination quits the game.

[Jari]

Alt+F4 should pound some sense into most Windows programs (read: shut them down).

I think that there was another combination too... ctrl+x? ctrl+q? Something like that, IIRC.

[#Sen-chan#]

Thank you. Okay, got the configurator to load DLS files, problem is...I have no idea if it's loading them o.o I'd really like to try this orchestral version, but I'm assuming that I can either use Samuel's or the orchestral, only one or the other?

Also, at least alt+f4 works

[phlim2]

i remember a long time ago that there was a patch for ff8 which uses the .minipsf files (playstation song rips) instead of midi, kinda similar to the FF7Music Patch... don't know where it was from though sorry

[Goku7]

(My mom really liked the improved one on the FFSF page, but I have no idea how to make *that* work as I keep getting an error, even though it could be because I tried to patch the already patched Samuel's one...and it can't be the read only error since it wasn't read only).

Are you refering to the "Improved Tracks" patch and "Revision2" DLS update?  *Is the creator of those two patches*

If so, then yeah....they're kinda a mess right now, and have been for a couple of years, unfortunately.  For some reason my version of WinRAR isn't making the .FFAddon correctly, making any new updates I create unrecognizable to our config program's "install" function.  That, and life has forced me to put it on the backburner for years now.  Furthermore, the Revision2 update is supposed to be applied to the original DLS file that the game's installer installed on your computer -- don't put it on Sam's DLS.

These days, I tend to recommend using Sam's stuff over mine, as the large majority of internet connections are now broadband, and a 45mb download isn't the multi-hour task it used to be back when I joined the project and made my patches -- the idea behind them being a compromise between sound quaility and download time.

Of course, I haven't stopped progress on my stuff completely -- in recent months I have been (slowly) working on making my choir version of Griever's Theme (from the "Improved Tracks" patch) compatible with Samuel's DLS, because while compositionally it sounds great, the relative lack of sound quality between the Rev2 DLS and Sam's DLS really holds it back.

[#Sen-chan#]

What I really wish is that orchestral version would work with Samuel's. That was my mother's favorite, but it only seems to update a few tracks, while Samuel's does the whole thing. In the end, even though I used the orchestral version for a while, I'd rather have a whole updated sound than just a few, even if I really liked them. So I ended up just going with Samuel's.

[stormmedia]

Well... it's not too hard to do .. I once did it ... basicaly the orchstral version of the song are intruments that the author of the patch pur in the DLS of ff8.  What you have to do is to find what instrument are used for the orchestral song and copy it in the Samuel's dls... then you have to change the mid files as well.... I don't have the time to do it for you right now but I'll tell you when I'm finished... or maybe you gonna do it before  ... but I'll try to do it the faster I can.