Manually tracking music is a pain. Manually porting music is a pain. Programs make both these tasks just as easy, assuming you know what you're doing. And if you know what you're doing, you'll get equally favorable results whether you port or you import. The point is, you're still taking music from other source—whether it be other SMPS games, an XM file, or maybe even a Cube game. This is why it's only fair to base the awards solely on how well the music fits the levels. How the music gets in the game shouldn't matter—I could have a badass Scrap Brain remix playing in Green Hill Zone, and it could be the best sounding Genesis song ever, but what good is that if it doesn't even fit the level well?
I find it quite theraputic actually, and very satisfying when it's done perfectly to your own liking. and the game in general, tbh. Conflicting music bugs me, usually. :x
Yes, the Puyo Puyo exercise mode song gets old relatively quickly. I would expect to see it about as frequently as Green Grove is ported to Green Hill.
This is where I agree with ICEknight... and I think you misunderstood what I was saying earlier, Tweaker (probably because I wrote the post in the five minutes before history class started). Ripping off was a harsh way to put it. I believe that it is VERY important for level music to match the level... but if I have a song that's composed from scratch or a song that's ported and they fit the level equally well then I'm going to go for the music that was originally composed. It's not until you try and write your own music that you realize just how much blood, sweat, and tears goes into composing original music over simply porting new stuff in there. Like you said, anyone can port music these days with fantastic utilities on hand. I still want to give a fair shot to people that know how to match music to levels and those that create their own music and know how to match it to levels. It's not fair to let what I know is a heavy personal bias (and honestly a fairly arrogant and elitist view) get in the way of me being able to judge this contest fairly. I've always tried very hard to be fair with these and unless I get another judge that can balance out my bias then I'm probably keeping it as two trophies.
You see, but there's a thin line here. What if I take a MIDI, of, say, a Master System song, and improve it to bring it up to what's expected of a Genesis song, adding more instruments and whatnot, and then import that. Where would it fit then?
...but it's not original. Your context cannot be clearly defined, and, as a result, I find it completely retarded to split up the trophies. Please merge them back.
Ugh. I had done a giantass edit of my previous post a few hours ago and for whatever reason, it got lost. So let's start all over again: Most of the points I've seen in this thread done by ICEKnight revolve around the idea that porting a MIDI to a Genesis song is "easy" and "anyone can do it". To this I ask: O RLY? Case in point: Exibit A and Exibit B Exibit A is the import of Bomb Jack in Sonineko, while Exibit B is the import of the same song for the Nekomix soundtrack in Sonic 1 Remastered. They were imported from the exact same MIDI. As you can see, though they are recognizably the same song, they sound extremely different. This proves that MIDI importing is not an "exact" thing that can be done in 5 minutes, as some people here seem to think. Don't believe me yet? Fine then. In that case, I dare you to take this MIDI, import it, and end up with something that sounds like this "in 5 minutes". Also, back on the ported vs original debate, yet another case pops into mind: What if a ported SMPS song is edited to sound differently (e.g. this)? While you might immediately answer "ported" or "original", other people will likely have a differing opinion on the subject. This not-well-defineable line is the main reason why the separation of the two prizes is, imo, retarded. tldr; The two different music prizes are a stupid idea, plz to be merging them.
not original is taking something from another game and putting it into the hack unmodified.. such as taking hpz song from final sonic 2 and putting it in the beta or whatnot. Since it seems to be more popular for me to merge them I'll do that.. but let it be known I warned all of you =P
I don't care about rating original music higher up on the scale if it's good--that's worthy of extra praise. But if you rate an original song higher just because it's original, then, eh...
Here's the question I had...again. How exactly would you be able to tell what's original and what's ported?
I rate it based on what music fits whatever level best.. don't concern yourselves over it. I was just saying I might have bias towards anything I can tell is original and anything I can tell isn't. It's not an issue that has shown up before and I doubt it will this time.
What about a composition trophy, something for 100% original music, not a song in the charts, but something you've written yourself? It's something I'm working on myself, but I would most likely not bother with the hacking contest anyway =P I'm just thinking about people who might want to.
That's what the trophy I got rid of was for =P The majority seems asshurt about the idea that porting music from different games, porting different sound engines, etc. could have a different trophy than something that a person has originally composed. Personally it reminds me of rave djs acting like they make the music while the composers stay in obscurity. Both take talent.. one shouldn't be promoted over the other. I can't pick out different arrangements of known songs; however, so we'll see what happens. This only makes things more competitive, right? =P
What if I, by some unknown means (I'm guessing magic), manage to port a song from a NES game to a MIDI. Not re-sequence, as in make it from scratch, but convert it directly into MIDI from the sound data (as in an NSF)... and then make it into an XM file, import it into XM3SMPS, and finally end up with some nice music. Is that a port, or an original? And what if you also edited the XM file a bit, to change the notes and looping? Does that change anything? And no, I'm not thinking of submitting my hack. Well, not yet. But still, I have converted some NES (and soon even SNES!?) music for it, and they don't sound very NES-like (nor much like the original songs, hehe).
