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[HelixNRG]

Hi all,

You'll learn a fair bit about me regarding my follow plea for help 

I'm hoping someone might be able to set me straight on this issue I'm having with the MOD format.

Is there a way of 'downgrading' or converting MODs (and I don't mean OctaMED, ScreamTraker, XM, etc.) to the earliest MOD formats in existence, i.e. ProTracker , NoiseTracker, etc., trackers released before July 1992?

The reason I ask is this:

I'm wanting to convert some MODs I've found to the Apple IIGS, and more specifically, to the Apple IIGS's SoundSmith format, which was a tracker that made the most of the Apple IIGS's sound hardware.

The IIGS can play MODs quite well, but it requires a fair chunk of it's limited processor for playback, which is not so ideal for a IIGS platform game, as the IIGS doesn't feature any of the graphics hardware that the Amiga has to push sprites and backgrounds.

SoundSmith tracks, on the other hand, only require 1-2% of processor time for playback, but can only include 64k of instrument data. Apart from the low processing required for playback, the other benefit of SoundSmith is that instead of being limited to 4 tracks, you can use up to 15 tracks concurrently, which leaves plenty of space for sound effects to trigger at the same time music continues to play.

There are a couple of IIGS utilities written in the early 90s that convert MODs to SoundSmith, but of course being from that time, the utility doesn't know how to deal with MODs created with newer trackers other than ProTracker, NoiseTracker, etc.

Using these conversion programs hasn't yielded terrific results - while the notes convert, the instruments haven't (which they should, according these utilities'  documentation).

So, is there some utility to convert or 'downgrade' more recent MODs to their earlier formats? I don't mind if a lot of the effects, for example pitch-bend, are lost. I know the convert utilities DO work on the IIGS, because I used it back in 1993-94 to convert a whole bunch of MODs to SoundSmith for another game that never got finished! Those MODs were written on a PC...the name of the tracker I can't remember, unfortunately.

Any help greatly appreciated.

- Alex

[barryvan]

Welcome to the forums, Alex!

Re: your problem, it could be as simple as ensuring that all of the samples are 8bit mono waveforms. If they're stereo or 16bit, the utilities you're using might be choking on them.

You can enforce this in OpenMPT by right-clicking on the waveform data and selecting "convert to 8bit" (or something similar -- I don't have OpenMPT here at work, and I haven't worked with samples for a few years. )

[Saga Musix]

barryvan, as far as I get it this is not about converting anything to MOD (also, modplug would convert the samples by itself, as the format simply does not allow anything but 8-Bit samples), but to revert to a earlier MOD format. To know if we can help, it would be useful to see the MOD that actually doesn't load, because it might be in FLT8 or whatever format instead of M.K. - which is the latest format that ProTracker can load if I'm not mistaken.

Anyway, welcome to the boards!

[barryvan]

Yeah, I get that Jojo -- I figured that maybe the mods were 'modernised' versions, with fancy sample data.