I wouldn't mind it to be a separate tool from FamiTracker, if only for purposes of getting instruments from various games. Couldn't hurt that bad for that purpose, I guess.
The SMW and Super Metroid hacking communities had this very same same issue when people broke the lockouts on hacked ROMs. To be honest though, that didn't cause too many problems within the community as they found it regulated itself, as far as thievery of intellectual property went. It actually made the community much more open about sharing ideas.
I can totally understand the concerns people have with others going out and lying about how they made an NSF even though they changed the instruments up, but those tend to be isolated cases. If anything, they're inconsequential to the community as a whole as it primarily happens outside the community. Plus most of those guys are just untalented bums who probably won't get very far anyway.
Also, as someone going through the learning process myself, the ability to look at a decompiled NSF would be amazingly helpful. I've pretty much been grabbing FTMs from others to get a taste of instruments and such. The ability to decompile a whole NSF from a game or composition and view it in Famitracker would certainly be just as helpful.
I know I'm more or less a noob, but eh, figured I'd just throw my two cents out there...
It was just a demonstration of how converted files would look like, I never intended to make a converter available.
Dave wrote:
i lost my FTM for one of my songs in a hard drive crash. i'd love to get it back with this. since it was made in famitracker does that mean everything including original speed, number of frames, instruments etc. would be preserved? i had considered that impossible.
Yeah everything is in the NSF (patterns, instruments etc) and is possible to turn back into the original FTM, only things missing are instrument names and stuff not needed for playback. You can send me the file if you want it converted back.
Another thing I also forgot about; what if someone were to try & import an NSF that uses features that are unsupported in FamiTracker (like the N106 expansion chip or Action 52's PCM)?
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You can send me the file if you want it converted back.
So could you maybe provide a zip file or something full of FTMs of licensed NSF files, since they're not user NSFs? Or can we make requests for games to be converted and eat away more of your time that could almost definitely be better spent developing Famitracker?
If NSF's can already be broken down and recreated manually I really don't see the harm.
This would be incredibly useful for mimicking instrumentation, and figuring out tricks that NES composers used to get the sound they got.
I don't really see how privacy could be an issue, isn't putting an NSF just as insecure as putting out an FTM if all of the instrument data can be accessed?
I say if composers are that worried about people modifying/stealing their work, they should just put out an MP3 or something.
JSR, having a program like this would be revolutionary. You couldn't possibly say you wouldn't wonder what awesome things people would create with a tool like this!
I don't really see how privacy could be an issue, isn't putting an NSF just as insecure as putting out an FTM if all of the instrument data can be accessed?
I say if composers are that worried about people modifying/stealing their work, they should just put out an MP3 or something.
if this was day 1 of famitracker then yeah there'd be no real security concern because everyone would be informed and could accept that NSF comes with the same insecurities as FTMs. however the fact is famitracker has been around for half a decade and the rest, and in that time hundreds of people have released NSFs ~ many of which have done so in the knowledge they couldn't be converted back into more-or-less the original FTMs. so of course from here on people can make an informed decision about whether or not to release an NSF, but it sucks for people who have already released NSFs and didn't want their songs open source (and didn't realise.) i'm still for it but yeah, i have sympathy for people who are worried about this. still, developments like this happen all the time... i bet a lot of the people composing for and creating licensed videogames didn't expect fans to reverse engineer them to get music rips with sequence data preserved.
I think that, in that case, the artists need to tell us they want their sources to be private, and we should respect their wishes. I, for one, promise never to reverse-engineer a song if the author doesn't want me too.
It's like if you make a tracked file (xm, mod, it, s3m). You are releasing the source in that case, just like releasing an FTM. If you really want your track to be fully "closed source" you'll just release an MP3.. and even then someone can recreate it :P It's been said already, but this just simplifies what people do in NSFPlug/NSFPlay already.
But yeah; it's much easier to import FamiTracker-made NSFs because they all follow the same compilation method, whereas other NSFs wouldn't be as easy to import.
it doesn't matter what engine it was made with. blah blah
Actually I guess it does, I didn't realize FT saved so much info in its NSFs :X
I think that, in that case, the artists need to tell us they want their sources to be private, and we should respect their wishes. I, for one, promise never to reverse-engineer a song if the author doesn't want me too.
heh right, but it's not like they can hope for better than that anyway.
to be honest the people concerned about their songs being open-source are a minority. i have to admit that historically i haven't liked to share around FTMs haphazardly, but it isn't a big deal.
Furthermore, you can still reverse-engineer an NSF using the same tools to reverse-engineer any NES ROM down to its ASM code. Thus the futility in compiling NSFs as a form of "secure" file distribution. You might as well do like Mex & Rushjet1 said; make your own MP3s.
Rushjet1 wrote:
Rushjet1 wrote:
TechEmporium wrote:
But yeah; it's much easier to import FamiTracker-made NSFs because they all follow the same compilation method, whereas other NSFs wouldn't be as easy to import.
it doesn't matter what engine it was made with. blah blah
Actually I guess it does, I didn't realize FT saved so much info in its NSFs :X
Well, it's not that FamiTracker stores extra information inside the NSF or NES ROM; it's just that each tracker command & setting is associated to a particular opcode & operand when you compile your songs. This makes the job of reversing FamiTracker-made NSFs more simple because they'd all follow the same general coding pattern.
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