Mario Paint Composer Limitations

[ripx]

How do you feel about the design and limits imposed by the Mario Paint Composer? Do you wish you could load in a new soundfont easily? Have more keys? Add arpeggio or chords automatically? or do you love it just the way it is?

[GuitarMaster72]

Tempo gaps, 5 notes per bar, and no warning about saving over old files are currently its biggest problems.... BUT

RehdBlob, a veteran member, is currently working on a new Mario Paint Composer which will hopefully solve almost all its problems, and MORE!

[RehdBlob]

There exists Advanced Mario Sequencer, which FordPrefect has unfortunately put down from active development. I'm currently working on Super Mario Paint, though I am also currently getting kind of hammered by classes, midterms, and projects.

[ripx]

Well, I'm currently working on my own simple sequencer for iOS, Android, desktop and the web. It is built on the Adobe Air/Flash framework which is a good cross platform solution. I've already created a dynamic sound library with optimizations for mobile devices and included a lot of attention to audio synchronization. It is being designed to use the same file format as Mario Composer meaning that your songs will already play in it.

Now would be a great time to get feedback about what I can do to create an app that gives the same simplicity and cute feeling of Mario Composer whilst finally polishing it for peoples everyday use whilst making it accessible on multiple devices.

My plan is to use this tool myself to create audio for my other games so you can be assured that support will be ongoing.

[ripx]

I'm really hoping to make something that you guys like because i'm actually super excited to see what you could make with it.

[RehdBlob]

I've made provisions for Super Mario Paint to open MPC files, AMS files, and possibly other things.

I've also been making Super Mario Paint in Java for the cross-platform reasons, and I had figured out the soundfont support.

You've obviously got at least 8 years of programming experience on me, and given that you seem to have more time to actually work on this thing, you'll probably finish before I do...
...

[ripx]

Hi RehdBlob,

Soundfont support in Air/Flash is possible yet challenging (There are even libraries that I have tried and tested working), the challenges faced are mostly in terms of cross platform support due to the CPU consumption of sampling the data on-the-fly. For this reason, I'm favoring a different structure for soundfonts, yet converting pre-existing soundfonts to adhere to the new structure (I'll probably create a batch tool that can perform this process automatically). Soundfonts are an obvious ideal though of course, so I'm very interested to so what happens with your project, I love this stuff, it's a breath of fresh air from programming games and nostalgic as hell since I remember spending an entire childhood playing Mario Paint when I was a kid (in between fzero, starfox, top gear, super soccer and pilot wings of course lol) I loved it!!!

[ripx]

OK, so, I've pretty much started by making a twinkling sound myself from scratch in Audacity. It's an octave higher than the original star sound with a little bit more reverb and phase effect but I'm working with notes which obviously brings me to the topic of range.

I notice that there is a difference between the number of notes available in Advanced Mario Sequencer and The Mario Paint Composer. Can anyone tell me if this makes a significant difference?

[Mr. Sub]

Personally I think the limitations of MPC form a lot of the character of compositions in the program, and I like that. However, I do sometimes find the limited range, glitches, tempo gaps and 5 note limit irritating.

[shinyjiggly]

If you plan on fixing the limitations, make sure that you also implement a way for the user to be able to impose their own togglable limitations (just in case they want to work within some arbitrary limits but don't want to accidentally break them for some reason) on a per song basis. These limitations can be polyphony levels, max speed, note range, which instruments can be used, and other similar limitations.

There could also be preset limit sets for each of the main versions of Mario paint ( Super Nintendo MP limits, MPC v1 limits, MPC v2 limits, MP Sequencer trio limits, etc) and maybe even other limit sets like "Animals only", NES limits (can only use up to two gameboys in a chord, only one heart at a time, only one boat/mushroom at a time, all other instruments off limits), Warioware DIY limits (I don't remember the limits of their music program of the top of my head), and some others as well.

Compositional limitations are great when you have a choice between using them or not, but various design issues with the program itself should definitely be improved.

As for cool features like arps, fancy volume envelopes, and modulation and stuff, I probably wouldn't use them much (though the arps might come in handy for pieces with very low polyphony), but they could be optional if you wanted to implement them.
When you open up the program, you should be presented with a simple tool-set but then have the option to complexify to a certain degree.

[Mr. Sub]

Nov 7, 2012 0:09:42 GMT -6 ripx said:

I notice that there is a difference between the number of notes available in Advanced Mario Sequencer and The Mario Paint Composer. Can anyone tell me if this makes a significant difference?

Having that extra range available in AMS is really pretty useful, and the more the better with range.

[RehdBlob]

Nov 8, 2012 1:04:15 GMT -6 shinyjiggly said:

If you plan on fixing the limitations, make sure that you also implement a way for the user to be able to impose their own togglable limitations (just in case they want to work within some arbitrary limits but don't want to accidentally break them for some reason) on a per song basis. These limitations can be polyphony levels, max speed, note range, which instruments can be used, and other similar limitations.

There could also be preset limit sets for each of the main versions of Mario paint ( Super Nintendo MP limits, MPC v1 limits, MPC v2 limits, MP Sequencer trio limits, etc) and maybe even other limit sets like "Animals only", NES limits (can only use up to two gameboys in a chord, only one heart at a time, only one boat/mushroom at a time, all other instruments off limits), Warioware DIY limits (I don't remember the limits of their music program of the top of my head), and some others as well.

Compositional limitations are great when you have a choice between using them or not, but various design issues with the program itself should definitely be improved.

As for cool features like arps, fancy volume envelopes, and modulation and stuff, I probably wouldn't use them much (though the arps might come in handy for pieces with very low polyphony), but they could be optional if you wanted to implement them.
When you open up the program, you should be presented with a simple tool-set but then have the option to complexify to a certain degree.

So what's interesting is that I've been designing that into Super Mario Paint. There will also be some very fun hidden extras.

[GuitarMaster72]

Well damn.... sounds like SMP might just really be more super than I thought

[RehdBlob]

Well... I've got to finish it first. I have, however, been improving my programming skills so hopefully, when I'm off the hook of lots of work, it will continue on very quickly.