Org or Pxtone?

Okay, I'm really glad you mentioned that that was a bug and not a feature. Because it turns out if you change it once too often, the thing comes crashing down.

I think it's still really useful for just testing a few different instrument choices for a single track when you're otherwise done. That's pretty huge, at least to me. But don't use it when you're in the middle of a lot of unsaved work. Exiting and coming back in about every... five changes might prevent this, but I'm not sure of that.

Speaking of, I just discovered the listboxes expand and shrink if you click the track names. (Kind of off-topic, yes, but where else are we talking about the program features?)

Anyway, my opinion on which is better... PxTone creates better sounds, no doubt about it. There's no using ORGs for much other than 8-bit-style games. It's easier to control playback during testing in PtCollage, and PtPlayer doesn't have a Winamp plugin that can sound wildly different and wreck compositions (sorry JTE).

But OrgMaker's interface has a handful of incidental quirks that make editing just a bit smoother. It can fit more keys onscreen at once; in PtCollage, you get these giant bricks for the keys with no way to resize them vertically, so it's hard to see notes in multiple octaves at once. The differing track colors are convenient, too, and, quite frankly, it's just easier to assemble the song with a limited set of instruments pre-installed, unless you have a distinct (...image?) of what each track should sound like. Finally, unless I'm wrong, it's not possible to copy and move more than one track at a time in PtCollage.

Personally, I use both together: OrgView to get the song's melody together (write up sheet music, if you will), and PtCollage to give it a richer sound (have the band play it). Nox's converter is invaluable in this process.

 

It's possible if you select the tracks in the Units tab. Just click while holding ctrl in Unit to select the instruments you want to copy, then click and drag the green bar section. Afterwards, select the copy option from the top menu (among File etc. ).

 

Where is the Fast Tracker option in the poll?
Hahahahahahahahaha

 

As ORG2 has a pianoroll layout (Which is what I'm used to) I'm gonna have to say ORG over Pxtone. From what I've gathered, Pxtone has better and more capabilities (which I'd love) than ORG, so if anyone could direct me to these guides that would be very helpful. In the meantime, I'll check the forums and the tribute site.

 

they both have a pianoroll though??????

 

PxTone does???? Sheeeeeeiiiiiit. 'Cause from what I saw, Pxtone didn't. Okay, looks I need to look into Pxtone when I get access to a computer. The sample tracks I played sounded really cool and I want to do stuff like that. I'll have to look into it, and download Pepofont when I get a chance. Thanks for letting me know!

 

As soon as Cave Story gets a Pxtone player, things will be better.

 

As soon as Cave Story gets a Pxtone player, things will be better.

http://www.cavestory.org/forums/threads/proof-of-concept-hack-cs-pxtone-dll.2681/

 

that's only a proof of concept tho. it's not to be used in a full mod.

 

Well, y'know, there was that guy that made a mod that can play custom sounds by adding a ***k-ton of Lua code to the game, it just makes assembly hacking a pain.

TBH, the real problem was that I was silly... saw a nice big area of unused space and used it, which broke... well, Cave Editor certainly didn't like it.
The C interface code doesn't rely on the address of the calling code, so you just need to change the addresses around a bit.

How to change the addresses:

niceilib.txt, change the offset line to: offset 48B7E1
niceinit.txt, change the call to: call [48B7E1]
nicenpch.txt, change the data line to: data FF 15 E5 B7 48 00 90 ; jmp [48B7E1]
nicetsch.txt, change the data line to: data FF 25 E9 B7 48 00 ; jmp [48B7E9]
NOTE! If you are annoyed because TSC+ breaks with NICE, remove nicetsch.txt altogether.
This will remove the NICE TSC hooks, so you'll need to use NPCs to call into NICE functions (use <ANI or whatever it was called), but it'll work.

This should fix the "running Cave Editor on NICE-patched EXE -> corrupt EXE" problem.
Well, I hope it does, anyway.

As for the Lua code... it was really only there because it's (hopefully) easier to modify than the C interface code.
The original versions of NICE were C-only.
Technically, if you know C *anyway*, it should be easy to remove Lua from the system.

 

I don't use Cave Editor, but I love it's script editor. (I wish Noxid would just steal it already)
I must say the NICE mod was ingenious, as are you, it's just a bit confusing for someone like me who gets a headache from trying to read Hexidecimal.
There's still a proof-of-concept mod I want to make to show off what NICE can do, but I kindof need a tutorial on how to use it first.
Also what's TSC+? I've heard so many people talk about it but I've never really known what it was.
TL;DR I don't use Cave Editor, you're fucking awesome, NICE needs a tutorial, WTF is TSC+?

NICE-Hexadecimalstuff: The current uploaded version of NICE has some flaws in it. Specifically the ASM edits use addresses that mess up Cave Editor. Not sure if Booster's Lab is affected.
You do *NOT* need a hex editor or anything difficult to fix this, just replace the lines in the ASM edit files as I wrote. (The txt files in "asmedits".)

NICE-Usage: NICE's complexity depends on what you want to do.
If you want absolute full power, you need to know C. And maybe ASM, to create new hooks.
If you know C, you'll probably already know what to do with the "game_dll" folder.
If not, ignore that.

If you want to use NICE to write your NPCs and TSC commands, you just need to know Lua.
"data/nice.lua" is where you write your code.
Write your NPCs after the "local npcTable={}" line.

-- Example NPC. This is a carbon copy of NPC216, aka "Debug Cat".
npcTable[216]=function (npcAddr,data)
  data.displayL=0x100
  data.displayU=0xC0
  data.displayR=0x110
  data.displayD=0x0D8
  doukutsu.setNPCData(npcAddr,data)
end

NPCTick is called for all NPCs, and by default, it calls the respective npcTable function, or calls Cave Story's implementation of the function.

For TSC modification, the same system is used: "local tscTable={}", followed by your commands.
Commands written this way take parameters differently from Cave Story.
When one of these commands is read, they *ALWAYS* require a semicolon. If parameters exist, they are separated using ":", and the semicolon goes after them.
An example of a command in usage, that sets the NPC with internal ID 2 to be a debug cat(216):
<SNT2:216;
The example command:

tscTable["SNT"]=function (paramIterator)
    local addr=doukutsu.getNPCPtr(tonumber(paramIterator()))
    local data=doukutsu.getNPCData(addr)
    -- data now contains a *copy of* the NPC's data.
    -- Let's change the type.
    data.npcType=tonumber(paramIterator())
    -- Save the NPC data back into Cave Story memory.
    doukutsu.setNPCData(addr, data)
end

More is achievable - the uploaded version comes with a command that plays arbitrary sounds (VOC).

If you can't do the above, you can still use VOC.
An example of VOC's usage: <VOCload:SomeAudioBuffer:test.ogg;
That would load an audio buffer into memory, reading from the Ogg Vorbis file "test.ogg".
For a list of what's supported, go look at libsndfile's manual.
What I know is that WAV and Ogg Vorbis files are definitely supported.
To play an audio file using VOC: <VOCplay:SomeAudioBuffer;
"playloop" is also usable.
To stop an audio file using VOC (for looping sounds): <VOCstop:SomeAudioBuffer;
To free an audio file using VOC: <VOCfree:SomeAudioBuffer;
Finally, remember to free your buffers.

TSC+: Some ASM mod, that completely changes a ton of TSC commands and adds stuff. Incompatible with NICE's TSC commands - if you use NICE's TSC hook, you can't use TSC+.

 

PxTone does???? Sheeeeeeiiiiiit. 'Cause from what I saw, Pxtone didn't. Okay, looks I need to look into Pxtone when I get access to a computer. The sample tracks I played sounded really cool and I want to do stuff like that. I'll have to look into it, and download Pepofont when I get a chance. Thanks for letting me know!

Okay. My computer got a virus which corrupted the visual display of ORGmaker 2, so I ended up having to switch over to PxTone. I didn't know how to use PxTone so I checked out a little manual/guide on it and I must say. It is clearly better than ORGmaker in terms of versatility. Pepofont has an exorbitant amount of samples ranging from FM synths to square waves to actual instrument samples. You can even load the samples and waves used in Cave Story if you can find them. Hell, I've even made a little reggae song using chords because of said versatility. Also, PxTone can export into a listenable format in .wav files. That's a plus. No more stereo recording from Audacity for me. There's still a bunch of stuff I don't know how to use, but from what I've seen and used, it is absolutely amazing.

 

Nobody makes viruses anymore.

You'll never know the large amount of people who still makes viruses.

 

I've made many viruses in my time

 

Nobody makes viruses anymore.

Who cares what you call it. Biological Malware, Software Viruses, Technological Bacteria, Hardware Fungal Infection, whatever. All I know is that my computer has one or all of these. I did something stupid, fucked up my computer and now ORGmaker is broken. PxTone is by default the winner because of it's durability. And it's just generally more versatile. But mainly the latter.