Castle Paradox

[r3wind]

Umm... i'm trying out notate because my converted midis dont turn out too great, but I've come across quite a dilemma. In order for me to place a sharp, I am required to hold alt and press space. But upon doing so also happens to be a way of minimizing the window. Is there a way around this? I wont be able to put music in if I cant use sharps

Secondly, is there a conveniant way of timing a song using plotscript ticks? Some scenes require musical sync, and I was hoping that there would be an easiar way aside from trial and error.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Oh wait... spoke too soon. Scratch that notate part, I figured out how to disable shortcut keys.
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- R3wind and play it back

[RPGCreations]

For timing with music, you're just going to have to guesstimate. It's roughly 12-15 plotscript wait commands per second, depends on the computer.
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[Calehay]

Go to the program and right click. I don't remember exactly where it is, but it has to do with shortcut keys. Turn off Alt-Tab and it will work perfectly.

But truthfully, I would just use a MIDI program because Notate is very hard to work with.
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Calehay

[Camdog]

Unfortunately, there really isn't a way to time songs because the duration of ticks vary from computer to computer, so even if something synced up properly on your computer (through a lot of trial and error), it wouldn't on someone else's. I tried to do this with Bliss, and it just didn't work.

But I think working directly through notate (as opposed to converting a midi) is a good idea. When I write OHR songs, I always compose directly in notate because, as you mentioned, conversion never gets it quite right, and I like to know exactly what my limitations are when I'm writing so I don't hit a wall later.

[r3wind]

If that's the case, then I guess I'll just have to work around it. Thanks for the help.
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[Setu_Firestorm]

[r3wind]

I prefer realtime as well, but as I mentioned previously, my midis wont convert properly

But notate isn't so bad... at least I can make it sound a little closer to what I imagine for it to be in the game.
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[msw188]

Depending on what you are trying to do, it might be possible to synchronize music and certain kinds of things in your game. I'm thinking of making a separate 'song' for each part of the music where something in the game must happen (even every note, if you are using legato type, not very tightly timed music), and then call them at the correct time in the plotscript. You probably couldn't hope to sync things in a beat (a dance would be impossible, I'm guessing), but it might help you create some effective scenes. I don't really know what you are trying to do, so I can't say more.

[Fernurion]

to expand on what MSW said,the best way to sync music (in my opinion anyway) isto use the 'playsong(x)' plotscript. just have a few song styles available, such as song for happy, sad, dramatic ect then time them in the script. they may not link perfectly, but at least the music is sycronised to the story.

[r3wind]

Well, what I was trying to do with the sync is this:

For the intro, the music starts off plain and the game is just showing some simple text in a black background to get into the story. After the whole text intro is done, strings are added and (since were using BAMs) more instruments are added to simulate a cresendo while the blank screen fades into the scene.

But, well, that's impossible since the tick-times aren't the same on all computers. If i broke the whole song into separate ones, it could work, but then the whole song itself wont flow properly and would be pretty awkward.
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[msw188]

I know that often when you already have the music in your head along with the plot, you don't want to change it. But if possible, try to think of a way that a silence could work to your advantage. What if the introductory music is plain, as you say, but the point at which you want the crescendo to come in is somehow heralded by a sudden stopping of the music, maybe together with a timpani-roll type sort of thing? I don't know, I'm just throwing out ideas. I don't even know if Notate can do timpani type sounds, my new computer doesn't play BAMs.

If silence doesn't work, but your 'plain' music has some note that could hold out common to all of the chords, you could make a second song as nothing but holding out that note, and call that song to play in the middle of the first song. I don't have a way to experiment with this, but it seems to me that it ought to make whatever else was going on in the music go away, but there would be a sense of continuity because that one note was still being held...?