Super Famicompo 2 [RESULTS]

Aww thanks, it's always nice to be included in a sentence someone says.
I believe your feedback was fair and nice; although I don't complain either at all the verbose stuff I've received since it will have me improve technically (hopefully I get there).

If you are wondering about feedback and their treatments, may I interest you in sensory analysis, it is a field broadly applied to food science. Multiple questions exist in order to gather certain feedbacks and resultiong actions: what do the customers like more from a range of products, why, are these reasons technically pertinent, can we identify a link between a taster's keyword and a specific ingredient or process. Also very specific tests are lead about a taster's sensibility to a difference in ingredients: useful for price reductions, changes in suppliers, etc... Panels of tasters often are trained so they'd use the same vocabulary. Large companies allow themselves to use high numbers of tasters in their panels.

So I'm in for my little stat, I have guessed a grand total of 6 ports.
Lucky that Exodustx0 chose a niche target he had covered before, and that Ruberjig teamed up with bebn.

There's also this phenomenon where I had no idea about an user, for example Plasmariel. Yet another angel or elve's name, just like Sariel :p I only had the music section history to try and guess, so...

I also remarked that only 2 songs were perfectly guessed by every voter/guesser; and that 17 songs have got 70-80% of right guesses, so there's that.

Interestingly my ports consistently have received a guess of Infinity, but the reverse has not occured.

I need to listen again to each song now that I know the authors, and try to catch similarities between them.

Thanks again to sinc-x for hosting, and to everyone who let us enjoy their nice songs. 10/10

Congratulations to Maxodex and Pinci, those ports sounded awesome! And to everyone else, lots of really cool pieces here. Special thanks to Sinc-X for making this possible!

My port was Debussy's Reverie, which I know now is not very good, but it was my first-ever port , before I knew about ADSR and the fine points of echo and stuff. I really appreciated some of the constructive comments in there, so thank you for those! I'd like to revisit this port someday, maybe with some samples and better ADSR.

What the heck I'll provide insight into my entries too. This is waaay too long to have put into the comments lol. I didn't vote, mainly because I'm not confident in my scoring abilities. Also I was so psyched that I did two covers I was proud of, so I didn't feel like I could judge the other entries as well.

First off I'll start by saying I never know what to port for these contests. I always feel like I have to do something which shows off a technique, is a favorite of mine, would provide a nice challenge, and makes a quick and favorable first impression. When I started doing contests, I often chose things which were really only exciting to porters who were as crazy about samples as I am, or who could feel my pain haha. If you weren't one of those people, then you might think some of my past entries were too short, weren't suitable for a contest etc. because they were self-indulgent ports and not bangers. So when superfamicompo started last year, I tried to get better at picking stuff that would say "I demand attention!" from the first note. I'm kinda bad at judging that sometimes, but I feel like I'm getting better.

Cover17 (Ace Combat 2 - Lightning Speed)
I really didn't expect a 2nd place for this, so thanks to all who voted! Tbh I didn't know what placement it would receive.

I've had a nice midi of this for a while now, so ever since I learned how to port, I wanted to hear how this would come out on snes. I put it on my "things which I think are impossible but I want to try" list. I think it was wise to wait; there were certain things about this track which would've overwhelmed me at first, but now that I'm better at porting I could at least handle the tough spots better. That said, it's a huge mess, as our many of my unreleased ports, and some of my released ones haha

When I actually took a good look at the midi, I saw that it could be fit into 8 channels fairly easily, cutting relatively little out. The organ was a random idea. The original midi used a sparkly pad and the real track sounds like it uses an organ loaded with effects, so I thought, hey it'd be cool if I used a nice rock organ which just showed off for a bit, since rock organ on snes is not very common and often sounds programmed. As it turns out, I barely had room for it. I needed to use two-note chords, but I only had one channel free. So I had to make chord samples which take up a fair bit of aram. I barely squeezed them in (I had to cut out all sfx, global songs and smw samples just to get the final version to compile).

I spent hours searching for the perfect guitar, and while I still have my qualms with it and was about to try something else, I'm so used to it in the port now that I don't want to change it. The snare was pretty much the same deal, I like the aggressiveness of the sound but someone did comment it was too loud. But if I turn it down, it loses its bang I think lol. Same with the kick drum, I feel like certain parts of it are nice in the mix but others aren't. Ah well, if I don't listen critically, I really like it, so I guess that's the best way to evaluate one's own work.

The port took me a week to make and I was sort of losing my energy for it by the end, so I have no clue how people make these huge 3 or 4 minute ports. Am I just slow, or impatient or what? Lol

Cover41 (Final Fantasy VII - Flowers Blooming in the Church)
This one has an interesting story. This was one of the first ports I started when I first got into porting. I even had the fake reverb/echo stuff planned out too, and had started making samples. Unfortunately, due to a dumb accident which was my fault, I reformatted the drive which had my ports on it. What little I had done with this was lost, and I just didn't feel like coming back to it. But the more I thought about what to port for superfamicompo, the more I developed a "Why not?" attitude with this port. I already knew how I wanted to do it, I just had to make it happen. This was one of those fully for myself ports to try some tricks I hadn't tried before, and it only took me a few hours to make lol

Heck the original song doesn't really hit me. My biggest problem with the original is its samples, so that's why mine sounds different. The only reason I even ported it was because I heard renditions I liked better, and I also realized that because of how few channels the song technically needs, I could toy with ambience.

The bell samples are all two-note chords which allowed me to condense more notes into less channels. Not exactly sure what I think of the bell though, it sounds sparkly and I'm a sucker for sparkly samples, but it sounds extremely glassy/icy too, which I think is fine. But a lukewarm bell/pad would change the flavor of this significantly, and I think it would still have worked. If I get bored I may try replacing the bells to see what happens.

The hardest part of this port was getting the fake echo right. I know a few people didn't like it or at least thought it was exaggerated. I think that's fair. If there's one thing I've learned from doing these contests, it's that people have vastly different opinions, which is great, but easy for me to forget sometimes. At least one person saw the lush empty cathedral vibe I was going for, so I'm glad it came through.

My main goal with this port was to avoid the tap-tap-tap effect that comes from the SPC700 delay. So what I ended up doing was condensing the song down to 4 channels, then making two copies of each. The first channel received the SPC echo, while the second copy did not iirc. The second copy was also reduced in volume, panned radically different, very slightly detuned, and delayed a few ticks to make a sort of stereo chorus/early reflection effect. I also used smooth releases to further masc the tap-tap of the delay and make it sound more like a reverb tail.

I'm going to mess with this a bit more to implement some suggestions (#0, #1 and #2 being too loud, and some ADSR a bit too punchy). If I like what comes out, I'll submit to the music section, since I can get it down to a reasonable size for smw insertion. The echo parameters had to be modified since a delay of $0A is a bit too big haha. I reduced it to $05 and tweaked some other settings and the difference is minimal.

Few, that's it I think. Sorry for the long ramblings, I just thought I'd share them in case someone happens to find this interesting lol

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Make more of less, that way you won't make less of more!

Song - Sell Out by Reel Big Fish

Frankly I'm impressed that my song was 3/6 for artist guesses. I didn't think I was well known enough, so I'll take that as the biggest win. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback. I know rock n roll isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I do want to improve this port in particular and all my porting in general. It's still a learning process.

So, if anyone has better samples for trumpets and horns, please send them my way. <3

Congrats to the winners and to all who entered. Happy holidays!

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Rock 'n' Roll Mario Show: Set 2 is released. Rock on!

Working on ports and grinding through Elephants

First of all, I'd like to thank Sinc-X for hosting this contest and for patiently bearing with my multiple submission updates, lol.

Second, I'd like to congratulate the winners! You all did an amazing job. In fact, when I listened to your entries in the Cover category I immediately went "99th place here I go!!!!!!!". Also, I stand convinced that the SPC700 is actually perfectly capable for rock music and electric guitar sections (as in, in a level above stuff like Rock n' Roll Racing), for which I had my doubts before. I'm very impressed!

Third, I'd like to thank everyone who voted and thank you for the votes for my entries. 4th place is much, much better than I anticipated, I was delightfully surprised to see that placement when I wasn't expecting anything in top 10 to be very honest, lol. The surprise was bigger when I saw Dark Forest (normal version) in 11th, given how desperate I was to find a good enough violin sample and ended up with one that still didn't satisfy me. I accept violin sample donations!

Fourth, I'd like to apologize for not voting or commenting. Actually, I've had no time or energy for SMWC matters lately, including voting for Non-VGM Tourney (sorry again, Deppy, if you're reading this!!!) due to irl and health problems. Everything is ok now, though.

Finally, some fun facts about my entries:

- No More Bugs was my main entry. It took me almost all the original submission period (pre-extension) to port it. I was basically finished on September 25th or something. It used 28 custom samples, of which about 10 are chord samples. They add up to a total of 51.8 kB of space, which is easily the highest I've ever reached... aaaaand now you know why the port has no echo! For everything to fit in ARAM I had to fully optimize the MML, probably more than what would be needed for it to be accepted in the SMW Music section. Truth is, this port uses so much ARAM that one additional ADSR command was enough to exceed the limit and kill the port, lol.

- Dark Forest was that kind of entry one comes up with in the last 5 days of contest just for the sake of having an entry, lmao. ...Although in this case I already had No More Bugs, but y'know, the more the better hehehe. It is my second ever music transcription, with the first one being another Layton track. Originally, transcribing it wasn't in the plans, because I wasn't expecting the original music to be streamed and not sequenced (and therefore rippable) in Layton Diabolical Box. It ended up being a good thing though, because it became a very good transcription practice. Getting a serviceable violin for this port was quite the challenge though, because the pitch range it had to play in was too low for the samples I have access to. Diabolical Box's music couldn't be ripped, so using the game's violin sample wasn't an option. Layton Curious Village interestingly seems to use the very same violin of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, which I think is how I had the idea of making a PMD version of this port. Too bad PMD's violin wasn't realistic enough for the normal version though. Eventually, I was between using RS3's viola or recordings of a real violin. Unfortunately, the recorded violin samples for the octave I needed had a very pronounced attack, which wouldn't work with Dark Forest, so I used one from an octave above, which sounded ok attack-wise, but ended up a tad too muffled for my taste at lower octaves.

- There is an SMW version of Dark Forest I had reserved in case I wouldn't be able to make a convincing PMD version. It was eventually not submitted, because I was satisfied enough with the PMD version... and honestly, there isn't anything special in the SMW version. I literally took the ADSR + tuning values from Custom Instrument Thread, tweaked them to work with Dark Forest and called it a day, LOL. Well, to be fair I did try to have the flute be @13 instead of @0, and it actually provided a more similar flute to the original than @0, but unfortunately there was an audible artifact in the sample when I used it that way. Sad!

I can get behind the discuss-your-entries bandwagon. Always game for some reflection.

For both of my entries, even though I don't think it was needed at all, I modified the engine code to remove everything that my songs didn't use. 'Twas fun, but so unnecessary hahaha. I'd wanted to do some actual new stuff in the engine too, but unfortunately couldn't motivate myself to put in the work. Even if I did though, I had no motivation to actually do some complex song to make it work. As such, structurally, the two songs I did port are ones that don't feel big and imposing, and still both very rewarding in their own way.

• Olivier Messiaen - Oraison (cover19)

I've wanted to do this song for a while, and decided that there wouldn't be a better way to present it than at a contest. 9 minutes of infinitesimal existence... yeah, had to do it. Have fun topping that duration record

I put some effort in making some nicely-stereo sine samples for this, not worried about their size seeing as I wouldn't need any other samples. Really happy with they came out. I like how the comments seem divided on the crackling (an unintended side-effect of BRR conversion I believe, imo a happy little accident). Helps in reminding myself that there's different people behind the words.

bebn is right with the "apocalyptic" movie comment, as the song has been used in The Revenant!

I agree with NewPointless' comment about the ondes martenot, but I knew that emulating the instrument so precisely would be a fool's errand, so I settled for "close enough, satisfying by its own merit".

I'll admit that I'm a bit disappointed about one thing, namely that a lot of judging comments talk about how the song would work in an SMW hack or any game at all, which has nothing to do with the music and the contest, but it can't be helped I suppose. In the end it matters little, so there's no harm done or anything.

Above anything else, I'm proud that I was so recognizable, and in the words of Lazy, hard to compare to others

• ППК - Воскрешение (cover38)

Indeed, I'd set a low bar, but I wanted something simple yet very pleasing. The original's theme is so mighty, for all of its simplistic elegance. I agree, Kevin, I really wish I could've done the full trance mix (everyone, do yourself a favour and check it out, or alternatively the Trailer Trash remix which I considered covering instead), but I really wanted to minimize the amount of stress/worry, so I kept to the Robots Outro Mix version instead. Even still, I couldn't resist adding some teasing harmony at the end, with the violin and viola, which doesn't occur in the original trance mix either if I'm not mistaken. Maybe if I lowered their volume a bit more (I kept changing their volume, it was a mad scramble) the contrast between the pure sine plucks and the strings wouldn't have been too jarring? Who knows.

I'm not happy at all with the echo; ideally it would've been longer, but this is the SPC700 we're talking about. Feels weird to say it like this, but this delay time was the least bad of the ones I've tried, at least in my opinion. Maybe I could've gotten better results with a much shorter delay, lower echo volume and higher feedback, but I believe I've tried that too, with disappointing results.

I took the strings samples from the samples of insanity pack, but I made the sine plucks myself, to the same effect of Oraison: controlling the stereo image. The effect isn't as pronounced here as it is in Oraison, but I do think it did what I wanted it to.

Again a lot of the feedback is subjective, with many divided opinions towards both the strongly positive and strongly negative side, so all in all I'm still pretty pleased with my work.

(Fun-fact: after a lot of testing, I originally wanted to make this cover microtonal; I'd settled on 43-EDO before eventually still falling back to same old same old)

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Thanks for your effort in making this happen Sinc! I understand you'd bitten off more than you could chew; I do hope you won't need to go through that again

Whenever I can find the energy within me, I'll see to it that my ports appear in the music section. One day.

I'd also like to express my profound apologies to everyone (mostly to myself...) for not voting on anything. I've been extremely under the weather, and really couldn't have the additional stress of having to vote on anything in a way that would be acceptable to my standards. I feel bad about it, though I'm aware that that doesn't help anyone, least of all myself. pls forgiv

Hopefully soon I'll actually take a proper listen to all entries; I'd only skimmed through most (not all) initially after the bundle was released...