Looping Music Via OGG?

[Mr Mad Mothy]

I'm not sure if it is possible but I find the method of using Audacity, creating a LOOPSTART and LOOPLENGTH for an OGG file to be the best way to create seamless looping points within a music file though I am unsure how this could be achieved using RPG Maker 2003, as it's the one I want to use and not anything above, I heard about the Harmony Patcher but I just don't think it's possible unless anyone could be kind enough and mention an alternate method?

If there is a way to use OGG and the method mentioned above in RPG Maker 2003, i'd love to know about it since the Loop Editor apparently doesn't work too well, perhaps we could get a patch or mod for Steam's RPG Maker 2003 someday that allows the use of OGG as how it is used in XP and VX.

[Caethyril]

Unfortunately only .mid, .wav, and .mp3 formats are supported for music files at present. Cherry may patch in support for .ogg at some point, but I'd guess that's not likely to be any time soon.

Fortunately, I believe all the above formats do support loops to some degree, though (unsurprisingly) uncompressed .wav is deemed most suitable: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_looping.html

[Mr Mad Mothy]

So i'm unable to create a loop without trimming the rest of the music file? I was hoping to be able to play the introduction to the music and then loop a selection in the middle that is supposed to repeat.

It's a shame Cherry has gone quiet with this as a lot of people do prefer this as it being "Pixel Perfect" more like the classic games rather than VX's take on it, it would be great to see added features such as larger Chipset/Charset sizes, basically some of the features from the newer RPG Makers should be put into this one, it would be awesome. :P

[Caethyril]

Originally posted by Mr Mad Mothy:

So i'm unable to create a loop without trimming the rest of the music file? I was hoping to be able to play the introduction to the music and then loop a selection in the middle that is supposed to repeat.

I'm definitely no audio expert! However, based on that link it looks like you can set start and end points for the loop, so maybe that kind of behaviour is feasible? I'm pretty sure what you want is possible with .mid format (seems it's even explicitly compatible with RPG Maker: link[github.com]), though naturally that operates quite differently to recorded audio...

it would be great to see added features such as larger Chipset/Charset sizes

Yes! =D

[Mr Mad Mothy]

I suppose I could wait it out and see if Cherry does come with an update for OGG sometime soon, it would be a lot less hassle than having to get patches from here and there. :/

[Aërendoodle]

You can create this kind of effect, but you'd have to split the audio into two files: one for the intro and one for the looping part.

• On whatever map uses e.g. the song "Field 1", you would set the map music to "Event Setting.
  
• Then, make a parallel processing event.
  
• In said event, you put a conditional branch with "Current BGM has completed a loop" as its condition with the "else" branch active.
  
• In the branch part above "Else", put "Play BGM..." and pick "Field 1 - Loop.mp3" (or whatever filename you picked for the looping part).
  
• Under "Else", put "Play BGM..." and pick "Field 1 - Intro.mp3" (or whatever filename you picked for the intro).

As for in-battle events, I don't really know much about battle eventing myself, so I can't be of help there.

Is it as convenient as OGG use? No, but since RPG Maker 2003 was made before the OGG format became widely used (and was based on an RPG Maker engine (RPG Maker 2000) that released before OGG was even published) it would be very surprising if RPG Maker 2003 could be easily modified to play OGG files.