What is your current level of musical expertise?

By that, I mean can you tell a quarter note from a thirty-second rest, can you notate basic rhythms by ear, etc.? How's your pitch perception?

Then you're facing a daunting task. Most of the actual hack work for all the NES games I've worked with (musically) wasn't too hard, but this was only because I have over 17 years of musical experience under my belt.

Trying to hack music without any understanding of music speaks for itself, regarding the difficulty level.

*Edit* This is assuming that you want to make songs that aren't pure shit.

Yup. Games use code to play music, so you need to learn the "code" to put the music in. Or something like that...

Yes and no.  Yes games have music driving code.  No, you don't need to know any of it to edit music.

Games have music engines that play the music -- but the music data itself is stored somewhat intuitively (usually).  That is, notes/rests are assigned a tone and length, there are loop markers, etc.

The thing is each engine has its format its own way.  So music from one game might not be in the same format as music in another game.

I like to compare it to level data.  Just because two games have levels, doesn't mean you can copy/paste levels from one game into the other.  Likewise, just because both games have music doesn't mean you can copy/paste the music data over either.

I'm not sure which *utility* you're referring to; DataCrystal's ROM map for MegaMan 3 is totally blank, so this is going to take a little bit of effort.

I did notice, however, that MegaMan 2 has a rather spiffy ROM map posted; this is good. I recall a rumor that Capcom used a proprietary/consistent music coding sequence among their games, or at least some of the NES Megaman ones.

Your best bet is to open up the Megaman 2 ROM in your favorite hex editor (I like Translextion, but I'm in the minority) and check out the section from $35000-$3D000. (This seems to be the section which codes for sound effects, so it's a reasonable assumption that the music might be stored here as well.) If you've never done music hacking before, this will be akin to shooting in the dark, but you'll need to scan the data sequences for oft-repeating values with identical first digits. In other words, if you see something like:



...it's a good bet that bytes in the 80's code for rhythm offsets and values in the 10's and 20's code for individual pitches.

This, of course, assumes that the game codes for rhythm and pitch individually. Some games code for both with a single byte, which makes it harder to spot patterns. But once you think you've found something, try altering the pitch bytes by +/- 2 or 4. Then play thru the game to see what (if any) music is affected. Once you get a lead, pound the ever-loving hell out of it until you know how the game codes for what.

...then open up the MegaMan 3 ROM and look for similar patterns. Good luck!  :angel:

No problem!  :thumbsup: I'm currently embarking upon a similar quest with Zelda 1, although full disclosure forces me to admit that it has a fair amount of music data documentation already available...

Looking forward to hearing about your progress. Music hacking can be a very rewarding endeavor.