GEMS2MID problems with Toy Story

[birdmanager6]

Hi, I have been using GEMSScan and GEMS2MID to convert some music from a number of Genesis games, and it's mostly been working fine. But I'm having problems with GEMS2MID. When I try to convert the sequence data from Toy Story, it converts, but it says there's a lot of "unknown effects" and "invalid loop points" and the resulting MIDIs sound very bad, and sometimes barely even recognizable. It seems to get parts of songs in the wrong locations, and sometimes the channels don't match up to the right song. I've had this same issue with Comix Zone. I know that all the data is extracted properly, because it plays just fine in GEMSPlay.
Valley Bell, if you are reading this, could you please fix GEMS2MID to convert Toy Story and the other games right? I've been in badly need of MIDIs converted from the source, and VGM2MID just doesn't cut it.

[MusicFox]

I heard somewhere that Toy Story for the Genesis also used MOD files, which is different from MIDI sequence data. Unfortunately, I don't think the program will work with that particular games.

[birdmanager6]

I heard somewhere that Toy Story for the Genesis also used MOD files, which is different from MIDI sequence data. Unfortunately, I don't think the program will work with that particular games.

Toy Story actually uses two audio drivers. One is the GEMS driver (which uses a format similar to MIDI), which is what is used for almost all of the music, as well as all the sound effects. The other is a custom player that plays part of a MOD file, like you said, through the DAC channel, which is used for the main menu and the credits.
I actually extracted the MOD myself before, and it can even be found on The MOD Archive.
So, that's definetely not it, as I'm extracting the GEMS part. I've successfully extracted that data, and I can play it right. The problem is the converter to MIDI.

[MusicFox]

Oh, I see. Well, I wish you the best of luck! I hope you get it.

[Tom]

The best part is that you can inject a custom MOD file in the ROM if you want. The player doesn't support all the MOD effects, but it's not that bad at all. Also, since you like MIDIs, Davis Cup World Tour Tennis (yes, that topic is broken, but it's not my fault, I used plain BBcode and probably there was a fuckup somewhere down the line).

[ValleyBell]

gems2mid doesn't support the 3-byte sequence pointers used by GEMS v2.8 yet. If I find time, I'll see if I can add an autodetection/support for those to gems2mid.

gems2mid is more than a year older than GemsPlay, that's why it doesn't support everything. I didn't know as much about GEMS back then.

[birdmanager6]

gems2mid doesn't support the 3-byte sequence pointers used by GEMS v2.8 yet. If I find time, I'll see if I can add an autodetection/support for those to gems2mid.

gems2mid is more than a year older than GemsPlay, that's why it doesn't support everything. I didn't know as much about GEMS back then.

Okay, thank you!

[ValleyBell]

Well, here it is - gems2mid with GEMS 2.8 support.
You can either use the additional commandline parameters or trust the autodetection (which I ported from GemsPlay).
As usual, source is included.

I also made it convert most of the commands to the respective MIDI controllers listed in the GEMS documentation.

[birdmanager6]

Thank you! But now there's a new problem: it only converts the first five songs from Toy Story and then crashes. Still works for Comix Zone, though.

[ValleyBell]

The song that caused the crash converted to a MIDI that was > 64 KB and gems2mid didn't expect that.
Here is a fixed build. I actually fixed it the next day, but forgot to build a release build. (I blame the usual christmas business.)

[birdmanager6]

Thank you so much! Now I finally have the MIDIs I need!