Bgm -- Bass For Game Maker, Still available, but no longer supported Options

[The Music Guy]

Bass for Game Maker!

Unfortunately, I am no longer able to continue working on BGM or provide support for it on a reasonable basis. I am simply too busy trying to keep up with real life and I don't have time for it anymore. Besides that, I am no longer an active member of the Game Maker Community or YoYo Games, and no longer use Game Maker, so it doesn't make sense to continue to develop anymore.

I had a fun time working on it and providing what help I could offer, but the time has come for me to move on. Sorry, everybody, but that's the way it has to be...

- Brad Harms (a.k.a. The Music Guy)

What is BGM?

It is an extremely simplistic front-end to Un4seen.com's BASS.DLL that acts as a bridge between BASS and Game Maker.
In other words, it is a system that uses Game Maker's functionality to use external DLL files as a means to improve Game Maker's music-playing abillities.
In other other words, BGM lets you play all sorts of tracked music formats like MOD, IT and XM in your Game Maker games.

Feature List

* Extremely simple interface
* Total amount of data added to your game is less than 200kb
* Support for MOD, XM, S3M, IT, MTM, UMX, MO3 (see below), WAV, AIFF, MP3, MP2, MP1 and OGG.
* Supports un4sen.com's hybrid compressed-tracked format, MO3.
* Uses the latest version of BASS.DLL (which is 2.3 at the time of this writing)
* Play, play looped, pause, stop
* Quick Play - This allows you to easily load and play a song simply by passing it's filename, then automatically stop and unload it when you're done.
* Can use whatever output format you want
* File- and Internet-Streaming for sampled formats
* Load and play as many songs as your system can handle (quite a few, usually)
* Volume, panning, and playback speed control
* Access to many module attributes, such as sample/instrument/channel volumes, pan seperation, etc.
* You can refer to loaded songs via the ID given when they were loaded OR by giving the filename of the song
* Lots of automatic error handling (which can be turned off if you want)
* the list goes on -- See the manual (included in the download) for more details.


Known Bugs

* The function bgm_SetLibDir() has been deprecated because it doesn't work correctly and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it.

* The functions bgm_GetPos() and bgm_GetLen() don't work on non-streamed samples; they always return 4294967295. However, the functions work fine for streamed samples and modules.

Update History

(updates above 2.0.1 beta can be found on the website)

2.0.1 beta -

* Updated to BASS.DLL 2.3
* You can now choose what output format you want
* File- and Internet-Streaming now supported for sampled formats
* New API (backwards compatibility has been preserved, however)
* It is now possible to load multiple songs at a time
* Volume, panning, frequency can now be changed for each individual song
* Many module attributes (instrument volume, bpm, pan seperation, ...) can now be both set and retrieved
* You can refer to loaded songs via the ID given when they were loaded OR by giving the filename of the song.
* Lots of automatic error handling

1.0a -

* Example .gm6 now lets you load WAVs and also lets you change to a different file after playback begins.
* Now it can REALLY play MP3s, although it takes a minute for them to load.

This post has been edited by The Music Guy: Jan 23 2008, 04:50 AM

[Bathy]

It seems good, but it doesnt load mp3s

[Smarttart62]

seems real cool!
-Steve

[The Music Guy]

Hey, you're right! How did that happen?
Well...Score 1 for you, Bathy.
I'll look through the BASS docs to try and fix it.

[Shaltif]

Ah, I see someone beat me to the punch on this one. Oh well, got my hands tied anyway working on the new Fmod wrapper SXMS3. Keep up the good work, always nice to see alternatives (and it free's up my schedule a bit, not needing to make a BASS wrapper ).

~Brandon

[The Music Guy]

Fixed the MP3 bug. It will play them now but it takes a minute for it to load them.

Well, it's not exactly an alternative since it doesn't have nearly as many features as SXMS (and I don't plan to add any more).
But by all means, if you want to make a REAL wrapper for Bass than go ahead. I won't mind

[game_maker_dude]

hey can you tell me befor i download it will this be good for a live radio on GM

[The Music Guy]

Not really... It has no live streaming support.

[Andreas]

It's good and has great features... But still, I wonder why you and some other people here try to port bass to GM, since it's already done with all original functions?

[FredFredrickson]

I want to use this, because some of the others seem a bit too complicated for my needs... But does it support looping tracks?

[The Music Guy]

OEM:
I'm not sure I understand you. Are you saying that somebody has already ported Bass to GM? If that's the case, then yes, I know. As far as I can tell though, this port is the easiest to use. It's not meant for super-high-quality stuff like SXMS.

Fred:
Yes and no.
It doesn't automaticly loop at the end of the file/song but it will accept pattern breaks, which can be used to give the same effect.

This post has been edited by The Music Guy: Aug 20 2005, 03:23 AM

[dimitri]

Ah, thank you for making an easy to use .xm player! (Jbfmod wont work on my computer for some strange reason) now i can make games without huge file sizes.


10/10 for simplicty and easyness

[dhelfin]

ok---I am like super newbie...ok I dl this mod program or dll, but how do Input this to my game without having that screen pop up to load the file...I want this dll to work like where I have my game in a folder, and put some mods inside that folder , and whenever the game starts, depending on the room that I am at, for the mods to load, with maybe a code like STR = open mod track 1 or something like that.


can anyone help me with this?

[-Insane-]

ok---I am like super newbie...ok I dl this mod program or dll, but how do Input this to my game without having that screen pop up to load the file...I want this dll to work like where I have my game in a folder, and put some mods inside that folder , and whenever the game starts, depending on the room that I am at, for the mods to load, with maybe a code like STR =  open mod track 1 or something like that.


can anyone help me with this?

CODE

bgm_play(*filename*)

What I accually came here for, is to ask if I need to mention you if I use it.

-Insane

Ps: The dll is awesum!!
I made a media player with it

[9_6]

This actually is better than fmod because it doesn't mess up some effects like Midi macros, high pitches or filters o_Ô
If only i had known that earlier...

It needs the ability to set the channel seperation and maybe (like jbfmod does) the ability to load files from a single packed file. (unfortunately i don't know how to do such thing myself ~~)
If it had that, i would SO use this!

[Simpson_Software]

I reckon this is awesome! I will be using this! Just one problem... how do I convert an mp3 to mod or mo3? Cause I don't want a large file used in my game, I only want a small one. I did however find a converter that changes it from mod or mo3 TO mp3 and I love the compression! The normal file size is like 2.69mb or something and the mo3 or mod version can be 186kb or something...

Do you know of anything that will convert MP3's to this mod or mo3?

And I am VERY suprised that this game maker add-on was never popular (with lots of replies)? I reckon this topic sure does deserve it! And nice simple code, very useful.

Cheers,
Simpson_Software

[Postality]

This is perfect bro, nice work. I can finally get my MP3 track I produce in GM =P

You da man.

I'll up a sample mp3 I made some time for everyone to check out.

[9_6]

you can't convert a mp3 to a mod format.
think of MODs like of MIDIs, you also can't convert a m3 to a MIDI, can you?

[Simpson_Software]

Ok then. But if you noticed there is an example of a song (mo3 format) in the archive you download for BGM 1.0a, that is 187kb (or something) and I converted it without trouble to mp3 and it was 2.7mb (or something). So is there a program that can convert mp3 to mo3? Because I find it strange how you can convert FROM mo3 but not TO mo3... so how did it become mo3 in the first place?

I also know alot about music as I am a DJ and stuff, but I just don't know of a program that can do convert TO mo3, although I already have a program that converts FROM mo3. If someone knows of a conversion program that CAN convert to mo3 then please PM me or something!

Thanks,
Simpson_Software

[The Music Guy]

Simpson,

Now, I'm notorious for giving confusing analogies, but...

An MO3 is a tracked format and MP3 is a sampled format. This means that conversion is strictly one-way (MO3 --> MP3, but not MP3 --> MO3). It's like if you recorded a room full of people onto a cassette tape and then tried to break it down to just the words of the individual conversations.

BTW, An MO3 is just an ordinary tracked music format (Like MOD, XM, S3M, etc.) but with each sample OGG- or MP3-compressed individually.

-Insane-,

You don't need to give credit but it is appreciated. Just give a link to http://www.alphaios.net/bgm in the credits if you want to.

--

Okay, now...

As you all probably noticed, I had kind of abandon this project for a while. However, I've been getting a lot of requests recently and it made me realize that there's some more work that could be done. So, I'm now in the process of upgrading BGM to include many of the features you've been asking for while still trying to maintain all the things that makes BGM "special". Among these will be...

+ Quick Play - This is the "load-on-the-fly" behavior that currently exists. However, you will be able to choose NOT to use this behavior in favor ot the feature listed below.
+ Load+Play - You will be able to load any number of songs into memory ahead of time so that you don't have to stop and wait for them to be loaded mid-game.
+ Streamed-In Samples - If possible, I'm going to make it so that sampled formats (WAV, MP3, OGG, etc.) can be loaded from the hard drive and played at the same time. This should fix the little "hiccup" that occurs whenever you try to play a sample.
+ More Editable Attributes - Volume, panning, tempo...All of these and more will be changable even while the song is playing.
+ Per-Song Attributes - You will be able to set the attributes of each song individually.
+ Attributes that Stick Between Playings - Previously, any changes of volume to the song would be lost whenever you began playing it again. You will now be able to turn this behavior off if you want to.
+ BGM 2.0 will also be completely backwards compatible so you can continue to do things in the way that you do them now.
+ BGM 2.0 will now be using the latest version of BASS.DLL, currently 2.3.

This post has been edited by The Music Guy: Sep 4 2006, 08:08 AM