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README.md

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 # Midi2ASM Converter
-This is a simple tool to convert MIDI files into [pokecrystal](https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal)-based music, written in C#. As someone who's already [knee-deep into making chiptune music](https://soundcloud.com/user-930339535/sets/all-demixes) using the pokecrystal / GameBoy engine, I know how important the current tool made by FroggestSpirit is and also how frustrating it can be to arrange some songs using it. It was a good first step, but I felt I could write my own tool and fix the current problems with it, including the annoying fact that its output format is no longer supported, and add new features as well.
+This is a simple tool to convert MIDI files to [pokecrystal](https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal)-based and [pokered](https://github.com/pret/pokered)-based music, written in C#. As someone who's already [knee-deep into making chiptune music](https://soundcloud.com/user-930339535/sets/all-demixes) using the pokecrystal, I know how important the current tool made by FroggestSpirit is and also how frustrating it can be to arrange some songs using it. It was a good first step, but I felt I could write my own tool and fix the current problems with it, including the annoying fact that its output format is no longer supported, and add new features as well.
 
 ## Features
-* Converts the notes in the MIDI file into the note commands used in pokecrystal (including rests) in a .asm file.
-* **IMPORTANT:** currently the program converts the songs into the old notation, which although supported by the most recent version of pokecrystal, is not the default.
+* Converts the notes in the MIDI file into the note commands used in pokecrystal in an .asm file.
+* Support for legacy and new pokecrystal commands, and pokered/pokeyellow commands.
 * Detects velocity changes in the MIDI and translates them into intensity.
 * Detects stereo.
 * Detects changes in the notetype.
 * Prints out comments with the music's bars so you can easily navigate the notes.
-* The output file is ready to play so you can plop it into the game without much effort.
+* The output file is ready to play so you can plop it into the game directly.
 * An option to make the noise channels' notes entirely of easily replaceable placeholder names.
-* Warnings in the finished .asm file that let you now the notes that might not be in sync.
 
 ## What it doesn't do
-* **This tool is not intended to directly convert a MIDI into GameBoy music**. The output files *will* work, but they might sound bad because of potential syncing issues between the tracks.
+* **This tool is not intended to directly convert a MIDI into GameBoy music**. The output files *will* work, but they won't sound very good for various reasons.
 * The intention is to save arrangers time doing the boring parts, such as fixing triplets, short notes and intensity changes.
 
 ## The GUI
-New in version 4.0 is the GUI! Everything has a tooltip so it should be self-explanatory enough, but I'll go over some of the most complex options.
+Everything has a tooltip so it should be self-explanatory enough, but I'll go over some of the most complex options.
 
-* **Auto-Sync**: This is a new piece of code I wrote to fix some annoying songs that were a pain to fix and sync manually using the old system. Basically, this forces all tracks to sync by maintaining a "ledger" of all the roundings being done to the note lengths; when the rounding exceeds a certain threshold, the next note is forced to round down or up to fit with the grid. This **guarantees all tracks will sync globally**. However, since some notes are forcibly cut short or prolonged, there might be occasional notes that are out of sync, have the wrong lengths or get their length set to 0 (especially if they are very short). The code requires a certain notetype to be chosen as the "base" for which all notes are rounded to (this is the checked notetype on the list). If you're unsure which notetype is the best for your song, I recommend trying 12, 6 and 3 first, reducing the number if many notes' lengths are being reduced to 0. If the song sounds weird, it may be because it was written using 8 or 4 as a base, so try those next. Smaller notetypes might lead to a more accurate translation, but it will also lead to longer code. Another downside to using Auto-Sync is that it will eat up triplets when using notetype 12, 6 or 3 as a base. So if your song has a lot of those, you'll manually have to fix them.
-* **Allowed Notetypes**: This is the list of notetypes accepted by the program. *Checked* means it's considered a base notetype for the Auto-Sync option (although you can check multiple options, only the smallest will be considered). A *square* means the notetype is allowed but not as a base.
-* **Ignore First Track**: The same as the old TempoTrack option. If this is *checked*, then your MIDI files need to have 5 different tracks; the first Track (track 0) only serves to grab the tempo of the song and will be ignored otherwise. If this option is *unchecked*, then you MIDI file needs to have 4 tracks exactly.
-* **Noise Templates**: The same as the old NoiseReplace option. If this is *checked*, the noise channel's notes will be have placeholder notes instead of the usual. These are labelled in the format N#H, where # is a number (an octave) and H is an hexadecimal number (from 0 to F). The console will also print the list of all these templates so you can easily find them. If this is *unchecked* then the notes will be written like the other channels.
+* **Auto-Sync**: This option forces tracks to sync to the chosen notetype by maintaining a "ledger" of all the roundings being done to the note lengths; when the rounding exceeds a certain threshold, the next note is forced to round down or up to fit with the grid. This thus **guarantees all tracks will sync globally**. However, since some notes are forcibly cut short or prolonged, there might be occasional notes that have the wrong lengths or get their length set to 0 (especially if they are very short). The code requires a certain notetype to be chosen as the "base" for which all notes are rounded to (this is the checked notetype on the list).
+If you're unsure which notetype is the best, for 95% of the cases 12 is the ideal option, but there can be certain songs or parts that require other notetypes. You can try using 6 and 3 for parts with very short notes, and 8 or 4 for sections with triplets. Smaller notetypes might lead to a more accurate translation, but it will also lead to longer code. A major downside to using Auto-Sync is that it will "eat up" notes that don't fit (triplets and short notes specifically). You can allow other notetypes (more on that on the next section) which detects these notes, but this may lead to *too many* notes using these notetypes, so I don't recommend it.
+Nevertheless, **this is the recommended option** unless you know what you're doing.
+* **Allowed Notetypes**: This is the list of notetypes that are accepted by the program. *Checked* means it's considered a base notetype and the program always tries to round notes to fit this notetype. A *square* means the notetype is allowed but not as the base; essentially, only when notes fall exactly to the expected length does the program change the notetype.
+* **Ignore First Track**: If this is *checked*, then your MIDI files need to have 5 different tracks; the first Track (track 0) only serves to grab the tempo of the song and will be ignored otherwise. If this option is *unchecked*, then you MIDI file needs to have 4 tracks exactly.
+* **Noise Templates**: If this is *checked*, the noise channel's notes will be have placeholder notes instead of the usual; for this reason these files will not work directly. These notes are labelled in the format N#H, where # is a number (an octave) and H is an hexadecimal number (from 0 to F). This option also creates a text file in the same directory with the various templates used in the file. If this is *unchecked* then the notes will be written like the other channels.
 
 ## Instructions
-* Download the .zip file in the releases. It contains the executable, an example midi.txt file and this Readme.
-* Alternatively you can compile the tool from the .cs files provided.
-* The following instructions won't go into how to put custom music into pokecrystal. If you don't know how to do it, you can follow [this guide](https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal/wiki/Add-a-new-music-song).
+* Download the .zip file in the releases. It contains the executable and a bunch of other files I don't know what to do with.
+* The following instructions won't go into how to put custom music into pokecrystal / pokered. If you don't know how to do it, you can follow [this guide](https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal/wiki/Add-a-new-music-song).
 #### Prepare your MIDI
-* The MIDI needs to be have precisely 5 or 4 tracks, depending on whether TempoTrack is true or false in the config file. If you're using the TempoTrack true, then Track 0 of your MIDI will be ignored. The order of the other tracks is Pulse 1, Pulse 2, Wave and Noise. I recommend using AnvilStudio to delete and rearrange the tracks and MIDIEditor to switch notes between tracks if needed.
+* The MIDI needs to be have precisely 5 or 4 tracks, depending on whether you decide to ignore first track or not. The order of the other tracks is Pulse 1, Pulse 2, Wave and Noise. I recommend using AnvilStudio to delete and rearrange the tracks and MIDIEditor to switch notes between tracks if needed.
 * AnvilStudio also has a feature to split tracks with multiple channels into separate tracks; you can use this in case you have all your notes in the same track.
 * **It is recommended** that you only have one note playing at the same time in each track, but the tool still works if there are concurrent notes playing. If the notes start at the same time, only one of them will be considered but exactly which one may be a bit random. If one starts as the previous is still playing, the first one will end and the new one will play again. This latter feature is particularly useful for the noise channel, so feel free to keep all the notes there and see where it gets you.
 If two songs are playing at the same time, the output will include junk information from the other notes, like octaves and intensities, which while ignored by the game, will increase the length of the code unnecessarily.
-#### Convert into a .txt file
-* Go to [this site](http://flashmusicgames.com/midi/mid2txt.php) and upload your MIDI track. **Make sure you select the Delta timestamp option**.
-* After the MIDI file is converted into text, copy it and save to a file named *midi.txt*.
 #### Convert into ASM
-* Place your midi.txt file into the same folder as the MIDI2ASM executable and run it.
 * Open the executable and change your options in the GUI. If a message pops up, follow its instructions.
+* Select your MIDI file using the Select File button.
 * If the conversion was successful, a message will pop-up saying the conversion was successful.
-* You should now have a *out.asm* file in the same folder.
-* If you selected the Noise Templates option, there should be a *noisetemplates.txt* file in the same folder containing all noise notes detected and the templates for easy replacement.
+* You should now have a *out.asm* file in the same folder (or with the same name as your MIDI file if you disabled that option).
+* If you selected the Noise Templates option, there should be a *out-nt.txt* file in the same folder containing all noise notes detected and the templates for easy replacement.
 * The music channels are all named *Placeholder* so you can easily replace the name with whatever you want.
-### Manually fixing notes
-* I have 100% confidence the note conversion works correctly. However, notetype changes are really tricky to do automatically. It works most of the time, but one badly translated note duration is enough to make the tracks not sync up properly.
-* After the output file is written, the command line will have the total length of each track, along with the length they *all* should have. If these numbers don't match exactly, this means some rounding error made some notes shorter or longer than they should be. Even still, it's possible that the rounding errors cancel each other out and the tracks won't sync up in a specific section.
-* In conclusion, you'll have to listen to the music and try to figure out which notes might be off.
 
 ## Missing Features / Improvements 
-* Read directly from a MIDI file. I'm not planning on doing this any time soon, seeing as it works fine at the moment and it would be a ton of work to implement.
-* Implementing an option to convert to the new music commands.
 * Expand the program to include global manipulation of the finished code, such as increase overall intensity for a certain channel.
 * Loops, seeing as some MIDIs have loop information integrated.
 
 ## Can I help?
-* YES! This is, technically, my first foray into an actual programming language. As such, I guarantee that the code is awful. For that reason alone, feel free to suggest changes to make the code cleaner or suggest fixes.
 * Feel free to leave feedback wherever I might see it.
 
-> TriteHexagon. Updated on 2020-6-17
+> TriteHexagon. Updated on 2020-10-06