Is there a list of GBA games that use Sappy? by TheUltimateKoopa at 9:58 PM EDT on September 24, 2012
So far, the only ones I have, that use sappy are: Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, all Final Fantasy games, Game & Watch Gallery 4/Advance, Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (Mario Bros only), Mario Party Advance, Sonic Advance games, Super Mario Advance, and Wario Land 4.
of what particular interest is this to you? I'm just curious - all games that can be ripped via saptapper should already be at gsf.joshw.info, and will say if they were ripped via Saptapper in their tags.
Actually the reason was this: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=29892&st=0
I'm not talking about ripping gsf files, but the MIDIs from the ROMs. Not all ROMS that have gsf rips use sappy as far as I know, for example, none of the DKC games or BKGR, Metroid games, and others, use sappy, at least I wasn't able to extract any MIDIs from them.
The reason is simply that the program mentioned in that sonic retro thread, basically, rips the MIDIs from the ROM, creates a soundfont from the samples in the rom, and assigns the correct instruments, resulting in a much higher quality sound, for examples: http://soundcloud.com/user796902865/sets/gbamusriper-comparisons
Alright, I understand, and I should probably have been clearer - I meant that it's easy enough to tell if a game you see at the GSF archive was ripped with Saptapper (and should thus be compatible) if you download the set and examine the tags for any minigsf file. Games which would be supported by Saptapper but which were not ripped with it can pretty much all be found at GSF Central and shouldn't be hard to sort through.
I guess I should have directly stated that I'm unaware of any full list of games that use (or don't use) the music driver in such a way they would be compatible with such programs, and there's not much demand for such a thing when you can use a little detective work to look things up on a game-by-game basis.
there aren't literally thousands of sets. There's barely thousands of GBA games when you take out mostly meaningless regional variants. The DS may have just broken ~6000 distinct releases due to the sheer amount of shovelware on the system, but the GBA has just barely gotten past 2800. I'm pretty sure at least a 100 of those are releases featuring two games in a single cart.
The work of looking at all those sets at gsf.joshw.info is pretty slim in comparison to going through all those GBA releases again and finding out which ones use the driver in a compatible way, and even in the most unexpected scenario you would certainly find less than a dozen such games that aren't already at that archive. The vast majority of sets there were automatically ripped with saptapper and optimized/timed with gsfopt. It pretty much is the list you're looking for - there just happen to be an additional 10-15% of entries that won't suit your purposes, whatever they are.
I'm sorry, but I can't even conceive of what you could be doing that this method of finding applicable games would be in any way insufficient.
As Dais! already pointed out, your best "list" is gsf.joshw.info. Yes, you'll have to do the work yourself, but that happens on occasion. Another option (though, essentially still the same thing) is to download all the sets on JoshW's page, extract all of them (you need direct access to the *.minigsf files), and run the xSF Tags extractor (it's a command-line tool. Warning - this is a direct link to the psf_rippers group (I couldn't find this program anywhere else using Google), and I don't know for sure whether it will work or not. It has in the past, but since I'm a member there, that might mean nothing). It will output a text file (*.BAT if I recall correctly) which you can then search (using some search tool that searches within text files) for "saptapper" or "sappy" or something. This does make it a little easier, but essentially, you'll still have to do the work. You can also use VGMToolbox to view/edit xSF tags, but since all you're looking for is a specific word, I'm not sure it'd be the best way to do it.
Short version - Sorry, but it looks like you'll have to get your hands dirty. Use a download manager, grab all the GSF sets, extract them, run the xSF Tag Extractor (you can likely do a mass extraction. *.psf? If not, there's other ways, but I'm in a hurry, and I don't have time to look for them), search through the results, and which ever ones you get a positive hit on, those should be Sappy Driver rips.
Hope that helps. At least with this method, you don't have to load *every* game, individually, into Winamp/XMMS/fb2k (etc.) to view the tags to determine which ones are Sappy rips. Mouser X over and out.
Why do I get the feeling that people are getting the wrong idea? Reading the posts, it seems like people think I'm trying to rip GSFs/miniGSFs. I'm not.
I was only asking about sappy, because of the MIDIs. And recently, someone showed me a link to that topic on Sonic Retro, which, basically, rips the MIDIs from a ROM (if available), as well as the samples, makes a soundfont file from the samples, and then with the correct plug ins and foobar2000, you can select the plug in, and then play the MIDIs, and it'll automatically play with the correct samples, but in a higher quality than normally posssible, with either the GBA itself, or any GSFs:
I don't think you're trying to rip GSF files, and I'm pretty sure Mouser X doesn't think that either. We understand what you are doing - I tried it out myself on some games earlier today.
We're trying to figure out what additional information you could hope to gain from a complete list of games which use the compatible engine/driver that you can't get from gsf.joshw.info. I'm sorry, but I'm simply unaware of any such list, and basically every game that would be compatible is already there, so you can just look there to see if a game is probably compatible. Knurek (I think) already went through the GBA romset and used Saptapper on all the games, so if it can be ripped automatically, it should be in that index, and therefore it's a likely candidate for using with GBAMusRiper.
Here is an outdated, incomplete list of theoretically compatible games: http://www.caitsith2.com/gsf/ofslist.txt (it includes some games which aren't compatible due to not fully using the driver, such as the aforementioned Metroid games, or Pyuu to Fuku)
If you can find a game on that list that is not present in the GSF archive but can have audio data ripped via Saptapper and/or GBAMusRiper, I will be rather surprised.
I may be coming across as difficult or obtuse, and I apologize if so, but I know what you're trying to do with GBAMusRiper. I'm just not understanding why you can't look up the games you're interested in and use the above method to check if they're compatible.
Ironically, I got what TUK meant the moment I saw the first page of the topic he linked. And quite frankly, I think the GBAMusRiper is onto something. Namely getting GBA soundtracks to play "natively" via the power of MIDI and Soundfonts!
The catch: It ONLY works on Sappy-based games. (For now. I hope other sound engines'll somehow make compatibility in the future...)