Additional files
Here are described the format of some additional files to include in the package.
Playlist
- This is a file named "Game Name.m3u", matching the VGM filenames, in m3u media playlist format. M3U is a simple playlist format, supported by most software players and a lot of hardware players.
- It lists the filenames all of the VGM files in the pack, in the order they ought to play, one per line.
- It must use the Windows-1252 character set, with CRLF line breaks. See note 1
- If you make the playlist using a media player, please edit it in a text editor to remove any lines starting with the character '#'.
Example: Attach:playlist.m3u.txt (Remove .txt extension for submition)
Description file
- This is a file named "Game Name.txt", matching the VGM filenames, in plain text format.
- It must be Windows-1252 encoding with CRLF line breaks. See note 1
- Do NOT use tabs. Use spaces for indentation.
- Lines should not be longer than 48 characters.
- Fields in the description file should be a superset of what is used in the VGMs' tags.
- "Package created by" means a superset of the "Creator" tags.
- "Song list" includes the English track name of every music file, it's lenght and loop time, if needed.
You may want to use vgm_stat to generate this list.
- "Notes", include any info you want here. Include only information related to the game, the music, or the file creation process.
- "Package history", add a short description of the current package release.
- Example line: 1.00 yyyy/mm/dd author: Description
- "1.00" is the release number. Only a complete music rip of the game can be a version 1.xx. A previous or pendant of approval package must be marked as 0.xx. Updates to released packages should be numbered this way:
- Least significant decimal number (x.x1) marks corrections to the tags or info of the game.
- Most significant decimal number (x.1x) marks corrections to the music: a trim, loop update, ...
- (1.xx) is increased if a new song is discovered and added to the package, or an important update to the package is done. (like the current updates?)
- yyyy/mm/dd is the date of the update.
- author is the updater's name/nick.
- Description is a very sort description of the update. Check the description file for some examples.
Example: Attach:new_description_3.txt
Image file
- This is a file named "Game Name.png", matching the VGM filenames, in PNG image format.
- It contains a representative image for the game, generally based on the game's title screen.
- Image creation:
- Screenshots from the latest version of Meka are recommended.
- Must be pixel-sharp, i.e. not filtered/resized/resampled.
- Image editing:
- Image must be altered so the aspect ratio is 1:1 (i.e. the image is square), to be more like LP and CD covers.
- Game name should be at least 8 pixels away from the image edge.
- Should be edited to remove unwanted text (such as "Press Start" and copyright details).
- Image optimization:
- Run through a PNG optimiser. PNGOUT is recommended.
Notes
Note 1: The best option is to download the example playlist and edit it (don't create new one and copy-paste example's contents) or a copy of it (save as ...). Different Operative Systems and text editors use different text encoding standards. Most plain text Windows editors (like Notepad) produce Windows-1252 with CRLF to mark a line end. Unixes use UTF-8 and use LF to mark line end.
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