• VGMTool 2
• A text editor, eg. Notepad
• A program that can make Zip files, eg:
  • WinZip
  • WinRAR
  • Loads of alternatives
• The ability to (and knowledge how to) send emails with attachments

This might seem obvious... if you want to submit a VGM set, make sure it's complete. Maybe you should ask someone if you've missed any tracks. Also, while making it, you should probably mention it in the SMS Power Music forum, to save two people from making VGMs for the same game unnecessarily. It's up to you to decide what counts as a music track, rather than a sound effect. If the game includes sampled audio (voices), you might consider adding those to the pack as a "bonus" - just record them with sample-accuracy.

Make sure all the tags match, so the same information isn't presented in different ways. Check that you've got the editing correct - try asking someone else to listen to the tracks, since they might notice something you haven't. Check your spelling and capitalisation in the tags. Basically check everything.

Rename all of the files so their titles are in the form Game Name - Track Title.vgz, where the names are those you put in the GD3 tags - you might want to shorten the game name if it's long, for example I put Wonder Boy III: the Dragon's Trap in my WB3 VGMs' GD3 tags but just Wonder Boy III in the filenames.

Click here to download a sample description file. Here's what it contains:

***********************************************
* VGM music package                           *
* http://www.smspower.org/music               *
***********************************************

Game name:           Super Mega Race-O-Matic
System:              Sega Master System
Complete music dump: Yes
FM:                  No

Original author:     I.P. Freely
Publisher:           Sega
Package created by:  Al Koholic
Package version:     1.00

Files, in approximate game order:

Name                                Length:
                                    Total  Loop
Example looping track               1:52   1:34
Example non-looping track           0:16   -

Notes:
Example information file

• Load each file in turn in VGMTool to allow you to copy data from there when necessary.
• If you don't know what to put in a field (eg. you don't know who the author is), leave it blank.
• The version should be less than 1.00 if the collection is not complete (best possible track titles, all tracks), incremented by 0.01 for minor changes and bumped up to the next 0.10 step for bigger changes.
• Put just the track title in the Name column, to match what's in the track title field in that file's GD3 tag.
• Try to put the files in the best order you can, so the title screen comes first, the levels are in order, and the ending music is last (or nearly last). There's some music which is harder to decide where to put it (eg. Game Over), just put it where it seems best to you.
• In the Length columns, you want to put the total length of the track (Total) and the length of the looped section (Loop). To find these, you can load the VGM file in VGMTool; it'll tell you the two values to use as shown here - the Total box shows the total length (in m:ss format), and the Loop box shows the loop length, or '-' if the track does not loop.
• Put anything you feel is relevant in the Notes field, or put '-' (without quotes) if you don't want to put anything.
• Don't use tabs! Use spaces to fill the gaps, because if you use tabs it is likely not to line up when displayed in another program.

Now you should make a playlist to load all of the files in Winamp, in the same (logical) order as you listed them in the description file.

This is easy - just create a plain text file containing the filenames of each file on a new line. Save it as Game Name.m3u. Load it in Winamp to check that you got the names right, as it will display Unable to open [filename] next to ones that are wrong.

You might be tempted to do this in Winamp, with its easy drag-and-drop reordering. If you do this, you must edit the file afterwards because Winamp adds lots of extended tags which affect the track title and length display. Open the .m3u in a text editor and delete every line starting with #.

Now put everything (.vgz files, description .txt file and playlist .m3u file) into a .zip archive. Rename this file to Game_Name.zip - the same as before, but use underscores instead of spaces.

Then e-mail it to Bock. It'll be examined by the SMS Power VGM experts; if we can think of anything that could make it better we'll tell you, and when we're satisfied, it'll be added to the VGM Archive.

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