## mks4agb System Overview

INDEX mks4agb System Overview

      (1) The mks4agb System
      (2) The AGB Hardware Sound Circuits
      (3) Music Players
      (4) Background Music and Sound Effects

#### The mks4agb System

A game sound development system specifically for AGB. The sound engineer does three things.
- Creation of Waveform Data (AIFF Format)
- Creation of Song Data (in Standard MIDI Format)
- Writing to the Setup File (mks4agb.ini)
The mks4agb system treats these files as input data and outputs Sound Object File groups. Then the game sounds can be played back simply by linking them to a game program.

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#### The AGB Hardware Sound Circuits

The AGB hardware is equipped with a sound source circuit called "Direct Sound," which outputs sampled sounds in stereo as well as a sound source circuit called "Compatible Sound" that outputs a sound equivalent to the conventional Game Boy(DMG/CGB). In this system both of them can be used at the same time when playing songs.
A conceptual diagram shows these sound circuits in the AGB Hardware.

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Figure: Conceptual Diagram of AGB Hardware Sound Circuits

#### Music Players

The programs that play the songs and sound effects in this system during the actual games are called the "Music Players." If you compare the song data to a CD (Compact Disc), then you could say that a "Music Player" is like the "CD Player" that you play CDs on.
Note that this system allows you to set up multiple Music Players and that each of them can be made to play different songs at the same time. For example, you could have one open for background music and three open for sound effects, allowing you to have three different types of sound effects while listening to music in the background.

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Figure: Conceptual Diagram of Actual Performance

#### Background Music and Sound Effects

In this system, there is absolutely no distinction between background music, sound effects and other kinds of sounds in the song data.

Whether it is a work with full orchestration or a sound effect like the beep of a button being pushed, all song data is constructed according to the same format.
If we take the "Conceptual Diagram of Actual Performance" as an example, the song "x" might be background music and the songs "y" and "z" could be sound effects.

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Starting with the next section, the procedure for actually using the mks4agb system will be explained with the data used in the demonstration. Next: Installing the mks4agb System

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