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Re: [pygame] MIDI music for games

Sami Hangaslammi wrote:

More specific to the format here, but I'd recommend against actual MIDI.

Could you elaborate on this one? Is it just the limitations of the
format itself that irk you, or are there some pitfalls in the
SDL/pygame mid support?
It's the SDL support that is weakest. Not long ago, MIDI support was only handled through Timidity. Timidity is a software MIDI engine, but it requires a huge collection of music samples. Timidity is not installed by default on most distros.

More recently, SDL can support 'native' MIDI playback on windows, and I believe the support is done/coming/soon for 'native' linux MIDI as well.

Anyways, the problem is that the samples are not included with MIDI. SDl's support isn't that great so it's not going to work for many people. Plus it will end up sounding a bit different on any given system. Tracker formats like MOD include the instrument samples with the tracks.