Combining SE and ME

[udime123]

Is it possible to remove the ME category and place Music Effects in the SE or BGM indexes (as appropriate)?

I find it somewhat annoying that there are four sound volume types that must be individually changed in the Options Screen, especially given how most of them can be grouped together. I don't know anyone who would lower BGS but not BGM or vice versa, and I feel if it's a mixing problem (i.e. sound effects are too quiet compared to the music) I feel that's a problem on the developer's side and the player shouldn't be expected to remedy this themselves in the option menu.

Now, obviously the player should be given the option, but I'd like to group them so you only have to worry about Sound Effect volume and Music volume (maybe Voice volume as well if I decide to take that route). Part of the reason I also want to remove the ME section is so I can group other types of sound effects (such as Voice Effects) in there as well.

Is there a way I can do this? Or, better yet, do you guys have a good reason why I shouldn't do this?

 

[Silva]

I can't think of a reason why you shouldn't if it's something you want to do (someone else might though). If you did want to do it you could just move all your ME from their folder into SE's folder. Then you would just need to customise your options menu so that either "ME volume" didn't appear or was replaced by "Voice volume" (something to that effect anyway), and start saving your voice effects to the ME folder. You could do this easily with Yanfly's Options Core:

http://yanfly.moe/2018/04/13/yep-165-options-core-rpg-maker-mv/

EDIT: I suppose one reason for not doing this is ease of finding your sound/music effects, but if that's not an issue I'd say knock yourself out.

 

[udime123]

I can't think of a reason why you shouldn't if it's something you want to do (someone else might though). If you did want to do it you could just move all your ME from their folder into SE's folder. Then you would just need to customise your options menu so that either "ME volume" didn't appear or was replaced by "Voice volume" (something to that effect anyway), and start saving your voice effects to the ME folder. You could do this easily with Yanfly's Options Core:

http://yanfly.moe/2018/04/13/yep-165-options-core-rpg-maker-mv/

EDIT: I suppose one reason for not doing this is ease of finding your sound/music effects, but if that's not an issue I'd say knock yourself out.

This works pretty well, but one issue I have is that the Victory Theme is considered a music effect instead of a BGM. Because of this, if I were to remove the ME option or disguise it as "Voice", everything would work as expected but the victory theme would still be tied to ME which would cause some problems, as you'd expect.

 

[Silva]

I don't think there's any way to get around that normally so I've tried my hand at making a plugin for this. I'll admit that it's my first attempt at making a plugin and hasn't got all the options I would've liked but feel free to give it a whirl. It will allow you to use SE for Victory and Defeat, as well as allowing you to use either SE or BGM for Game Over.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/76km7y1lvsuxqm0/SeAsSystemMe.js?dl=0

 

[Shaz]

BGM and BGS loop. ME and SE don't. You probably don't want to put an ME/SE into the BGM folder.

Why not do it the other way around and put all your SE files into the ME folder, then turn the SE folder into your voice folder?

 

[Aesica]

One thing to thing about is that ME and SE behave differently, in that ME sounds will temporarily suppress the BGM while they play while SE does not. This is so your battle victory tune doesn't overlap with the other music currently playing, so any SE sounds played as ME sounds would probably clash with the current BGM track.

Honestly, unless you want to get neck-deep in making your own plugin to add a sound channel for voice, your best move is to just lump voice effects in with sound effects.

 

[udime123]

One thing to thing about is that ME and SE behave differently, in that ME sounds will temporarily suppress the BGM while they play while SE does not. This is so your battle victory tune doesn't overlap with the other music currently playing, so any SE sounds played as ME sounds would probably clash with the current BGM track.

Honestly, unless you want to get neck-deep in making your own plugin to add a sound channel for voice, your best move is to just lump voice effects in with sound effects.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot more trouble than it's worth. I found it a bit annoying that there are four different sound classifications but upon further inspection they all seem relatively important so I think I'll try making the most of them instead.