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midi2lua is a specialized utility that parses Standard MIDI Files (.mid) into Lua data tables for use in gaming, automated performances, and embedded systems. It enables the conversion of MIDI events into playable scripts for platforms like Roblox and allows for procedural music generation in other Lua-based applications. You can read about the foundational technology of MIDI in this article: Beat Shaper Blog .
Instead of playing a static audio file, a Lua script can interpret a MIDI file to play notes via a synthesizer within the game engine, allowing the music to change based on game events. midi2lua
MIDI is based on Ticks (Pulses Per Quarter Note). Games run on real-time seconds. A good midi2lua script will parse the meta-events (Microseconds per quarter note) and pre-calculate the absolute time in seconds for every event.
Imagine a simple Middle C note played for one second. midi2lua might output: This public link is valid for 7 days
If you are converting for a specific video game soundfont (like a ROM hacker), you can map MIDI Program Changes (Patch numbers) to specific Lua sound function calls.
-- During conversion if program_change == 1 then instrument = "acoustic_grand_piano" end Can’t copy the link right now
Familiarize yourself with MIDI messages: Note On/Off events (containing pitch and velocity), Control Change messages (used for knobs and faders), Program Change (instrument selection), and System Exclusive (device-specific commands).
The core of this functionality is the midiconverter function, which takes the file path of a MIDI file and generates a new .dat file containing the parsed musical data. A more advanced version, midiconverterEx , allows for more control by creating a Lua object directly, which can then be used to manipulate the playback data. Key methods include:
: A high-level library that allows developers to read and write MIDI files directly within Lua. It abstracts complex technicalities like delta time and NoteOn / NoteOff signals into a human-readable API.
Load and play the generated script: