fdelapena
commented
3 years ago Quick draft notes here:
SoundFont files
Windows MIDI playback uses a DirectMusic component which uses a sound font wavetable bank licensed by Roland (some stripped down ~3 MB Sound Canvas version with GM/GS support) available in a file called GM.DLS, which was being distributed by DirectX and bundled by modern Windows. However, the file includes a txt file which contains a license that explicitly disallows using it on non-Windows operating systems, so consider this if you use it somewhere else at your risk if you want the original music experience out there.
SoundFont suggestions
Soundfonts out there were quite popular between 90s and 2000s, but unfortunately there are lots of sound rips from commercial products created by users, so be warned where the origin is dubious.
Musical Artifacts website has a lot of community provided SoundFont downloads with the "sf2" filter. It features a licensing "gray area" warning when content licensing is not clear, which is cool, apart of other better, classified licenses. But keep in mind the alleged license is still provided by the uploader, so they could be wrong (and there is a high chance a lot of them are!).
There are other places with soundfonts, but licensing and origin of files is not clear or simply not provided, so can't recommend them, including some Internet Archive folders.
Hint: in this site and some others, scc1t2.sf2 and other ~3 MB Roland based sound fonts are likely direct GM.DLS conversions made with Awave Studio or similar software.
For a chiptune-style soundfont GXSCC GM is just 128 KB, so it also suits for memory constrained environments. Note: it is not sure if these samples are directly ripped from a proprietary soundfont from Gashisoft GXSCC (if any) or just carefully created from sample primitives.
Safer (in the legal way) soundfonts, it is suggested audited soundfonts accepted in GNU/Linux distributions, which have stricter requirements, where the content source license should be proven as a free/libre license, no grey areas are allowed. Accepted soundfonts in large well known distros with strict guidelines (Debian, Fedora) are "Fluid" R3 GM/GS and "PersonalCopy" Lite soundfonts.
EasyRPG Player SoundFont support
Currently, EasyRPG Player allows MIDI playback with a user provided soundfont file. The file is expected to be called easyrpg.soundfont, so you can get a sf2 (or sf3 file, if fluidsynth/fluidlite is built with sf3 support), and rename it, then place the file in the same directory where the game executable is located.
calthax
Start collecting information about good and usable sound fonts. Make a dedicated page for this on the website to help users.