Mac Bug - cannot open MIDI file aliases

Trouble with Synthesia, your keyboard, or adapter? Think you found a bug?
When describing problems, always mention your OS and game version (shown at the bottom of the title screen).

If your keyboard has USB or MIDI ports, there is a tremendously high chance (>99%) it will work with Synthesia. See what you'll need on the keyboards page.
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MarkJ
Posts: 4

Post by MarkJ »

I have a large number of MIDI files and would like to create a separate folder of file aliases of selected MIDI files for playback in Synthesia. Although the Synthesia file browser shows MIDI aliases, the 'Error loading Song!' warning is shown and the song can't be opened.

The alias is created using the Finder Make Alias menu option.

Mac OS 10.14.6
Synthesia 10.8.5687
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

I'm able to reproduce this. It looks like macOS aliases are similar in spirit to the .lnk shortcut files that Windows uses.

Let me see if I can sneak a fix for this in at the last minute before Synthesia 10.9 goes out the door...
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

I think I just got this up and running, so it should make it into 10.9. On Windows and macOS you can now drag .lnk or aliases right onto the app window and they load the destination file instead.

And on macOS, anything with a recognized file extension is checked to see if it is an alias file during the scan for songs. If you use the orange "All Songs (grouped by folder)" view in the song list, the song will be shown in the same place (and with the same name) as the alias file. But for the purposes of choosing it from the list and for the progress number shown next to it, Synthesia will silently load the real file.

(The only caveat is that this particular feature requires macOS 10.10 or later, so you're already all set on 10.14.)
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