[Mika]

Hey!

Does anyone know how to play old game MIDI files like the computer used to play them? I think the problem is related to wavetable synth part at the current soundcards. Is there anyway to force the old FM synth back on? I tried changing this option in Windows XP sound card configuration, but this did not help.

What I would really like to hear are the Dune II midis and Falcon 3.0's a.mid & v.mid as they were in the old days. That weapon loading music would actually fit well with Freespace athmosphere.

Mika

[Flipside]

Heh, part of the problem is actually the improvement in soundcard Wavetables, so that stuff which sounded great on more 'computer generated' sounding banks sounds bloody awful on the newer high quality ones

It should just be a matter of playing the .mid file with Windows Media player Classic

If you want to use those files in things like FS2 though, you will need to convert them into audio .OGG files, which takes either recording your audio output or a program like Cakewalk or Cubase.

[CP5670]

I don't think there is any simple way to play the midi files like that. I generally just run these games in Dosbox (which can emulate the SB16 OPL3 FM) and record the music directly.

It should just be a matter of playing the .mid file with Windows Media player Classic

That doesn't do anything different. It will still run off the currently selected MIDI device in Windows.

[Mika]

Yes, the wavetable synth makes the old midis sounds usually quite horrible. However, I recalled trying to play these mids even in Windows 3.11 - during that time I had SB64 and Falcon and Dune music sounded as it was supposed to play in DOS. But Windows player didn't sound even close to that.

Bah, I was hoping there would be a easy workaround. I'm not sure if Falcon 3.0 will ever run in DosBox due to high base memory requirement (602 k is minimum). Could be worth trying though. Media Player Classic did not help, true.

How do you exactly record music when DosBox is playing something? Setting mic next to the speaker?

Mika

[CP5670]

Set the recording device in the volume control panel to "wave" and run a sound recording program in the background. Dosbox will struggle to maintain a decent framerate with some of those newer DPMI games, but the music often plays just fine. I've recorded a few files from Descent in this way.

[Shade]

I'm fairly sure Dosbox includes the ability to record sound output to a .wav file without you needing to jump through any hoops such as using an external program.

[Edit] Yep, remembered right. Ctrl-F6 to start/stop sound recording in dosbox.

[Mika]

Incredible!

DosBox 0.65 was able to run Falcon 3.0 straight from the scratch, no need to adjust any other parameter than CPU cycles! How did they manage to do that, I wonder! In any case, it's really good to hear some good old tunes from those titles. I wonder why they don't do game music like that any more?

The last game which really hit deep on the sound department was Jets'n'Guns. With Machinae Supremacy playing music for side scroller, you can imagine the results. The music sounds even better when actually playing the game, an effect from which I'll always remember Commodore 64.

Anyways, thanks for the help,
Mika

[Herra Tohtori]

VDMSound is also rather gold program. It only emulates sound, not the entire DOS environment, which makes sense with some games that only have sound difficulties with standard NT DOS wrapper thingamaroo.

[CP5670]

VDMSound would actually be really bad for this sort of thing. Its timer for the FM emulation is quite messed up and the music in many games doesn't play at the right speed. It also hasn't been updated in something like five years.

[Cyker]

Damnit... there was a WinAMP plugin that took MIDI and passed it through an OPL2, 3 or 4 FM synth which would have been the sort of thing you wanted. Can't find hide nor hair of it 'tho

I've never liked FM MIDI much 'tho, always DOS MIDI stuff through my AWE32 back then

MIDIs sound good in wavetable *IF* you can find a high-quality but balanced sample bank. The Chaos and Utopia SoundFont banks aren't bad, but the original 1MB AWE32 samplebank had the perfect balance (Although it sounded a bit crap for rock/metal-style MIDIs )

Well written FM Music was much better, but unreproducable without DOSbox or a real OPL-capable soundcard - They'd tweak the FM oscillators as the thing played for some really cool effects that static MIDI can't do.

[Mika]

Hehe, I was looking for WinAmp plug-in, but I found no matches.

I had AWE64 during that time. These files would play almost the same regardless of sound card you used. I'm not sure that indicates that some neaty tricks with sound banks were used in those games.

I can't help to wonder how much better game music could be produced, if they hire MIDI composers. Those files are minimalistic, yet I'm amazed how crystal clear sound current sound cards can give.

Mika