DescentBB

I have an AWE64, and a ISA slot to use it in.

gimme a week or so.

As do I.

I'll go ahead and start recording too. fliptw maybe you can do the FM version? I can do the wavetable version. I have unlimited space available on my GameSpy hosted site so space isn't a problem for me.

Btw, not to be the MIDI police or anything, but \"SoundFont\" refers to when wavetables started getting stored in software on the computer back when the SoundBlaster Live came out - the AWE32 and AWE64 didn't use \"SoundFonts\" as they had a hardware wavetable.

last time I checked, I could load soundfonts onto my AWE64. only 512k worth tho.

Right. (The reason why I tried using the 2mbgmgs soundfont with Timidity is because that was a provided soundfont on the driver cd and also it was the soundfont I chose to load onto my AWE32 back in the day.)

Where the SB Live takes a different approach with soundfonts is loading the soundfonts into system RAM instead of onto the sound card's RAM.

mvoed to tech forum for the win

I recorded the track for D2 level 02:

http://www.planetdescent.com/lyris/d2_level_02.asr (right-click & save)

Rename the extension to MP3. Let me know if this sounds like what you heard in-game. Recorded it straight off the MIDI ripped from the game using DTX2.

So that was recorded in game, or did you rip the midi and use the midi file for playback using the AWE32?

It's close if not exact (which means it may be exact - it has been a LONG time since I heard it last). I may be hallucinating the effect I seem to recall.

Luckily, I have now purchased an AWE32 for $5.50 and will soon get to see what it sounded like natively, in DOS. And also the OPL one too.

I think I have an old AWE64 somewhere in my basement... I should use it to build a legacy box sometime, but every time I have enough parts to make one I forget or do something else with the parts because I am lazy.

Hmm, it looks like after playing around, I can get more original sounding output from Timidity by using a soundfont named 1mgm.sf2, which is essentially the awe32 ROM. Still isn't exact to Asrale's yet.

I don't think Asrale's was in-game... I'm building my legacy box probably monday (when the AWE32 arrives), then I will see how D2 was supposed to sound!

I've uploaded newer versions of the ones I did before here:
http://www.jeffsplace.net/descent/

Asrale, I'm 99% sure that the guitar in game12 in the URL above is extremely close to being right, if not exactly right, so I'm curious if you wouldn't mind recording that one for comparison. If it does sound like the one above, it looks like we're set to go. If not, we may have to further investigate, or perhaps I'll need to get my memory checked.

original_jynx wrote:I don't think Asrale's was in-game... I'm building my legacy box probably monday (when the AWE32 arrives), then I will see how D2 was supposed to sound!

Cool. I am expecting *some* discrepancy in the real deal vs. Timidity even after everything is done right with Timidity, so a small discrepancy alone shouldn't cause too much concern.

original_jynx, yes that was recorded off the MIDI.

Jeff250 wrote:I've uploaded newer versions of the ones I did before here:
http://www.jeffsplace.net/descent/

Asrale, I'm 99% sure that the guitar in game12 in the URL above is extremely close to being right, if not exactly right, so I'm curious if you wouldn't mind recording that one for comparison. If it does sound like the one above, it looks like we're set to go. If not, we may have to further investigate, or perhaps I'll need to get my memory checked.

I downloaded your game12.mp3 and the instrument sounds are identical. Yes that's confirmed. Whoa, freaky. I can't believe you got that result without an AWE32/AWE64! I've gotta check out this Timidity program.

Is it possible to set up Timidity as one of the MIDI ports on the computer? Would be awesome if I could use its synthesis engine in my MIDI sequencing...

Asrale wrote:original_jynx, yes that was recorded off the MIDI.

So that was gotten from playing the game, or from playing a MIDI file ripped from the game data?

There's an issue here, because it appears D2 loads instrument data in game, which we would expect would not be represented when simply playing the MIDI files.

Asrale wrote:I downloaded your game12.mp3 and the instrument sounds are identical. Yes that's confirmed. Whoa, freaky. I can't believe you got that result without an AWE32/AWE64! I've gotta check out this Timidity program.

Is it possible to set up Timidity as one of the MIDI ports on the computer? Would be awesome if I could use its synthesis engine in my MIDI sequencing...

You can do this on Linux, not sure on Windows. When you're using Timidity as your realtime MIDI synth, it really has no advantages over a hardware synthesizer, and I suspect if you loaded 1mgm.sf2 with a SB Live that it would sound very similar. Where it does come in handy is for people with no hardware MIDI synths, such as on this laptop. And outside of realtime playback, it's also useful for stuff like being able to digitally convert MIDI's into wave's.

original_jynx wrote:There's an issue here, because it appears D2 loads instrument data in game, which we would expect would not be represented when simply playing the MIDI files.

I don't think that there's any explicit reason to think that Descent does load instrument data, but I think that, since it could, it should be ruled out before anyone takes the trouble of recording all of the mp3's.

nothing prevents descent froms switching instrument banks tho.

PS - Jeff, everytime I try to access your site, it says your account is suspended!

Might be taking an usually long time for the new name server to update with your ISP.

I don't know why everyone likes the music of Descent as rendered by anything using a wavetable. I guess I hold greatest sentiment to the OPL3 FM synthesized versions, especially D1 shareware's music, cuz that's what I was playing for hours a day every day way back when.

Here's a method that no one's yet mentioned... DOSBox! Make sure the CPU type in dosbox.conf is set to dynamic, otherwise you won't be able to get the cycles parameter much higher than 25000 (ie, 25MHz emulation). With it set to dynamic, I can set cycles to 66000 on my stock X2 4200+ with no problems.

Descent uses the OPL2/3's programmability to change the instrument sounds to its liking. That's why the FM tracks sound crappy on anything but an OPL2/3-based synth in-game (even a MIDI player outputting with an OPL chip won't sound right because the instrument changes simply aren't there). Thankfully, however, DOSBox however has near-perfect emulation of the OPL chips. It's just beautiful. Better still, it's fully digital, so you don't get any unintended analog noise. Your recording will even have DC bias in it (which I recommend removing prior to normalization).

I currently have recordings of D1 levels 1, 2, 3, 6, and endlevel, and D2 menu, 2, and 3, and I'm working on getting all the rest ever since I discovered the wonders of setting the DOSBox core type to dynamic (66mhz emulation as opposed to 22mhz with normal ). They are all authentic beyond belief. Unfortunately, I have nowhere to upload them...

Remaining technical details: I had to increase the OPL and mixer sampling rates to 4x normal to get some of them to sound right though, especially the high pitched instruments in D1L2. Keep in mind that at a 176,400 Hz sampling rate, you have 2 bytes per sample per channel and 2 channels, so it's around 690KB/sec. 5 minutes will be over 200MB as a raw .wav file. Also, you can go to other windows while it's recording if you don't have it in fullscreen; even though sometimes you can't hear the sound anymore, it's still being generated and recorded. I've found that recording with ctrl-F6 works best with blocksize set to 4096 and prebuffer set to 10. The audio in-game sounds horrid, but the recording will be crystal clear, unless something isn't working right. Setting the blocksize to 8192 mostly fixes the in-game audio for me (I'm running on Vista RTM though, so YMMV), but causes imperfections in the recording. If you're picky about making sure one track's long instruments don't \"bleed\" into another's (if you're not you should be!), play the endlevel music through until it's silent, then you can start the next track and be certain that nothing undesirable is in it.

My card arrived today. It was, instead of a stand-alone AWE32, an AWE32 upgrade card. I have a problem. I don't have the necessary interface to make it work on the motherboard (which has a built-in Yamaha XG sound chip on it), neither do I have an SB16 to interface the card with.

What should I do? Should I purchase an SB16 to make this sucker go, and if so, which model? Or should I go for a stand-alone AWE32, or maybe an AWE64?

Suggestions welcome!

I would get a stand alone card, less possibility of failure.

Preliminary results are that the authentic, in-game midi on the AWE64 is pretty darn good.

Ok, I need a dos refresher course. The AWE64 is PnP, and I have it in a PII 350, with a spanking new installation of Windows 98 SE. I need a config.sys and autoexec.bat to do stuff in DOS, like access the CD drive, set up the memory managers (himem, emm386) and set up the AWE64 for dos compatibility.

I tried to do this by memory and failed (windows has ceased booting, and no error messages).

Any help would be appreciated.

AWE 64 Gold Getting Started:
http://ccftp.creative.com/manualdn/Manu ... nglish.pdf

AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS Commands:
http://www.computerhope.com/ac.htm

Thanks for the links!

Next question: does anyone have the original drivers for the AWE64? (although it's a AWE64 Value, will the soundfont stuff still work, as in use system memory?)

Answer - nevermind, found them here: excessively long url fixed -Krom

On a side note, you shouldn't need DOS CDROM drivers for Windows 98, there was a registry key somewhere that disabled the Windows 32 bit protected mode driver if there was a DOS driver loading. I think it was the key \"NOIDE\" around HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CURRENTCONTROLSET\\SERVICES\\VDX\\IOS

If that key is there, delete the key and comment out the DOS cdrom device driver from config.sys and the mscdex.exe from autoexec.bat.

Well, I think my problem was I added \"devicehigh=c:\\windows\\mscdex.exe\" - that's verbatim - to my config.sys file (oops). I'll fix it when I get home from work

I basically want to have a pure DOS config to boot into so as to see if there is a difference in MIDI playback in-game between DOS and the Win9x version of Descent II. The CD rom is not available if I exit Windows, or boot straight to DOS (\"command prompt only\"). Tried it. D'oh.

Man, it has been a long time since I screwed around with DOS.

There was never a difference in the MIDI when I used to do that. You can set up different configs for booting into DOS only vs booting through and then exiting Windows. After Windows exits there is another file I think called msdos.bat or config.dos and autoexec.dos or something like that where you can tell it to load mscdex.exe. Generally the best way to run the DOS versions of D1 and D2 was from inside Windows 9x though.

Yes, I'm finding that's so. However, I now have a fully-functioning DOS only setup so if I need it for some game or other which might have problems in Windows, I can do it.

... it actually seems that the MIDI sounds a little better from INSIDE Windows, go figure... now I just need to wait for my copy of D1 to get here!

Hey, is there a way to load a 2 MB soundfont, even though I'm using an AWE64 Value which has like 512k DRAM, in windows?