DescentBB

Does anyone here, and has anyone here played both Descent 1, and the shareware version of Descent 1?

I grew up playing the Descent 1 demo, and the music was just so epic/memorable.

I recently got around to playing Descent again, and played the full version for the first time. The music did not sound anything like I remembered it. All of the level music sounded muffled/garbled... to put it simply, it sucked.

So, I scoured around the 'Net, and found the Shareware version of Descent 1 (the version I played a lot in my childhood) - the title/game music was dramatically different, and just as awesome as I remembered.

--

It's probably just nostalgia acting on me... but I'm trying to like the music in the full version of Descent, but it just doesn't appeal to me. The Shareware version just feels so much better to me.

Anyway, what are your guys' thoughts on the Descent 1 vs. Descent 1 (Shareware version)'s music?

I'm gonna guess most of you have Descent 1 on hand, so here's link to the Shareware version of Descent.

I wanna know your thoughts on this. I just can't stand the newer soundtrack.

Many thanks.

Really damn late edit: Removed some superfluous emotes, and fixed a typo in the title.

It's exactly the same except for levels 6 and 7, which are nothing but repeats of Descent levels 1 and 2 in the shareware version.

If they sound different, you have your sound card set up wrong in the full version.

ya know DH, there was the whole midi vs FM thing back then. They do sound a tad different. It's the same track, just .. \"rendered\" differently. But I don't know a cound card that makes use of that these days.

MIDI is pretty much all wavetable these days. While a lot of cards/chips don't include a hardware MIDI engine, there are software implementations that are almost as good. The Windows DirectMusic synth is supposedly an almost perfect replica of a Roland Sound Canvas - the same type of synth a lot of this old game music was composed on. FM synthesis never sounded the same from card to card because each one did it differently.

Probably the only manufacturer that uses hardware MIDI to date is Creative Technology. I have a Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit and all the MIDI part needs is an sf2 soundfont bank file, as their cards have always needed; it does not sound cheesy like the frequent software synths that are present in most sound devices today.

Maybe (I could have sworn even Creative had dumped hardware MIDI as well...), but that SoundFont bank got stored in main memory which the Live hammered the PCI bus to access. That was one of the reasons it was such a prick of a card.

I haven't had issues with the PCI bus being hogged by my sound card. Often though I don't have multiple devices demanding use of the bus at once.

My board has 5 PCI slots and an AGP slot. In the PCI slots are:
SB Live! 24-bit
Adaptec SCSI-2 card for my flatbed HP Scanjet 4p
(Geforce 7600GS in the AGP slot)

The rest of the stuff like NIC, USB, etc. is integrated into the chipset.

I don't listen to MIDIs enough to worry about the soundfont hogging the bus, though. The soundfonts that do come with the card are quite small: 8 and 4 MB a piece. Holbred's custom soundfont for Descent stuff is about 30MB, but again, MIDI isn't used enough for it to be a concern.

I must say I have a lot of nostalgia for the Sound Blaster-rendered music. Still feasible, if one runs Setup.exe and later Descentr.exe under DOSbox! Hell yeah!

DXX-Rebirth and XL offer midi-rendered tracks, which MAY sound better/clearer but don't have that... chunkiness which made Sound Blaster version songs so awesome.

As of Full vs Shareware... Full is the very same thing but with over a dozen new songs, so the choice is pretty obvious to me...

My fav tracks: Level 1,2,3,6,7,8,11,12,18,21,22

Warning: Necro-bump.

Xfing wrote:As of Full vs Shareware... Full is the very same thing but with over a dozen new songs [...]

I've just compared the retail and shareware copies of the game, using the exact same DOSBox config and "DESCENT.CFG" file, and they do indeed seem to sound different.

Here's what level 1 sounds like in the retail release*, and here's what it sounds like from the shareware release.

*This sounds a little different from what I just tested in-game, but it's close enough.

Edit: Also, since posting this thread, I've somewhat changed my mind on what I think of the two variations. I don't really think that the retail version's music "sucks", but I do still prefer how it sounds in the shareware one. I blame nostalgia.

All I remember was the total lack of percussion which made the songs feel a little too bland compared to the retail versions.
Also, only the retail version had game12, game13, game18, game17, and game19.

The one that you pointed out as the "shareware" version sounds like the FM version or whatever it's called... to me, or at least when I used it in DOSBox. It has been a long time since I played with D1 on DOSBox set up for Sound Blaster on MIDI, as I have been using GUS for a while.

I always preferred playing Descent's music on my old Sound Blaster AudioPCI 128 from the Win98SE box I used to have (my parents sold it to some guy without telling me) and I never got the chance to render all of D1 and D2's midi tracks into audio files. Shame because except for a few odd instruments here and there (particularly the really godawful overdriven/distortion guitar) it sounded amazing when used with Descent's music.

Umm... the one he pointed out as the retail version is also "FM" (OPL2).
I can hear a difference.

Necro-bumping the thread again (though not as bad as the last time)...

Anyway, the two most noticible differences between D1 shareware and D1 full's soundtracks are the title, and levels 2 and 3. Personally, I've always thought the shareware version's level 3 tune sounded a little nicer, but otherwise the full version is better - especially on a wavetable card.

I didn't like the shareware level 3 song. I wouldn't have minded if it even had a low-strumming guitar or something noticable for keeping the beat, but it had nothing -- and for less-ambient game music like Descent has it's important for it to have something noticable to keep the beat. When the player has just emerged from a huge battle where they weren't paying attention to the music, the music can sound pretty wierd because of what the player takes to be the beginning of a measure. Having distinct percussion or something else to keep the beat is very helpful because it lets the player know where in the measure the song is "starting".

If you don't want to listen to music theory and want to hear something different that's still on topic, I have just the post for you! Did you know that you can extract the HMP and HMQ's from the shareware hog? I could be wrong, but I think if you put "game03.hmp" and "game03.hmq" in the game's root folder it will play them instead of the normal game03. Don't hold me to it though.

If I may throw in my two cents, I loved the Level 1 tune from Descent 2 with OPL rendering. The midi version sounds NOTHING like it, especially the first hooks. They were on a whole different level with the outdated rendering.

I kind of liked the synth tom beat. It made me think of dancing robots mining for metal. The OPL version didn't have that... but apart from that I kind of agree it was the best of the D2 OPL mixes (except for the title song which was absolutely epic on FM).

But you know what else is nothing like it? This!
http://soundcloud.com/snowfoxden/pyroha ... -2-level-1

I love the shareware music. I recorded it with dosbox and saved it to my itunes. It's the music I listen to when I play D2.

I think that for D1,5 I'll just take all the 22 tunes from D1, add the 4 tunes from D2 and play them consecutively, and then re-roll as necessary. Could also experiment with the order. But I need the levels first, heh