The TODO list AFAIK:
- YMF-71X soundcard troubleshooting (both WSS, SBPro and Midi).
- SB16 Midi port at 300h troubleshooting.
- Performance troubleshooting MAP03 of THT: Threnody.
- 386 / no FPU version. (framerate calculation uses floating point operation?)
- Demos recorded with v2.04 are somehow different compared to MBF 2.03 (MBF_Fixes).
Maybe:
- Raise limits to Support Community Chest 2 MAP32 and Community Chest 4
But first:
- Recap that Pentium II motherboard.

ETTiNGRiNDER wrote:

Also, how possible would it be to backport the -complevel 0 (Doom v1.2 emulation) option from PrBoom+? A few very old WADs (such as this one for example) rely on some v1.2 behaviors, but using the actual Doom v1.2 on my old machine isn't viable due to mouse bugs that were fixed in later versions.

Doom v1.2 demo compatibility was added already. But I suppose it needs the v1.2 iwad to trigger this mode.

Hope you are still working on this great source port! 😀

I am having some issues with setting up my new MIDI device (MPU-401 connected MIDI module to FSMP on Windows).
Whenever I select my AWE64 for digital out (AWE32 option), and MPU-401 for MIDI OUT, the SETUP program just hangs my computer when entering "Test Settings". It does not seem to matter whether I select port "-1" (default) or "330" for MIDI OUT. When I select the AWE32 MIDI OUT device instead, the SETUP program mentions that it is not possible to use this soundcard's DSP and MIDI OUT at the same time.
The MIDI output does work properly, when I choose "No Sound" for the digital output.

What is this all about? Is this a limitation of MBF? Other games do not seem to have issues to utilize both at the same time.
Also: somehow (really don't know what I did exactly) I got MPU-401 MIDI OUT to work together with digital out, just once, and it sounded just fine! This is what kinda frustrates me: if it worked once, why will it not work anymore after a reboot? (and not having changed any settings in MBF)

EDIT: Using latest version of MBF 2.04: Update 14 - 2016-01-31, on MS-DOS 7.10.

This behaviour is indeed odd. I haven't touched the the SB16 and AWE drivers really (it is the Allegro 3.0 library that is used for sound). In the todo list is something with the SB16 already.
I will see if there is time to to check it, but haven't had much time for hobbies for months now 🙁 Just small amounts.

gerwin wrote:

Next; I don't like the fact that MBF does not give sound with the Vortex-2 PCI SB-Pro emulation driver.

Answer to self: The culprit is the DPMI extender. swap it with DOS32 or something and it will work.

After some more extensive testing, it seems MBF is not to blame after all.

It happens with every game that utilizes both the MPU401 for music and Sound Blaster for sound effects. I have also found a (very dirty) solution: if I first launch the game ROTT (or it's sound setup program), it will successfully initialize the MPU401, after which all other games that I have set up to use the MPU401 with Sound Blaster work perfectly fine. Even if I run the DIAGNOSE program again (SB16 init) in between. So ROTT does something to "fix" the soundcard issue (until I reboot the system that is...).

This is what confused me into thinking the issue was only MBF related: during testing my new MIDI setup, ROTT must have been somewhere in the middle of my testing rounds - and I would be like "oh see, it works in ROTT, but not in MBF". Sorry about that!

Note: this issue is also not soundcard type related, as the exact same thing happens on my new SB16 (CT2290) and previous AWE64 Gold. Perhaps I can find a neater way to initialize the MPU401 properly...

Glad it is not MBF. Would be nice to know what exactly is poked by ROTT, to make things work for your system. (Maybe this helps: http://web.archive.org/web/20040823011136/htt … xg/waveptch.exe )

gerwin wrote:

Glad it is not MBF. Would be nice to know what exactly is poked by ROTT, to make things work for your system. (Maybe this helps: http://web.archive.org/web/20040823011136/htt … xg/waveptch.exe )

Oh.. my.. god!! This little tool actually works like a charm!! 😲
Geez, I can't thank you enough... You've really made my day! THANK YOU!

It worked, that is fortunate... Glad I could help.

BUG - doesn't happen with vanilla or old MBF.

The level timer gets reset to zero when loading a save. So if you save just before the exit switch, then exit, you get one time. But if you reload that game, then immediately exit, you get a time of a few seconds ... Verified in plain DOS, under NTVDM, and in DOSBox so I'm pretty confident it's a bug with the game, and should be fixed if anyone's still maintaining it.

Thanks for continuing this, 20 years later!!!

I'm flattered.

Thanks for James Haley, Simon Howard, Colin Phipps, Jim Flynn, The late Ty Halderman, and so many others!!!

If you're ever in a conundrum, I'd be glad to help.

Thanks,
Lee Killough

Life is too short.

I was working on this in 1997. It still hasn't changed.

I'm confused - is the last supposed to be a reply to me? As indicated the bug is new.

mbf wrote:

Thanks for continuing this, 20 years later!!!
....
Lee Killough

Hey Lee!, good to see you signed in to vogons and dropped by here! We communicated briefly some months ago. I don't think I mentioned that here.
So Welcome, and thank you as well. I can only appreciate the efforts and skill you put in this great game back in 1997..99. Of course the Doom source moved in many directions after that, but it seems like MBF was the best port still supporting DOS. So it really fits the timeless niche that is Vogons.

mbf wrote:

If you're ever in a conundrum, I'd be glad to help.

That is kind of you.
The ToDo list is on the previous page... No, just kidding. 🤣

koverhbarc wrote:

I'm confused - is the last supposed to be a reply to me? As indicated the bug is new.

Don't think so. But the leveltime bug is now fixed (upload no. 15). I was the one who broke leveltime saving back then in 2014 so it is only fair I fixed it. Thanks for reporting it.
Maybe this also fixed the demo recording differences mentioned in the ToDo list?

mbf wrote:

Thanks for continuing this, 20 years later!!!

I'm flattered.

Is this the real Lee? Thanks to you for all your work, i was one of the MBF players back then.
I'm just a poor guy with a modest hacky port or two, what i'd like to do now is re-add some limits but in an optioned and controlled way (already did with distance sprite culling by dpJudas one of the GZDoom guys) for performance.
I'd like to add next wall culling with distance (drawsegs) but i don't know how.

gerwin wrote:

Don't think so. But the leveltime bug is now fixed (upload no. 15). I was the one who broke leveltime saving back then in 2014 so it is only fair I fixed it. Thanks for reporting it.
Maybe this also fixed the demo recording differences mentioned in the ToDo list?

Got it, thanks.

Upload no. 16 is available:
-Made changes in WSS.C sound driver, to prevent tweaks meant for CS4232 sound chip being applied to a similar OPL3SAx sound chip. Also disabled one tweak entirely for all WSS cards.
-Made changes in MPU.C music driver, to prevent lockup when using the older SB16 MPU together with SB16 Digital section. Also made this driver follow the guidelines better, with more status checks.
Edit - Upload no. 17 is available:
-Setup.exe: Scrolling font spacing fix.
-Stereo no longer reversed in relation to setup ('sep' in i_sound.c).
Edit - Upload no. 18 is available:
-Setup.exe: Display detected DSP version for Sound Blaster cards.
-Sound Blaster Pro driver reverses back the reversed stereo of the hardware (allegro: sound.c + sb.c).
-Made changes in SB.C digital sound driver, mainly to handle unexpected MPU-401 interrupts with SB16.
(PS: to minimize hanging midi notes with SB16: lower the digital sample rate tot 22 or even 11 kHz)
-Setup.exe: bugfix: 22 kHz sample rate was not properly selectable in the dialog.

In my testing this resolves the SB16 issues reported by Jolaes76 + mOBSCENE and the WSS issue reported by clueless1.
Tested with SBPro CT1600 and SB16 CT2290+CT2940. Tested with WSS+SBPro compatible YMF719(aka OPL3SAx or Audician) and CS4232.

A technical note on the possible lockup with the Sound Blaster 16 cards, when using digital effects together with the build in MPU-401 Midi interface.
This is a problem also found in other games. As discussed earlier the patch SBMPU401.EXE (inside waveptch.exe) offered by Creative prevents such lockup.
Basically, what "SBMPU401 /E" does is is write 0Bh to undocumented mixer register 83h. "SBMPU401 /D" reverses this by writing 0Fh to the same register. My tests indicate that the /E register tweak prevents unexpected interrupts on the SB IRQ; these are ones that contain the MPU tag (100b). Digital sound interrupts keep coming, as they are necessary. The distinction of interrupt types can be made because SB16 introduced mixer register 82h, which informs on the type of interrupt that was given. But AFAIK the MPU should not send interrupts in UART mode to begin with. MBF now filters out and acknowledges any interrupts not tagged 'digital effect 8/16bit' and that works well. SBMPU401 is no longer needed for this game.

Upload no. 19 is available:
-Fix in GUS-PnP driver detection routine, as it messed up the WSS driver in PCem v12.
-More consistency between SB16, WSS and GUS-PnP drivers.
-Increasedd DMA buffer size on SB16 sound hardware, to minimize Midi problems;
4096kB for SB16 DSP v4.11, 4.12, 4.13 / 2048kB for other SB16s.
-Fixed sb.c regarding differences between SB 1.0, SB 1.5 and SB 2.0. Improved setup description.
-Adlib/OPL driver; fix to prevent it probing an Ultrasound port and messing up the codec.
-Setup.c fixed bug where Frequency listbox would not display previously selected frequency.
-Setup.c test dialog: drops stereo test buttons when a mono soundcard is selected.
-Setup.c test dialog: Test of Digi/Midi/FM will now output correct volume, when a volume is set.
-Setup.c test dialog: Raised sound volumes of Digi/Midi/FM in case volume is not specified (-1).

Heads up on the MBF dog part - Nash's making a GPL friendly version. Keep an eye out

fantastic work. this is my new favorite way to play Doom under DOS.

i have one request--can we get a working ouch face?

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Ouch_face

i have seen other source ports restore this and i would love to see it back in DOS.

It's been close to two months since we last got an update on this. Any news whatsoever? Especially concerning the whole "demos can't play in PrBoom-Plus" thing?