It's nice to hear about successes. Be sure to tell us when you get all those other games running that you dreamed of - sometimes users can get quite annoying with no "thanks" and just demands. we are happy about every report of success 😉

In that case, here's my thanks as well. When I got my first 486 years ago, I was so happy to be able to play Tyrian and OMF2097, MM2, etc. My friends already could, but I couldn't 🙁. Now with dosbox, I can do it again 😀

And what's more funny, about the same time gust0208 discovered dune2, so did I with a friend of mine. I already new it worked, but he didn't. He asked me how to get the sound running, I told him dosbox. We finished the attreidies in two days, alternating levels (I would play one, he two, i three, etc). With harkonnen we got to level 8.

Be sure to run dune2 version 1.07 BTW (version number is in the lower-left corner of the main menu). You can download it from here, perfectly legal. I used to play version 1.0, which has this very annoying bug that your starport ceases to function 🙁

The mission packs on that site are nothing much BTW. I believe the attreidies are actually new maps, but the harkonnen and ordos have just got the final two missions replaced, probably with something easier. That's for noobs 😀

Lately I've been busy with Warcraft 1. With the Dos32a dos4gw replacement it runs fine. It may run from windows as well, I don't know, but running from dosbox is my only option, since I run Linux.

So, 'Moe' (means "tired" in dutch 😀), let the team know they found a wonderful way to waste my time 😁

Another source for Dune 2 patches is here: http://dlh.net/cgi-bin/dp.cgi?lang=eng&ref=&sys=&cap=d

The sound patch is especially useful, as it allows you to choose different sound cards for music, sound effects, and digitized sounds.

The soundpatch is available from the site I posted as well. I don't find it particulairly useful BTW. The music only sounds good when soundblaster is selected. It's the way I remember it from the old days 😀 The MT32 music sounds more like an error...

HunterZ wrote:

Another source for Dune 2 patches is here: http://dlh.net/cgi-bin/dp.cgi?lang=eng&ref=&sys=&cap=d

The sound patch is especially useful, as it allows you to choose different sound cards for music, sound effects, and digitized sounds.

That's awesome 😀 I would love to have a similiar patch to Betrayal at Krondor 😀

halfgaar: I originally heard the music on a Sound Canvas, so I find the General MIDI option quite nice. At the same time, I think the non-digitized sound effects sound best on Sound Blaster Pro.

Freddo: I would very very much like to see something like that for B@K as well, as you currently have to choose between (1) MT-32 or General MIDI music with no speech or other digitized sounds, or (2) Crappy OPL FM music with nice speech and other digitized sounds. Unfortunately I think it would require someone to reverse-engineer the sound drivers for that game and then hack together a custom one that uses MT-32 or General MIDI for music and Sound Blaster for sound.

halfgaar: I originally heard the music on a Sound Canvas, so I find the General MIDI option quite nice. At the same time, I think the non-digitized sound effects sound best on Sound Blaster Pro.

When I select soundcanvas, it sounds exactly the same as SBPro.

Let me try the MT32 again, just to be sure... Ah, it sounds ridiculous. It must be that you hear something else than I. Perhaps I can record a sample...

halfgaar wrote:

So, 'Moe' (means "tired" in dutch 😀)

😀 Yet another pronunciation and another meaning... I should have known this, living a mere 60km from the dutch border, but didn't think of that yet 😉

When I select soundcanvas, it sounds exactly the same as SBPro.

😮 For music or for sound? Note that if you select Sound Canvas, MT-32, MPU-401, LAPC-I, etc. in a game, then DOSBox will by default use whatever MIDI device you have selected in Windows (assuming you're on Windows) to play the music from that game. The Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth is supposed to sound like a Sound Canvas, and doesn't do too bad a job.

Let me try the MT32 again, just to be sure... Ah, it sounds ridiculous. It must be that you hear something else than I. Perhaps I can record a sample...

Yes, I'm using a custom build of DOSBox I compiled with MT-32 emulation code built in.

hmm...so Sound Canvas is General Midi compatible, it can be selected if a game does not have a GM option? I didn't know that...Any other cards that can do that? This should be written down somewhere...

gulikoza: Is it really that hard to experiment yourself? 😉

Roland Sound Canvas is a wider standard and has more instruments than General MIDI and also has sound effects. It is best to have a Sound Canvas sound module/card or it's emulator, so you can use it also for General MIDI. I recommend Roland Virtual Sound Canvas.

guli: The Sound Canvas supports GS, which is a superset of the GM (General MIDI) standard. This means that the Sound Canvas synthesizer can play any GM songs and they will sound correct. Games that support the Sound Canvas explicitly may not sound correct on synths that only support GM, but only if the games actually use GS-specific features.

robertmo probably stated it in a more straightforward way than I just did.

I've always been confused about midi, what devices there are, how the banks are ordered, etc. Anyway, this was also true about soundcanvas. I just tried it, and it does sound different than SB. It sounds like GM, SBLive GM, which sounds bad, at least for dune2... I run Linux BTW, so I don't have a MS software synth. The last time I heard an MS midi synth it sounded reasonbly well.

I wonder what hardware Frank Klepacki used to create the music, and if he checked how it sounded on other hardware.

The only 3 usefull standards for game wavetable music you should know are:

1. Roland LAPC-I/CM-32L (options in games' setups: MT-32, CM-32L, LAPC-I)
2. Roland Sound Canvas (options in games' setups: Roland, MPU-401, SCC-1, Sound Canvas, SC, CM-300, General MIDI, GM)
3. Gravis UltraSound

Sometimes games setup only says something like this: Roland, MPU-401, MIDI. So you have to check yourself (or read game's manual) whether it is LAPC-I or SC.

The original Sound Canvas module model number was SC-55, so you may see it referred to by that as well.

Also, you can sometimes guess by the age of the game which standard a game is referring to by "Roland". Older games used the MT-32 (and compatables) while newer games tend to refer to the Sound Canvas (which is almost synonymous with General MIDI) when they say Roland. It's also usually obvious when you pick the wrong one, since the different instrument maps (among other things will make things sound quite wrong.