can you use general midi for music?

Spycraft's installer doesn't allow you to choose "General MIDI", only the various Sound Blasters, Gravis, MT-32, MSS, etc.

It sounds okay with MIDI set to Sound Blaster 16, but it's bugging me that so far its the only Ultrasound game I've not been able to use Ultrasound for music in without the audio glitching.

PS I'm still stunned by the difference in my bought "Disk 1" to the one I found online... what do other Spycraft players/fans have on their first CD, I wonder?

Spycraft uses Human Machine Interfaces sound drivers. There are lots of games using it. (Generally at that time most games used either Human Machine Interfaces sound drivers or Miles sound drivers.)

I have found out that there are at least two types of Human Machine Interfaces sound drivers. If I remember correctly one type works correctly with GUS. The other type (Spycraft for example) doesn't play GUS digital audio correctly even on a real hardware (although gus max plays it correctly, but it is not emulated in dosbox) and doesn't play gus music. Both also have problems with Roland MT-32 support (on real hardware too): One type doesn't play it at all, the other type plays it only when you run it after choosing a different mpu device first (although i think music is not being played properly).

Nevertheless MT-32 and GUS are not needed at all as you can use Sound Blaster 16 for digital audio and General MIDI/General Standard for music. You can tell which device uses General MIDI/General Standard by the port it uses:
Port 388 is FM (Opl, Adlib)
Port 330 is General MIDI/General Standard (except Roland MT-32/LAPC-I/CM-32L):
- MPU-401
- Roland Sound Canvas
- Roland RAP-10
- Ensoniq SoundScape

Actually MPU-401 is just a device where any MIDI device can be connected to so you can never be sure whether it plays MT-32 or General MIDI/General Standard. With Human Machine Interfaces drivers it always plays General MIDI/General Standard, but in other games it may play Roland MT-32/LAPC-I/CM-32L.

If you have a choice it is always better to choose General Standard (Roland Sound Canvas) than General MIDI as it has more instruments and sfx that won't be heard otherwise.

Similarly if you have a choice it is always better to choose Roland LAPC-I/CM-32L than Roland MT-32 as it has more instruments ans sfx that won't be heard otherwise too.

About no DOS version on your CD. It is not the first game that doesn't have DOS version in later versions of the game.

Absolutely fascinating post, mate... thanks for the interesting info which taught me a lot today!

Reconfigured Spycraft, and MPU-401 sounds much better than Sound Blaster (of course), and I was so intent on trying to fix GUS that I didn't think to try alternatives.

I've set it to Roland Sound Canvas on your advice (so far sounds the same as MPU-401, but may later be better given what you said about more instruments).

I'd actually never tried this card in a game (or even known what it was!) until now... so, will DOSBox emulate a Roland Sound Canvas generally, or just with HMI driver games?

What you said about the MT-32 vs LAPC is something I'd noticed when first using DOSBox and trying CVS builds to get MT-32 (which I'd heard so much about as a kid, but never owned a real one or got to hear)... and was saddened that even when I got it working, a lot of games that didn't let you pick a digital audio card thus had no (or awful) sound effects! I've often thought about buying a real MT-32 for my beloved Sierra games, but I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be.

As an aside to Spycraft's digital audio... auto-detect says I have an AWE-32 (hey, not in this computer! 😀 ) even though DOSBox is set up as normal to default to SB-16. SB16 does NOT work, but the wrongly-detected SBAEW32 does! Not a problem, but interesting to note, I thought.

Oh, re: the missing "DOS" folder on my CD... I wouldn't have been so surprised/confused if it was clearly a "re-release"... or if the manual didn't clearly mention it... or that my actual CDs weren't labeled with "MS-DOS support", like this:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/spycraft-the-gr … eCoverId,51032/
I'm of the school that although you can find most of these old games on Abandonware sites and torrents, I MUCH prefer to own the "real thing"... hence my annoyance and having to find and download a new Disk 1 just to play what I bought. 🙁

Anyway, big thanks for the help, Robertmo! Just shows you can learn something new every day... and that VOGONS folks rock! 😀

I can play this game at last... hope it's fun!!!

It is Windows that emulates Roland Sound Canvas not dosbox. Dosbox only passes midi messages to whatever emulator or real device you choose in windows control pannel -> midi mapper.

Not very many games uses extra General Standard instruments and sfx so it is very possible Spycraft doesn't use them at all.

For lapc-i/cm-32l support you can try gulikoza's build http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza/ and you need cm32l roms for that.

SB16 works, you need to set high dma in this game.

Awe and sb16 is exactly the same card for digital audio. The difference is that awe has wavetable midi music.

Gus music works too. Just make sure you set gus to 220 address in dosbox configuration and that it doesn't interfere with sb address.

Gus music is way worse than General MIDI btw.