opl!=midi

Check the sound configuration of the game.

wd wrote:

opl!=midi.

Hm... I am confused. And why does the oplmode affects the midi output?

That are the sound options in the game:

ONLY if I select dualopl2, I hear all MIDI channels. If I select other options, I hear few channels only (no harpsichord, no flutes).

If someone wants to try it: Listen to the harpsichord in the first screen (after intro video):
Try cms and you hear drums only.
Try auto and you hear music without harpsichords
Try dualopl2 and you hear all channels (instruments)
.

Disable midi (mpu401=false in your dosbox config file) and if there's still music
the game definitely does not use midi but the sb's adlib capabilities.

wd wrote:

Disable midi (mpu401=false in your dosbox config file) and if there's still music the game definitely does not use midi but the sb's adlib capabilities

The game is clearly using OPL-based synthesis for the music since the OP is hearing different things with the different DOSBox oplmode settings.

Lebostein wrote:

wd wrote:

opl!=midi.

Hm... I am confused. And why does the oplmode affects the midi output?

wd is hung up on the fact that MIDI doesn't mean what you think it means. Just say "music" instead of MIDI in your subsequent posts.

cms and you hear drums only.
Try auto and you hear music without harpsichords
Try dualopl2 and you hear all channels (instruments)

Is this with DOSBox 0.74?

What do you have sbtype= set to?

It's possible that the game is incorrectly treating the OPL3 as if it were dual-OPL2's, or that it just sounds better on OPL2 than on OPL3 for some reason.

wd is hung up

No he isn't, he's trying to figure out if the opl selection has some side effect
on the midi emulation or it's just a mis-typing in the posting.
But thanks for mixing things up now, makes it easier.

I'm positive that's not the case and that it's you that's mixed things up, but we'll see I guess.

I'm positive that's not the case

I prefer the answer from the poster rather than your guess.

and that it's you that's mixed things up

I don't see any mixup from my part, only straightforward replies.

HunterZ wrote:

Is this with DOSBox 0.74?
What do you have sbtype= set to?
It's possible that the game is incorrectly treating the OPL3 as if it were dual-OPL2's, or that it just sounds better on OPL2 than on OPL3 for some reason.

Yes, DOSBox 0.74 (I have tested both versions, mac and windows, same problem)

Settings are default (exactly as I had configured it in the game):

sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
sbmixer=true

OPL2 and OPL3 leads to the same incomplete music output.
The music is a little bit special in the game. The drums seem to be wav files, other instruments sounds like normal midi output.

Since my reply got unanswered i assume HunterZ knows what to do.

Well the SB16 has an OPL3 chip in it, so either DOSBox is emulating it incorrectly or the game is interfacing with it incorrectly. You're probably best off running as SB 16 with sbtype=sb16 and oplmode=dualopl2 since the game seems to work best with that.

The only other things I can think of to try are:
- setting the game to SB 16 ASP with sbtype=sb16 and oplmode=auto to see if maybe they thought that SB16 had dual OPL2's and SB16 ASP had OPL3, or
- setting the game to SB Pro 2 with sbtype=sbpro2 and oplmode=auto.

The latter option may be a good way to go, as it looks like probably it doesn't take special advantage of the SB16 over the SBPro anyways. My guess is they list the SB16 models because they implemented detection routines for them, but that they didn't actually fix the OPL music to work correctly with the SB16's OPL3 chip versus the dual OPL2's of the SBPro.

Since none of these will solve the midi-question i repeat

Disable midi (mpu401=false in your dosbox config file) and if there's still music
the game definitely does not use midi but the sb's adlib capabilities.

wd wrote:

Since none of these will solve the midi-question i repeat

Disable midi (mpu401=false in your dosbox config file) and if there's still music
the game definitely does not use midi but the sb's adlib capabilities.

Uh, sorry, I had overlooked it.

Yes, you have right! If I disable MIDI with

mpu401=none
mididevice=none

then the music plays...

PS: However the music is based on MIDI-Files. I can see these files in the game data. But they (Sunflowers) seem to use its own "engine" to play it... very interesting.

Does oplemu=compat change the output? Does core=normal along with a
rather low fixed cycle count (cycles=10000 or cycles=2000) affect the
amount of played channels?

In the worst case this would be a game bug only occurring on sb16,
maybe somebody can test it on a real system.

wd wrote:

Does oplemu=compat change the output?

Yes!

oplemu=default
oplmode=auto (drums + not all channels)
oplmode=cms (drums only)
oplmode=opl2 (drums + not all channels)
oplmode=dualopl2 (drums + all channels)
oplmode=opl3 (drums + not all channels)

oplemu=compat
oplmode=auto (drums + all channels)
oplmode=cms (drums only)
oplmode=opl2 (drums + not all channels)
oplmode=dualopl2 (drums + all channels)
oplmode=opl3 (drums + all channels)

wd wrote:

Does core=normal along with a rather low fixed cycle count (cycles=10000 or cycles=2000) affect the amount of played channels?

core=normal + cycles=10000 ... 2000 has no effect

Could be a DOSBox issue after all then, if it works correctly with compat but not default.

Lebostein wrote:

PS: However the music is based on MIDI-Files. I can see these files in the game data. But they (Sunflowers) seem to use its own "engine" to play it... very interesting.

This is extremely common, and in fact many DOS users think of OPL-based synthesizers as MIDI synthesizers (even though they're technically not) because of this.

Your original statement in your first post was therefore technically correct, as you mention that the game's music is MIDI-based even though it's being played on something that is not directly a MIDI device.

Thanks to all!

Conclusion: Use oplemu=compat for the best enjoyment of music in "Die Fugger 2"!