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Sound Issues with Descent 2 and AWE64

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First post, by CrimsonMachete

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So a bit of an odd issue. I installed Descent 2 CD for windows on a P2 Win98 retro PC I recently built, and had both digital audio and
midi sound working using an AWE64. A few hours later I load back into the game, and get only digital audio, with midi music only in the menus.
I exit out and open the descent.cfg file and see there are no settings input at all for the sound card; the IRQ / DMA etc are all set to 0. I change the settings to
use an external midi device and after restarting the game I again have midi music, this time through my Roland SC-55, but now get no digital audio
at all. Now awesome as that music may be I'd love to have the sound effects back.

So long story short, what I'm missing is the DIGIDEVICEID8 and DIGIDEVICEID16 for my AWE64. I have manually set the IRQ etc, but
don't know what the correct numbers are for DIGIDEVICEID8 or 16. They start with 0x followed by a short string of digits and letters.

Looking in the descent.cfg for Descent 1 I see a DIGIDEVICEID number, however there is only one given (it ends with ID, not ID8 or ID16).
Does anyone know what the correct DIGIDEVICEID numbers are for an AWE64, or how I can locate it myself?

Sorry for the rambling post, and thanks in advance for any advice.

Reply 2 of 10, by CrimsonMachete

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That would be the easiest and most obvious answer. Unfortunately I'm running off a disc image, and setup refuses to run unless I have a physical disc. Burn a physical disc, you might suggest. Tried that, it still didn't work for some reason. Hence the need to enter the info manually. I don't know if these IDs are unique to each PC, or if they are based on the type of sound card. I'm hoping someone else with an Awe 64 running Descent 2 might be able to let me know.

Reply 5 of 10, by collector

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Note for in the future, questions involving old hardware should be asked in Marvin. Marvin, the Paranoid Android

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

Reply 8 of 10, by dr_st

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CrimsonMachete wrote:

That would be the easiest and most obvious answer. Unfortunately I'm running off a disc image, and setup refuses to run unless I have a physical disc. Burn a physical disc, you might suggest. Tried that, it still didn't work for some reason.

Yes, this has been bothering me for quite some time. I have a long time ago found and documented no-CD cracks for the game executable, but not for the setup program. With most games, the developers don't bother to copy protect the setup program, but in Descent II they obviously did.

Not sure why it did not work for you with a physical CD, because it always worked for me when I was using my 'Definitive Collection' Descent II CD. It also works with a CD image mounted inside DOSBox.

Anyways, I finally decided to crack down on it, and after spending several long hours with the DOSBox debugger (could have been faster if I had been more experienced with x86 Assembly!) cracked the setup program, so now it will run without any CD. But if you have the CD, you can still test CD music.

In the end it only requires two offsets changed in the EXE, using any good hex editor. The details have been documented here:
https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/no-cd-descent2/

I will probably add a small write-up about the process (which taught me a few tricks) at a future point.

https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys

Reply 9 of 10, by derSammler

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Since when does the Windows version of Descent 2 relies on the config file of the DOS version? The Windows version has it's own config file (descentw.cfg) with no infos about sound cards at all. It uses Windows to play audio. If you have set your AWE64 as the default MIDI device in Windows, the game will just use that.

ps: please remove that link. We do not allow linking to cracks here.

Reply 10 of 10, by Jo22

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That link shows instructions (hex values) for patching only, I believe.
Anyway, the Windows version uses another config file as the DOS version.

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