Hello, just joined the site. 😀 I don't quite have the technical expertise of others here, so I'm afraid these questions might sound dumb.

I'm looking to dump music from several Dynamix games: Betrayal at Krondor, The Incredible Machine 1/2, Sid and Al's Incredible Toons. Actually getting music during gameplay works fine for me; I just want the music files independently (as XMI, MID, or something else standard that isn't the weird format this music is apparently in).

I installed the midi tools 4.7z package from this thread, put the Betrayal at Krondor files in the same directory, and ran the appropriate batch files, but the call to midi_dump.exe causes Windows 7 to report that midi_dump.exe has stopped working. Did I miss something? I also don't see anything to dump TIM 1/2 or Sid and Al's.

Also, what is the best way to play music on demand, on an actual DOS/Windows 3.1 486 machine with an actual Roland LAPC-1 installed? I can actually play the game with the music in question, or run XMIPLAY to play an XMI file; are there other, possibly more convenient, ways of doing so?

Most of those games that you mention have CD versions with the music available as Redbook CD audio tracks that can be ripped with any CD audio ripper. The CD version of Bak and most of the TIM games (outside of the first one) used CD audio for music.

collector wrote:

Most of those games that you mention have CD versions with the music available as Redbook CD audio tracks that can be ripped with any CD audio ripper. The CD version of Bak and most of the TIM games (outside of the first one) used CD audio for music.

I do have a CD version of BaK, but it doesn't sound good at all to me, compared to either GM or Roland synthesized sound from the floppy/downloadable version. I don't currently have the CD on hand, but as I recall it also doesn't have all the tracks the floppy version does. The Quest Studios version definitely does not, and even if it were I'd like to have the XMI/MID/whatever files.

Are there different CD versions of BaK, maybe? The CD I have comes from a bundle with the novelization of the game. I'm going through all this partly just to get a complete set of music files, which I just haven't been able to either find or rip myself. (No Linux box either, so getting xBaK to work will be tricky at best.)

Try this tool:
Interplay - sound driver hacking

It's updated and has more file support. But not Al & Sid. You might be able to rig it to dump editing one of the other ones. Otherwise sounds like you did it right - put files with extractor and run correct batch file.

Once you get the Sierra format SND files, you'll need SCI Viewer to create MID files for you. Open each one and click 'Save as'.

BAK CD has shortened touched-up Redbook tracks of original MIDIs. And maybe missing a few tracks. CD does have MIDI also, same tracks as floppy I think.

Another one to take a look at is RAMA. It suffers from a variety of issues, such as clipped/dropped sounds, distortions and noise.

tikalat wrote:

Try this tool:
Interplay - sound driver hacking

It's updated and has more file support. But not Al & Sid. You might be able to rig it to dump editing one of the other ones. Otherwise sounds like you did it right - put files with extractor and run correct batch file.

Thanks, this appears to work!

This also appears to work on Sid and Al's Incredible Toons as long as you only care about the music: dump RESOURCE.001, which spills out TOONS.SX, the Sid and Al's sound library; change reference of FRP.SX to TOONS.SX in the Betrayal at Krondor sound dumper batch file, then run the batch file; take the 1000-1199 sound files and convert them into MIDI files with SCI Viewer.

There's one thing I don't understand: SCI Viewer outputs multiple MIDI files for each original SND music resource. These look like they represent different MIDI channels, even though the larger files that are output sound like they have most but not quite all of the music present. How am I supposed to combine them into a single MIDI file?

BAK CD has shortened touched-up Redbook tracks of original MIDIs. And maybe missing a few tracks. CD does have MIDI also, same tracks as floppy I think.

Does anyone know what the Incredible Machine CD versions sound like compared to GM/Roland synthesis? I only own the floppy versions of those.

Normally when you open a SND file in SCI Viewer, it gives you the option to select each track. Just pick the ones you want and Save As. I forget if it includes the GM, MT-32 patch settings though.

Dummy - didn't know Rama is Dosbox compatible. 😀

So far (just a guess).. Sierra used to use double-buffer audio technique. Sometime in SCI1, they switched to single buffer I think. So audio buffer r/w cursors may overlapping briefly, creating small glitches. But I'm not confident in that theory.

tikalat wrote:

Dummy - didn't know Rama is Dosbox compatible. 😀

Outside of demos, there are few SCI games that never had a DOS interpreter. I may be forgetting a couple, but Shivers, Hoyle 5 and Mixed-Up Mother Goose Deluxe never had DOS versions (Shivers Two was Win only, but was not a real SCI game). Both KQ7 and Phantasmagoria 2 initially shipped without DOS interpreters, but later versions added the DOS versions. My installers upgrade the Win only earlier versions of these two games to the later versions with DOS to be able to set them up in DOSBox to avoid timer and compatibility issues.

Hey tikalat, did you have a chance to look anymore into RAMA?

Not yet. 🙁

I've got a small idea but couldn't get around to actually playing to see what happens. I do have it installed and just sitting around. 😐
- Thanks for reminding me though. I'll mark it as a higher priority.

You can notice it first during the into.

Did some RAMA - menu, plenty of interview clips, prologue, new game sequence. I'm surprised that the menu, logo, interviews, prologue turned out okay on default settings. But the new game is a big hit / miss - some plays it's mostly okay with some audio glitches. Other times it's partly pop, crackle. And some replays can be huge garbled distortion. Plus it seems blurry to me at times - not clear 22050 16-bit audio I was expecting.

I've got some pretty varied results adjusting:
- maxSubmits
- dacSize
- audioSize
- (minSubmits) - todo

Extreme problems --> pretty smooth flight intro, with 1 or 2 minor glitches. But it's still kinda random. Raising the maxSubmits sometimes helped me enough times. Too low creates bad audio.

Have to play with it more when I'm out of nsfw environment. 😀

I've been playing TEMIM a bit lately and I've noticed the sound effects repeat themselves when enabling SoundBlaster, haven't tried with IBM PS/1 neither did with TIM, but I will and I'll edit my post with my findings =)
It's a minor issue, but I thought about posting it.

EDIT: IBM PS/1 audio doesn't seem to work, and TIM works properly with the sound effects.

@Collector
Try this for RAMA

1resource.cfg
2
3dacSize	  = 2k

Problem seems to be audio buffering fill rate.

It helps quite a bit, but there is still some slight popping. It also seems to add a few slight drop outs.

Really love Battle Bugs on my MT-32 😀

https://soundcloud.com/schlangz/bbugs02

Been awhile since I got a chance to do any serious retro related work. I forget what I did to "fix" / "workaround" the Rama sound silence bug but everything plays - have to try on KQ7 to see if it fixes the gargoyle freeze / kitchen mouse sfx bugs there.

Lowering the dacsize introduces the sometimes really awful garble. It just flash hits you in the middle of a song sequence or when playing additional sfx on top of the streaming bgm.

I've been recording some clips. Wave editor shows that when the bad spots happen, they look like mini-bursts of static - cliffs, drops, dips. Noticeable jaggies in an otherwise smooth waveform when you really zoom in.

I don't know what's creating these peaks yet. But I put in some quality puzzle time, ignoring the awful random static. 😀

Will still look at Rama.

The main problem with the sound in KQ7 is mostly the crap audio in the RBT files.

tikalat wrote:

Space Quest III: Pirates of Pestulon

Got a very basic question. What are these sound.* files for?

The readme only talks about copying the MTBLAST.DRV over, which I understand. But what are these sound files?

They contain sound effects marked as "not recorded from the MT-32". Because when using MTBLAST.DRV, sound effects that are available as low-fidelity PCM recordings but were originally recorded from the MT-32 should be played through the MT-32 for quality.