No MIDI music in Privateer2: the Darkening Windows patch \ VOGONS

No MIDI music in Privateer2: the Darkening Windows patch

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First post, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

Posted on 2009-04-25, 13:43

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I patched my Privateer 2: The Darkening with solsector's Windows patch, then installed the game on Windows XP Home Service Pack 3. The game runs quite fine, actually. Everything is smooth, but not overly fast.

However, during spaceflight, the MIDI music does not play.

The in-flight music in Options menu (ALT-O) is indeed enabled, but it doesn't play nonetheless.

Out of curiousity, I copied the following files from the CD to my installation folder (C:\DARK)
SETSOUND.EXE
DOS4GW.EXE
AILDRVR.LST
PROAUDIO.DIG
SB16.DIG
SBLASTER.DIG
SBPRO.DIG
SNDSCAPE.DIG
ULTRA.DIG
MPU401.MDI
PAS.MDI
PASPLUS.MDI
SBAWE32.MDI
SBPRO1.MDI
SBPRO2.MDI
SNDSCAPE.MDI
ULTRA.MDI

Then I executed SETSOUND.EXE, and chose MPU401 as my MIDI device. It created a file named MDI.INI, with the following contents:

1;
2;Miles Design Audio Interface Library V3.03 of 18-Jun-95
3;
4
5DEVICE General MIDI (Roland MPU-401 interface or 100% compatible)
6DRIVER MPU401.MDI
7IO_ADDR 330h
8IRQ -1
9DMA_8_BIT -1
10DMA_16_BIT -1

Yet the in-flight MIDI music still does not play. What's wrong? Anyone has similar experience before?

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 1 of 6, by Davros

Posted on 2009-04-25, 16:42

Davros Offline

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do you have proper midi ?

hardware + not emulated

is it an actuall windows game or does it run in dos mode under windows ?
and why mpu-401 do you have a roland mpu-401 or does your card emulate it(have you set that up ?)

Reply 2 of 6, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

Posted on 2009-04-27, 03:16

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman Offline

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Davros wrote:
do you have proper midi ?

Well I actually use Roland Virtual Sound Canvas (which works as MIDI device in Windows). However, Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth doesn't work either.

Davros wrote:
is it an actuall windows game or does it run in dos mode under windows ?

Hard to tell. Privateer 2: The Darkening is a DOS game, but the solsector patch enables it to run in Windows. I'm not sure whether the patch changes the executable into truly Windows app, or it merely provides a "DOS mode" compatibility layer of some sort.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 3 of 6, by Davros

Posted on 2009-04-27, 10:00

Davros Offline

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i think the latter
what soundcard do you have

ps : mdi.ini have you tried changing it to

IRQ 2
DMA_8_BIT 1
DMA_16_BIT 1

Reply 4 of 6, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

Posted on 2009-04-28, 03:27

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman Offline

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Davros wrote:
i think the latter
what soundcard do you have

Well it's a laptop with standard AC97 on-board audio.

Davros wrote:
ps : mdi.ini have you tried changing it to […]
Show full quote
ps : mdi.ini have you tried changing it to

IRQ 2
DMA_8_BIT 1
DMA_16_BIT 1

Well I haven't, because I think MIDI merely needs port (330, etc), but I'll try.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 5 of 6, by Davros

Posted on 2009-04-28, 05:17

Davros Offline

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does your ac97 have dos drivers
if so it would add lines to your autoexec.bat
like setblaster ect

ps: maybe vdmsound

Guardian of the Sacred Five Terabyte's of Gaming Goodness

Reply 6 of 6, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

Posted on 2009-05-22, 09:59

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman Offline

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Rank: l33t
Posts: 3363
Joined: 2006-11-15, 06:44
Location: Indonesia

Davros wrote:
ps : mdi.ini have you tried changing it to […]
Show full quote
ps : mdi.ini have you tried changing it to

IRQ 2
DMA_8_BIT 1
DMA_16_BIT 1

Actually I never had the chance to modify the .INI file above, because....

It works now! Fuck yeah!

Turned out that all I need to do is changing the compatibility mode of Privateer 2: The Darkening to either Windows 95 or Windows 98/Me. Without compatibility mode, MIDI music doesn't play, but with compatibility mode, it does.

And not only it works, but it also works with my Roland Virtual Sound Canvas 3.23, which I set as my default MIDI device. Yay!

The problem is: the MIDI volume is too small compared to sound effects. Apparently Privateer 2 doesn't have in-game menu that allows you to change volume level for each type of sound (sound effect, MIDI music, etc). Virtual Sound Canvas has its own independent volume control that allows me to increase MIDI volume, but still doesn't cut it.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

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