It ought to be possible to do that, at least the DOSBox part, since DOSBox emulates an MPU-401 and routes it to Windows' MIDI system. I've used this to route MIDI from DOSBox games to various software and hardware synths.

I reckon you might get a little farther if you run the SimCity 2000 main executable through ResEdit on a Macintosh, rather than trying to use Audacity. Perhaps it will produce something more easily disassembled.

And of course you can always run SC2K 68k on a Mac emulator.

Well, Jorpho was right about ResEdit (Thanks for that by the way, I had no idea that it even existed, and despite the below, a total lifesaver.), I have a copy running under Mini vMac right now and the sounds used are all accessible from the executable. I can even play them as sounds from the Mac's clipboard, but I can't find any option to extract individual resources into their own files and I've been tearing my hair our for hours over it (About to start searching for a clipboard gyanking utility for System 7 if this keeps up). I wouldn't bother this place so much about it, as this question is almost technical support in nature except for the fact that the official manual for ResEdit doesn't really mention extracting resources and placing them into files, which is the whole point of it all for me. If anyone has a clue about that, would you mind speaking up a bit? I'm completely lost.

And on that note, aside from my need for actually generating a proper soundfont once I figure out the proper midi mappings to the soundfont and I set it up so that it sounds correct on the Windows and DOS versions, I don't suppose anyone else would like a copy? (That is, if it works right.) I already planned to, but just asking for asking's sake. I'm not sure of the legal status, but I've seen Simcity 2000 for Mac demos popping up on sites before, so it should be okay as far as distribution is concerned.

I'm glad that worked out. I don't suppose you can just drag and drop a resource from the ResEdit window into the Finder, can you? Or copy from ResEdit, select a Finder window, and then paste?

I know there's a lovely 68k/PPC program that's ideal for converting stuff from the Macintosh sound format into WAVs, but I completely forget what it is called.

1633Hz wrote:

And on that note, aside from my need for actually generating a proper soundfont once I figure out the proper midi mappings to the soundfont and I set it up so that it sounds correct on the Windows and DOS versions, I don't suppose anyone else would like a copy?

I can't say I'm not intrigued, but it's been ages since I've played SimCity 2000 and my backlog is so overwhelmingly massive that I have little inclination to go back to it at this time. I'd settle for two MP3s for comparison purposes.

Unfortunately, none of that works, it just does a select for me, and none of the control keys (like shift, ctrl, alt, etc, even etc for that matter) let drag'n'drop occur. The clipboard won't let me paste to anything except that application, though at this point, I could see if I could use the text programs, and just copy the hex-printout it gives me, which I just thought up now so I guess that might be a workaround. (I don't suppose it might be because I'm using a System 7 instead of a System 8 disk image (Yes, they're legal copies, Apple actually has them on an ftp server since they're so old, so anyone can get them), but that shouldn't really be the case, so I'm still stumped.

Anyways, can do. Though you might want to take a look at these in the meantime:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWTxZEp8VNE (Sorry, couldn't find something using an actual soundblaster midi device like those attachment cards, this is the closest I can get)
vs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HwL_9QTFjg (The Mac version)
It's obviously arguable which one is "better", because, for example, a "proper" midi device would give you real instrument sounds instead of synthy sounds, but there you go.

I just had a very merry time swearing at Sheepshaver trying to make it go. I don't remember this being so difficult in the past.

Anyway, you can make a new file in ResEdit, paste the sound resource into the new file, and save it that way. Exactly what you do with it then, I am not certain - it depends on what sort of sound programs you have available.

I thought every mac game played music through QuickTime.

filipetolhuizen wrote:

I thought every mac game played music through QuickTime.

Then you thought wrong. 😜 Mac games were making music for quite some time before Quicktime was released.

Run a recording app (Audacity for example) in Windows and then trigger all the sounds in miniVMac one by one.

Sune Salminen wrote:

Run a recording app (Audacity for example) in Windows and then trigger all the sounds in miniVMac one by one.

I guess that would be better than nothing, but it might get heavily resampled that way.

Back then people could live with audiotape too 😀

heh, that reminds me of my days recording opl2 music on my tape recorder

I think I finally found that old Mac sound program I was thinking of: SoundApp. (Curse these sensible undistinguished names!)
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/mac/convert.shtml

You should be able to convert those SND resources directly using that one, with no need for Resedit.

Sorry to dig up this old thread. Just a-wondering if anyone had made any progress creating a soundfont from the Mac version samples?

Oddly enough... I was going to head over to XMPlay's forum to ask this same question in the General area. 😜

I might be able to export the 'SND ' resources via ResEdit... but I have no clue where to go from there.

Edit: In the meantime, I've found that many of the instruments in SC55 are very similar to the samples used in the Mac version.

Edit2: I have the samples, but the actual creation of the soundfont might be harder than I thought, as there are only 16 samples from the Mac version, but the MIDIs I have seem to use more than that many instruments among them. I'll need to somehow dump the tracking data from the Mac version, but I don't know how.

Zarggg wrote:

I have the samples, but the actual creation of the soundfont might be harder than I thought, as there are only 16 samples from the Mac version, but the MIDIs I have seem to use more than that many instruments among them.

What they probably do with the Mac version is to mix several of the samples together (along with modifying their waveform envelopes and other sound parameters) to 'create' new instruments... quite similar to the tricks that one can do when creating soundfonts.

Zarggg wrote:

I'll need to somehow dump the tracking data from the Mac version, but I don't know how.

I'm not sure about a Mac, but on a Windows PC you could install a MIDI 'patch' cable of sorts that would re-route the MIDI data to another output. Like this, you can record the MIDI stream using a seperate MIDI sequencer.

I can upload the WAVs if you want to try your luck at it. I'm not very good at this myself, so I doubt I'll get very far.

Zarggg wrote:

I can upload the WAVs if you want to try your luck at it. I'm not very good at this myself, so I doubt I'll get very far.

A-OK 😀 If they're not too awfully big (I'm on a miserable-arsed dialup <ugh>), ZIP them up and shoot it on over to my email addy richnagel@earthlink.net 😀

Done. Let me know what you come up with.