Zarggg wrote:

Done. Let me know what you come up with.

A little experiment; Load 'er up in XMPlay (with the MIDI plugin installed), or better yet, your EMU hardware sound card of choice (AWE32/64/SBLive/Audigy/etc...).

(edit) New version of ZIP... see post below

I sent a reply by email, but reposting here for the others:

Not bad so far, but something seems a little "off". In the Mac application, there are two template-based resources: 'INST' and 'SONG'. I'm guessing these resources are the keys to finding the differences. I just wish I had a way to decompile a Mac program to dump these resources. 🙁

The application also contains the 'MIDI' resources themselves.

Perhaps we would be better served by asking for help in the Mac side of this board.

Here's the first incartion for y'alls enjoyment. The ZIP contains not only the soundfont, but edited MIDI files as well that match the presets in the soundfont.

(edit) New version of ZIP... see post below

Sounds good so far. Some of the MIDIs need a LOT of tweaking. I'm starting to think this might be better suited to a tracker or sequencer.

Zarggg wrote:

Some of the MIDIs need a LOT of tweaking.

Yeah, quite a bit of the stuff seems a bit "off". One problem is that I've never heard the Mac version's tunes before... but am quite familar with the tunes from the DOS version (back when I had a Wave Blaster 1), later with my AWE32s, and lastly with my SBLive (and my custom GM soundfont).

One thing: At first glance (or rather, "listen") I was thinking that the samples were not looped in the Mac verion; as the WAV samples already have quite a bit of volume and modulation envelopes contained in them. But, WAV samples such as "09LBRITE.WAV" (brassy horn sort of thing) sound 'clipped' in the edited MIDIs.

Then again, I'm sure that the Mac version prolly uses it's own customized versions of the tunes to better match the samples.

Zarggg wrote:

I'm starting to think this might be better suited to a tracker or sequencer.

Although Ian Luck has his MIDI2XM proggie (as I'm sure you know), a lot of the time the results leave a bit to be desired. Not to mention, you'ld _still_ be having to use the original GM compatable Windows version's MIDI files as a base for the conversions.

(edit) P.S.

A message I posted at another Internet forum, might be helpful to you (or anyone else):

rfnagel wrote:

I've used Cakewalk Professional v3.01 exclusively since 1994 for all of my MIDI (de)composing. Dunno about WinDoZe 7, but it works great on everything up to (and including) the Vista abomination... I currently run Windows XP, and it works like a champ 😀

Anyhow, eons ago, Twelve Tone Systems allowed Quest Studios to distribute CWP301 legally free of charge, snag it on this page -> http://www.queststudios.com/roland/utilities.html .

One would prolly want to download the PDF user's guide as well. The closest one for v3.01 that TTS offered for download was for Cakewalk Professional Version 8.0 (*NOT* the "audio" version; "Cakewalk Pro Audio"), but most of the info in that user's guide was helpful for the older version as well. Anyhow, I can't seem to remember where I saw that download at on Cakewalk's site, seems that I saw it on their FTP site ( ftp.cakewalk.com ), but currently their FTP is acting buggered right now.

I've noticed that in the mac version of the tunes, a lot of the instruments (especially LBRITE) seem to sustain, rather than end abruptly. That was what sparked my comment about a tracker, since that can handle such effects more easily than MIDI.

If you like, I can try to make a HFV with SC2k preinstalled for use in BasiliskII if you're interested in checking out the mac side of sounds for comparison.

Edit: And of course I went and did it anyway. I have it 7zipped up, so if you want it, shoot me an email and I'll send you a link for it off-forum.

Zarggg wrote:

I've noticed that in the mac version of the tunes, a lot of the instruments (especially LBRITE) seem to sustain, rather than end abruptly. That was what sparked my comment about a tracker, since that can handle such effects more easily than MIDI.

Actually, as long as the original WAV sample is loopable (fairly easily), sustaining is relatively easy when creating/editing a soundfont. You can do a 'global' sort of thing within the soundfont that will sustain any instrument's sample; reguardless of how short of a duration that the note is in any given MIDI file 😀

After looking at the original "09LBRITE.WAV" again in GoldWave, it appears that looping of the sample may not be all that difficult towards the end of the sample (see attached pic of the waveform).

OTOH though, the Mac MIDI sequences may have the LBRITE note durations set for longer than in the windows versions (in the Windows version's MIDIs I used LBRITE for any of the brass/horn instruments). But, even with that, it appears that the original LBRITE WAV sample ends fairly abruptly...

Leading me to believe that the Mac music engine must indeed do some form of looping and enveloping to the samples (unlike what I had posted earlier about my ideas on the subject).

Here's a new version for y'all to try out; LBRITE has been looped, with a bit of sustain and decay envelopes added in the soundfont.

Note that it *definately* needs a bit of work with the loop points of the sample, but this will give you an idea of what I was refering to in my previous post 😀

(edit) New version of ZIP... see post below

...and here's a new one! Lot's of edits here and there to the soundfont (as well as the included MIDI files). We're getting pretty close now to the original sound of the SC2K Mac tunes 😀

Did a little better job of looping the "09LBRITE3a" sample... although, the music engine for SC2K for Mac doesn't really do a good job of lopping it in the first place <grin>.

BTW, something that I discovered:

The "10017.MID" is not used at all by SimCity 2000 for Mac. The "MIDI" resource of the game contains this MIDI file (resource ID "10017", "METRPOWR.MID"), but the "SONG" resource does not include a matching resource (which should be resource ID "10017", "MetrPowr"). Hence, the song is never played by the Macintosh version of SimCity 2000.

The song was included with the Windows version of SimCity 2000, so I included in this archive as well.

(edit) New ZIP, external download link below. I figured I'd give the soundfont a little online "home" 😀

Folks,

A minor update to the SimCity 2000 Macintosh MIDI Soundfont ZIP (text below from the updated readme):

1Lastly, included is a little bonus... an additional MIDI file that was not part
2of SimCity 2000's soundtrack. SimCity Classic for Windows included the single
3MIDI file "SCWMUSIC.MID" that was played throughout the game (a cool jazzy type
4of song). I simply thought that it would be interesting to "remap" this MIDI
5file for use with the SimCity 2000 Macintosh MIDI Soundfont :) As above, the
6song will sound strange if you play back this MIDI file without using the
7soundfont.

Here's yer files:

Readme (also included in the ZIP) -> http://jasonwilliams400com.startlogic.com/sno … 000/SC2KMac.txt

The ZIP -> http://jasonwilliams400com.startlogic.com/sno … 000/SC2KMac.zip

Hope ya'll like it 😀

yeap! that's what i need. ZIP version is just okey 😀 thank you!!

As a big fan of this game I think this is a really awesome project. I'm 10 years late and I'm sorry for necroposting, but I really appreciated this.
I was totally expecting the link to be broken after 10 years, but since it wasn't, I decided to make a copy of this file on the Internet Archive - I assumed you wouldn't mind. Just so it can stay up even if the link does go down sometime in the future. (Also, I had a weird problem with the zip file for some reason, it crashed my unarchiver but then Winrar was able to unpack it. So I repackaged it for that reason.)

No problem at all 😀 Strange that the ZIP crashed your unarchiver... unzipping works fine on mine (I use Total Commander's built-in unzippper, as well as PKUNZIP for DOS, no problems).