"Miles" Sound Updates

[gerwin]

People who own a Creative/Ensoniq Soundblaster with Legacy device might
try this trick to make more games recognize their "virtual sb16"
hope I made somebody happy by sharing this, it sure works for me.


Miles sound system drivers.
Use these drivers to update games that use older versions.
It makes the games recognize the creative SB 64/128/Live PCI Legacy devices.

OLD STYLE DRIVERS (taken from Battle Isle 2) Version: 20 oct 1994
seems these games work when you run MIDPAK's sbwave.com first!?
-BATTLE ISLE
-SIMFARM
-HOME ALONE 2
-ULTIMA 7
-BLACK THORNE (?)
etc...

NEW STYLE DRIVERS (taken from Theme Hospital) Version: 25 march 1997 audiodrv=adrv688
just update the DIG+MID files with the ones in this package
-WARCRAFT I
-WARCRAFT II
-THEME PARK
-THEME HOSPITAL
-WWF WRESTLING
-TERRA NOVA
-SYSTEM SHOCK
-SUPER STREET FIGHTER II
-SETTLERS II
-PRIMAL RAGE
-HEROES OF MIGHT AND MAGIC
etc...

[Banquo]

I have Windows XP with a SoundBlaster Live! card. I use a DOS startup disk with the SB16 emulation driver for some of my older games that prefer to run in real mode. This may just come in very handy for some of them, thanks for sharing.

[gerwin]

Most of games listed did not detect my sb128 legacy device from within Win98se. with these files I managed to fix that. They run fine now.

The native dos sb128 legacy drivers (sbinit.com) are somewhat more compatible on themselves the the windows virtual device. So that is always a better try thought it does require a reboot.

Using windows XP; I suspect the legacy device was never included in creatives wdm driver. So you are dependent on vdmsound then.

In all cases it would not hurt updating the games miles drivers. (I understand the "old-style" drivers are for real-mode games, and the "new style" for protected mode games.)

[DosFreak]

Found this while thinking about updating Bink/Miles on my list.

Thinking about searching through my DOS games and gathering all the different versions of Miles Drivers.

I guess the best Miles Drivers for Real/Protected mode games would be the latest real mode game with Miles Drivers and the latest Protected mode game with Miles Drivers since the latest vers have the latest bug fixes. So....anyone that cares run through your own DOS games and gather your own Miles drivers and we'll compare.


Mabye we can stick the Miles Drivers in Deep Thought? Don't know if it's illegal to do so. Could always ask the radgametools people.

[HunterZ]

If you want to collect Windows ones too, let me know. I've got a fairly extensive collection of Miles (mss32.dll), Bink (binkw32.dll), Smacker (smackw32.dll I think), OpenAL (openal32.dll), A3D (a3d.dll I think) and EAX (eax.dll) Windows DLL files.

My guess is that the RAD Game Tools people won't have a problem with it. It would be good to ask, but then they'd probably have to say "no" because their lawyers will be overprotective. We could just put them up and then take them back down if we receive a warning. I guess that's ultimately Snover's call (unless they're hosted elsewhere).

[DosFreak]

Started compiling them last night....

The DIGPACK/MIDPACK drivers are a mess. No way to determine file versions except by looking at the header and seeing "1991" or "1991/1992" and looking at date-time stamp. Unfortunately date-time stamp isn't very reliable. So I have absolutely no way of determining which drivers are the latest drivers except to sort by game release date.....even then that's just me assuming that the person releasing the game actually used the latest DIG/MID drivers at release......

As for the .DIG files that go with protected mode games this was much easier. Looks like the latest version I have is 4.0d which comes with RedGuard. Looking at the Miles history page at Rad Game Tools it looks like they continued developing the DOS version for quite some time in their SDK. Don't know if anyone has compiled binaries of the latest versions. So if anyone has a version newer than 4.0d let me know, otherwise 4.0d will be the one posted to the site.


.DIG
Apache v3.02
Big Red Racing v3.02
Extreme Assault v3.50b
Mechwarrior 2 v3.03
RedGuard v4.0d
Warcraft
WaterWorld v3.02

.DIG
Alien Trilogy v3.5 Setsound and 3.03c drivers
Big Red Racing v3.02
Destruction Derby v3.02
Dungeon Keeper Gold v3.6b
Hind V1.1 and V1.2
Jagged Alliance
Jagged Alliance Deadly Games
Mechwarrior 2 v3.03
Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries v3.04
MegaRace 2 v3.03b
Revolution X v3.02

[HunterZ]

I should mention that with RAD's Windows DLLs (don't know if it applies to their DOS stuff), you can usually only interchange DLLs that have the same major and minor version numbers. That is, versions 1.0a through 1.0z are typically interchangeable, while 1.0z and 1.1a are not. It never hurts to try, but they seem to be pretty consistent about it in my experience.

[DosFreak]

Well I've collected every single .ADV file along with the programs to activate them....and there are a TON of different drivers for each sound card (For instance there are like 6 different .adv files for PC Speaker for some odd reason). Haven't actually gotten around to testing them yet.


Is there a list of games that use ADV that have problems with sound? Would be nice to have to know if an updated .adv could fix them.


EDIT

Looking through DIGPAK Sound Driver Setup I noticed these:

IBM Internal Speaker, background

Background driver works with 16mhz or better computers. If your computer is less than 16mhz you may want to select the Foreground version or one of the other drivers.

IBM internal speaker, 1 bit

This is an alternative PC Speaker driver that while louder than the others, is also much lower in quality.

IBM internal speaker, Foreground

Select this driver if you do not own any third party audio device and wish to hear sound effects out of your PC internal speaker. This driver is a foreground only driver and thus causes the machine to stop while playing a sound effect. You may want to select the NOSOUND sound driver instead.

[gerwin]

Hey I noticed this topic being revived, I will update the file in the first post.

the version of the setsound.exe is 3.50E

I haven't tried to update rad windows dll's myself, I fear they might have changed the "interface calls" for the sound routines. Though the idea of getting better features by just updating certain common files is nice.

Now where do I find those from v4.0d drivers....

[DosFreak]

I plan to upload 'em soon. Still working on them tho.

[gerwin]

OK, good luck.

I just downloaded the demo of redguard.
Suprises me to see they added a windows setsound utility.
Indeed it is version 4.0d now, though the soundblaster normal/pro/16
dig files are exactly the same amount of bytes as the 3.50E files.

I added them to the package listed in my previous message.

[HunterZ]

That doesn't suprise me, as Bethesda was coding DOS Glide games when everyone else had transitioned to Windows (I guess being a small developer it took a while to train their coders to write OpenGL/Direct3D). I never played Redguard because I went straight from a 120MHz 486 (running DOS 7 and Win95) to a 450MHz Pentium II with an AGP nVidia Riva TNT video card (which didn't support Glide).

[dvwjr]

Originally posed by DosFreak:

"As for the .DIG files that go with protected mode games this was much easier. Looks like the latest version I have is 4.0d which comes with RedGuard. Looking at the Miles history page at Rad Game Tools it looks like they continued developing the DOS version for quite some time in their SDK. Don't know if anyone has compiled binaries of the latest versions. So if anyone has a version newer than 4.0d let me know, otherwise 4.0d will be the one posted to the site."

I plan to upload 'em soon. Still working on them tho.

Here is some information on the Miles "Protected-mode" AIL v3 DOS audio drivers which may help in your quest to get the last released versions identified. The time/date and size of the Miles Audio AIL v3 file may help, but internally there are usually text strings in the MDI files which usually have an AIL33xx string embedded within the file. There is also an internal embedded version number located at byte position 0x8 and 0x9 (zero-based start) of both the DIG and MDI files.

Here is an example of the Gravis Ultrasound Miles AIL3 version 3.11 release originally dated 03-25-1995. Note that the internal version is 1.12 while the external release version was 3.11 - a bit strange. I believe that once the protected mode AIL3 drivers were released that the external numbers were always 3.xx - but someone made a mistake when these Gravis Ultrasound were labeled 3.11. Probably should have been 3.12 instead. Who knows at this point?

Code: Select all

Example:  ULTRA.DIG (Gravis Ultrasound) Miles driver version 3.11  ( 9,478 bytes)
:0001.0000 41494C33444947         ; "AIL3DIG" string                     
:0001.0007 1A                     ; CTRL-Z
:0001.0008 1201                   ; version 1.12 (0x0112)

Example:  ULTRA.MDI (Gravis Ultrasound) Miles driver version 3.11  (49,700 bytes)
:0001.0000 41494C334D4449         ; "AIL3MDI" string                   
:0001.0007 1A                     ; CTRL-Z
:0001.0008 1201                   ; version 1.12 (0x0112)


I have read on some now defunct forums that there was a set of unreleased Gravis Ultrasound AIL v3 drivers (supposedly v3.15) which actually worked and were stable on both actual Gravis Ultrasound ISA cards and Gravis Ultrasound software emulators such as the one built into DOSBOX and the Win32 GUSemu.

There is another advantage to your search for the latest Miles audio drivers - if you get the latest SoundBlaster versions for MDI: (SBLASTER, SBPRO1, SBPRO2, SBAWE32) and DIG: (SBLASTER, SBPRO, SB16) they will all read configuration information from the DOS "BLASTER=" environmental variable. This means that no need to change configuration files or to use the Miles SETSOUND.EXE utility in many cases for games run under DOSBOX.

Can't wait to see the results of your search.



Best of luck,

dvwjr

[DosFreak]

Hey Thanks! My Miles/Smack/Bink Project folder keeps getting bigger and bigger (add new files every time I test a game).......I'm thinking about just releasing what I've got and then releasing periodic updates.

[gerwin]

Thanks for the hard to find info "dvwjr"!
Did some searching some weeks ago, found some new/other driver files, but nothing really better than the ones I already packaged IIRC,
Dosfreak, If you have something interesting to add to the package please share it with me. (email: gbroers <at sign thingy> quicknet <dot> nl )

[mefistotelis]

Looks like this topic has been forgotten.

Maybe it's time to refresh it. Here is what I have:
- Protected Mode drivers (DLL) from the pack released by John Miles (plus some files found in various games)
- MDI/DIG drivers (real-mode drivers) from Miles Sound System 5 (dated 1998)

[gerwin]

Master of Orion 1 does not work nicely with windows XP Sound Blaster Emulation: drops all sound after exitting a game to load or save, and sometimes gives delayed and skipping sounds.

The game uses the old style miles drivers, but these are packed in a LBX archive: SNDDRV.LBX. I could not find a working tool to pack later drivers back into the archive. One LBXtool by wervdon from 2003 was malfunctioning, but came with the source.

Both issues now resolved, see attachments.

[bristlehog]

Note that for some unknown reason Miles Sound System of 4/5/6 versions contain obsolete SBAWE32.MDI (without soundfont support). One with such support can be found in Magic Carpet 2: Netherworlds or Dungeon Keeper. It has a filesize of 36880.

[dr.zeissler]

This is very interesting because the "miles games" do work really good with my ess-solo1 pci soundcard under plain dos. e.g:

Current testing platform (ScenicXS-D1215/Celeron 533 1,5V FSB66 (11W TDP!)7 EssSolo1 PCI DreamblasterS2

works 100%:
- MortalKombat3 miles "3.02b 18.Jan1995" Driver: SBpro
- WWF4 miles "3.02A 18Jan1995" Driver SBpro
- EF2000 "3.03 18.Jun1995" Driver: SBpro

Westwood SBPro Driver does work 100% too. NICE! (llore, Dune1)

Wolf3D/Spear3D do work 100% if the machine is not too fast.

Other Soundenginges have very different problems on my ess-solo1:
- FLD SoundDriver Setup Utility (Pinball Dreams) Only works with "Adlib"
- UltimaUnderworld Part1 works 100%, Part2 does not work anymore
- Doom1 (early Version 1.1 works), later Version 1.666 and Doom2 do not work anymore.