jez wrote:

What's so different about MIDI?

Every MIDI card sounds unique and you will never find a MIDI card that everyone prefers. It would also likely be illegal to include a sound ROM image from any card.

Yeah, I know. Sodding intellectual property, preventing progress, again. The MT-32 sound set damn well ought to be in the public domain by now, its being 23 years old. Anyhow, the point I was suggesting wasn't to perfectly emulate one MIDI card in particular, but to do a reasonable approximation (with a close enough wavetable) of the MT-32 or something that it sounded decent. By the way, the fact that the MT-32 was programmable is another good argument for having the goal of implementing emulation of it in particular in DOSBox. Not only would it provide the MT-32 functionality for games specifically designed for it (how many people have an MT-32 hooked up to their machine nowadays?), it would double as a decent general MIDI device too.

wd wrote:

And please stop posting pagelong replies, start coding.

it would double as a decent general MIDI device too

aren't you describing munt perfectly ?

Qbix wrote:

it would double as a decent general MIDI device too

aren't you describing munt perfectly ?

Not bundled with DOSBox, won't work outside the major platforms, and involves setting up separately which is a PITA. 😉

ADDiCT wrote:

wd wrote:

And please stop posting pagelong replies, start coding.

Why don't you stop monitoring this damn thread?!

Why won't you stop riding a dead horse?

jez wrote:

Qbix wrote:

it would double as a decent general MIDI device too

aren't you describing munt perfectly ?

Not bundled with DOSBox, won't work outside the major platforms, and involves setting up separately which is a PITA. 😉

And how exactly is the a problem of DOSBox ?
Maybe ask the munt devs to make it compile easier and setting it up more easily ?

It's not a 'problem' of DOSBox, just as not emulating Adlib wouldn't be a 'problem', but it is a 'desirable feature'.

Yeah it's so amazingly desirable that you're the only person on VOGONS who thinks it is. Read this thread carefully and ask yourself: how many people did I convince of my great idea? And then, please, shut up already. Or, to (kinda) quote wd once more, stop blabbering and start coding.

if you do code. it won't make it in dosbox.
We made decision to split munt of the dosbox code.
I currently see no reason to reverse this.

I really hate bringing this up more than once in half year or even more so, twice a day 😀, but wouldn't implementing fluidsynth directly into dosbox be some kind of solution? No fiddling with external fluidsynth but a config option with path to the soundfont...
Jez, this fluidsynth solution is already done in Exult for example (http://exult.sf.net) so if you want to implement this, tyou can take that as an example. Shouldn't be toooooo hard...

@Dominus:
think harekiet once coded it (partly?) and there are some patches on sf.net on this matter as well.

My comments above about it won't enter in dosbox is about the MT32 emulation.

@Dominus:
think harekiet once coded it (partly?) and there are some patches on sf.net on this matter as well.

didn't know about that and haven't looked at the availlable patches for dosbox in a while now... will take a look, though *I* certainly won't code it (1. I'm not good at coding and 2. I'm good with the availlable MIDI and also do own a real MT32 😀)

My comments above about it won't enter in dosbox is about the MT32 emulation.

I figured as much 😀

I still don't get what good that would do? There is timidity, there is fluidsynth, I can decide whether I want to use a soft-synth and which one... (and, not only for dosbox but for any midi software)

The only valid reason for this I can see right now is supporting platforms that lack some "virtual midi port" concept. Is this a real issue or just hypothetical?

One place it would be useful is console homebrew ports. For example SCUMMVM on Xbox has Fluidsynth so you can run soundfonts on Xbox. It was buggy when I tried it though (maybe just doesn't work with some soundfonts).

On computers though or anywhere you have access to installing Timidity or whatever, then IMO it's not worth the effort.

I had a Zaurus PDA once, which is Linux based. Linux made that thing as functional as a PC. It had SDL, for example. Amazingly because of that, Timidity worked and I got software wavetable music from prboom (Doom Linux). 😁 That is the big advantage to an open platform. It wasn't the greatest 'PDA' though, with its buggy apps and limited battery life. Didn't care about that stuff really.

I still don't get what good that would do? There is timidity, there is fluidsynth, I can decide whether I want to use a soft-synth and which one... (and, not only for dosbox but for any midi software)

If this is aimed at my fluidsynth integratiion recommendation, then my aim is that if fluidsynth is integrated the user would not need to install any soft-synth, since the soft-synth is already integrated. Also as I *heard/read* in Vista and Windows 7 choosing the midi output is not as straight forward as it was with XP (still possible though, just not as easy)...

Hmm. This seems to be a valid argument, but still, i'd suggest to make that at least compile-time-optional. I chose to use timidity (NOT fluidsynth) a long time ago and i'm very happy with dosbox using this setup 😀

but still, i'd suggest to make that at least compile-time-optional

Of course, but still even if fluidsynth was compiled in you would still be able to chose between built-in synth and OS synth... BUT as no one is really taking this on, this all very theoretically 😀

I have to take this back... Fluidsynth depends on glib and thus implementing Fluidsynth would be a nightmare for releasing Dosbox as you'd need too many libs statically compiled into the binary