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Storm Master (1992, Silmarils, somewhat obscure game) crackling sound

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First post, by Furexus

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Hey everybody,

I'm trying to emulate the somehow obscure game Storm Master in DosBox, which gives me crackling or no sound, depending on the settings. The game is not listed in the DosBox compatibility list, maybe due to it's rather obscure status. I'm pretty sure I exhausted the usual suspects in the settings for this, but maybe there is something I haven't thought of. Also, maybe a dev wants to check what is the underlying issue. It's not terribly important, but I thought I give it a shot.

Stuff I've tried:

  • Setting the cycles to fixed 25000 / 50000 (25000 and lower does nothing, 50000 removes the sound from intro and gives better sound effects in general, but there is still a lot of crackling going on. Also I think it cuts of sound (church scene, you need to construct a church and go in there with the ecclesiast) which should be played in different channels.)
  • Setting the display to surface
  • Change the machine type to pentium_slow
  • Chance the core to normal instead of auto
  • Disable XMS/EMS
  • Tried Loadfix 127KB
  • In Audio tried reducing the samplerate/oplrate to 22050
  • In Audio tried to select different cards (sb1, sb2, sb16)
  • Changed OPL-mode (often leads to no sound at all)
  • Increased Prebuffer to 80
  • Tried to increase (up to 8192) and decrease (256) buffer size
  • Tried changing adress, IRQ, DMA

With so many options I obviously didn't try every possible combination, so like I said, maybe I overlooked something, but at least I tried to change everything.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Reply 1 of 2, by _Rob

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With DOSBox SVN I get a single drawn out "ping" at the Silmarils logo screen and some storm sounds at the title screen, but I don't think any of it sounds right.

With DOSBox-X, I get a single clean "ping" at the Silmarils logo screen, followed by silence.

With DOSBox-Staging, I get silence at the Silmarils logo screen, but do get some storm sounds at the title screen. Again, it sounds a bit strange.

After the opening screen, I did not notice any further sounds, but then I did not go too much in depth. I did find a YouTube video where someone is "exploring" the first part of the game, but I'm pretty sure it is being run in DOSBox as it sounds just like my DOSBox SVN test.

This game was also released on two Windows compilations:
- Silmarils Strategy Pack
- Silmarils Collection

Interestingly, at least for the "Silmarils Strategy Pack" is that it apparently included the Amiga version of this game!?

Reply 2 of 2, by Furexus

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_Rob wrote on 2022-03-22, 09:23:
With DOSBox SVN I get a single drawn out "ping" at the Silmarils logo screen and some storm sounds at the title screen, but I do […]
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With DOSBox SVN I get a single drawn out "ping" at the Silmarils logo screen and some storm sounds at the title screen, but I don't think any of it sounds right.

With DOSBox-X, I get a single clean "ping" at the Silmarils logo screen, followed by silence.

With DOSBox-Staging, I get silence at the Silmarils logo screen, but do get some storm sounds at the title screen. Again, it sounds a bit strange.

After the opening screen, I did not notice any further sounds, but then I did not go too much in depth. I did find a YouTube video where someone is "exploring" the first part of the game, but I'm pretty sure it is being run in DOSBox as it sounds just like my DOSBox SVN test.

This game was also released on two Windows compilations:
- Silmarils Strategy Pack
- Silmarils Collection

Interestingly, at least for the "Silmarils Strategy Pack" is that it apparently included the Amiga version of this game!?

Thanks for dive into the game; I think this pretty much matched what I have been experiencing concerning the sound. Some things to consider:
- Best way to check if sound if working corrently is to click on the ecclesiast(the priest looking guy), build a temple and then click on the icon with him shouting something. Afterwards, there is a picture of a priest on the right side, if you click on it, you get to the ceremony part of the game. There you can click on the various members of the church, which produce their own sound. I remember from back in the day that the sound doesn't stop, as it does in all configurations of dosbox that I tried, but rather is played on top of each other. I could be mistaken about that detail, though.
- I tried the amiga version and it works okay, though very *very* sluggish. I haven't played the game on the amiga back in the day, so that might just be how it used to run. Sounds work fine here, there is even music - which I also recall being present in the DOS release, but I could be wrong about that, too, it was a long time ago.

Very interesting that the Silmarils Collection is Windows-based? I kinda doubt that it's actually true windows applications though. I can image this to have either an amiga emulator or dosbox wrapping as well, with all the aforementioned sound issues. On a side note, Silmarils Collection is listed at amazon at 90 Euros? wtf. I mean, I have observed the retro game price development, but good god.

Thanks again!

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