I saw the yt video you uploaded 15 mins after it went online, awesome stuff kudos!
Backed the project as well for the boxed copy tier, can't wait!!!

looks nice!
if i wanted to play this on metal what would it require? either im blind or it does not tell;
also the scrollig speed kinda changes a lot?

i do wonder a bit that its smaller than dune2..

mrau wrote:

looks nice! if i wanted to play this on metal what would it require? either im blind or it does not tell; also the scrollig spee […]
Show full quote

looks nice!
if i wanted to play this on metal what would it require? either im blind or it does not tell;
also the scrollig speed kinda changes a lot?

i do wonder a bit that its smaller than dune2..

I'm not sure what you mean by "on metal"... if you mean on real hardware, anything that has a 4.77MHz 8088 CPU will run the CGA version (8MHz recommend for no slow down with all features), and 8MHz (12MHz recommended) will run the VGA version. The CGA version is fairly all encompassing too and has support for special display modes like CGA composite and Tandy 16-color. I did my play testing on my Pentium II 300 rig and had no issues at all, so there should be no worries of a machine being *too* fast. I think there was someone who even tested it on an i7 running FreeDOS and it worked without a hitch.

The scrolling speed changes since you can either press an arrow key to move precisely one tile at a time, or hold it down to go very fast in one direction.

keropi wrote:

I saw the yt video you uploaded 15 mins after it went online, awesome stuff kudos!
Backed the project as well for the boxed copy tier, can't wait!!!

Thank you! It's actually a bit of a good thing it took you a few minutes to notice, since I quickly swapped out the upload with a new version haha. The first draft had some 10 seconds of silence since Sony Vegas decided to be uncooperative 😒

mrau wrote:

looks nice! if i wanted to play this on metal what would it require? either im blind or it does not tell; also the scrollig spee […]
Show full quote

looks nice!
if i wanted to play this on metal what would it require? either im blind or it does not tell;
also the scrollig speed kinda changes a lot?

i do wonder a bit that its smaller than dune2..

First of all, I've been testing this on a 386@25 MHz. It runs perfectly fine on that. I wanted to test on my 286, but it died before that.

Second, it is definitely less complex than Dune 2 and the gameplay works quite differently. But you will see once it's officially released. Dune 2 probably would never run on a 4.77 Mhz machine with 256K of RAM. I have the MegaDrive version, which has to run on a slow 68000 with 64KiB of RAM, but with the ROM for all the data and graphics. But still the AI and game features are much weaker than the PC version.

Cool stuff! I saw the X3 mention in your sig a while ago & was meaning to ask you about it. I still haven't gotten my music into a "big" retro game but it's definitely a goal.

I see you're making good use of the MT-32 toms, best part of the sound set IMHO. 😀

The Adlib version sounds kinda muffled to me, it comes across like everything aside from the leads has some kind of low-pass filter on it. A snappier snare and a bit more definition "bass guitar" would go a long way, and a closed hat if you could work it in - I understand what you have to work with though. Nice job on the conversions either way!

Will the final game support Lo-tech "Tandy" ISA sound cards? I have one of those here (thanks to Root42 - sorry, meant to post about it ages ago!) & a perfectly good 386 to play it on.

That PC speaker sound is interesting...
What tracker did you use?
It doesn't sound like MONOTONE most of the time... As in, it doesn't seem to actually try to multiplex multiple channels together at 60 Hz, but instead you play a single-note melody, and it is temporarily 'interrupted' by percussion sounds. So you maintain 'pure' notes, you never get that 'arpeggiated' sound.
Interesting approach.

^^ I liken this to really strong side-chain compression, done the hard way. 😀

The PC speaker version is well-done but a bit too shrill for me IMHO. I wonder how it would sound with all the melodic instruments dropped down an octave?

xjas wrote:

Will the final game support Lo-tech "Tandy" ISA sound cards? I have one of those here (thanks to Root42 - sorry, meant to post about it ages ago!) & a perfectly good 386 to play it on.

Yes, I use the same card that you got and it works brilliantly with the game. I use it more than the Adlib with this game. It is just so... fitting!

xjas wrote:

The Adlib version sounds kinda muffled to me, it comes across like everything aside from the leads has some kind of low-pass filter on it. A snappier snare and a bit more definition "bass guitar" would go a long way, and a closed hat if you could work it in - I understand what you have to work with though. Nice job on the conversions either way!

Regarding the muffled sound, the editor for AdLib tones was pretty limited, especially in contrast compared to what I was used to with AdLib Tracker II. I wasn't able to edit the ADSR parameters on the operators nor could I change the algorithm used - there was also a polyphony limit of three channels + drums since the tracker was built more around the Tandy 3-voice. In contrast to the somewhat limited (though still capable) AdLib offerings, it's fantastic for Tandy stuff! The dude must have worked some sort of black magic to get it to be able to almost fake 5 voices in some scenarios (3 melodic + kick/snare/toms + hi-hats).

I did actually plan to give the soundtrack a much more Dune 1 type of vibe with a lot of ethnic sounds and synth pads (the three demo tracks I submitted demonstrate this and I hope to post them sometime soon), but that wasn't really possible either. I should also note the drum set was one that Alex had made and was included with the tracker. Programming 2-op FM drums that only use a single channel has never really been my forte, and I couldn't use the drum kit I normally use because of the limited polyphony, so I just stuck with the defaults.

Scali wrote:

What tracker did you use?
It doesn't sound like MONOTONE most of the time... As in, it doesn't seem to actually try to multiplex multiple channels together at 60 Hz, but instead you play a single-note melody, and it is temporarily 'interrupted' by percussion sounds. So you maintain 'pure' notes, you never get that 'arpeggiated' sound.

It's a custom one made for the game by Shiru. I'm not too into the arpeggiated sound myself; there's one or two times in the soundtrack I use arps, but it's only on the Tandy/AdLib and they aren't super pronounced. They sounded a little eargrating to me on the PC Speaker whenever I used them, heh.

xjas wrote:

The PC speaker version is well-done but a bit too shrill for me IMHO. I wonder how it would sound with all the melodic instruments dropped down an octave?

I can see what you mean, I do kind of wonder if I should have dropped it by an octave on that tune since it sounds a lil shrill in the base build of DOSBox. It sounded a lot better when I ran it through a real PC Speaker though... regardless, I tried to keep it within a more 'reasonable' range for the rest of the soundtrack. 😵

root42 wrote:

Yes, I use the same card that you got and it works brilliantly with the game. I use it more than the Adlib with this game. It is just so... fitting!

Most of the music was originally made on the Tandy, or with the Tandy in mind and ported over to AdLib and PC Speaker second so that's probably why it's more fitting. 😊

How is the MT-32 music done by the way? Is it just a regular .mid file? And what player did you use to record this? Does it use any sort of quantization to (a multiple of) the framerate or such (60, 120, 240 Hz or such)?

SpeedySPCFan, do you have any details on why MT32 support was not included in-game?

Really? Mt-32 is not included? 🙁

Game is already getting too large. MT32 music will be on tape, by Anders.

root42 wrote:

Game is already getting too large. MT32 music will be on tape, by Anders.

MIDI files aren't very large, and a MIDI playback routine is only a handful of bytes.

You can take it to the creators. 😉 But since the game is supposed to fit on a single floppy disk, it seems that every byte counts. They already have great talent on the team. One of the 8088mph authors is writing the compression routines. So I trust their decision so far. Maybe they will release a deluxe version later that requires hard disk?

root42 wrote:

You can take it to the creators. 😉 But since the game is supposed to fit on a single floppy disk, it seems that every byte counts. They already have great talent on the team. One of the 8088mph authors is writing the compression routines. So I trust their decision so far. Maybe they will release a deluxe version later that requires hard disk?

Yea, I don't know what the design of the game is like, or how much memory they want to use.
If you target 640k machines, it should be quite easy to use two disks.
The first disk can contain the main game and graphics, and all are loaded into memory at startup. Then you insert the second disk, which contains music for all devices, and it will load the music for the sound device you selected.
Done.
Or perhaps you can put all music on the first disk, except for MT-32, and have an optional second disk for MT-32 support (since apparently they assume the other music will fit on a single disk).

Yes, one could do something like that. I think this layer of complexity is too late to the game (no pun intended).

All I can say is that the game seems quite finished, and already very polished. So I guess we have to save MT32 support for another game. 😉

Always an interesting example of the distribution of success in creative endeavors.

Scali wrote:

MIDI files aren't very large, and a MIDI playback routine is only a handful of bytes.

Well, someone would need to make the MIDI files. That means composing a new, MT-32 specific soundtrack. If you have an AdLib specific soundtrack, you can't just "support" the MT-32. You actually need to compose new music specifically for it.