First post, by BeginnerGuy
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hello, as some of you may know I've put in a great deal of time this summer working on my own DOS game engine from the ground up (which has reached a state I'm quite proud of). but -- I have not gotten into SOUND yet! I have a few questions, from which I'm hoping you guys can point me in the proper direction. I love buying old books so if there are any good books documenting the topics, please mention them.
1. MUSIC COMPOSITION - We have a monstrous array of devices in the DOS era between adlib, sound blaster (opl2, opl3), general midi, mt-32, etc. I'm wondering which format was generally used for composition, and how the files are then converted for each specific device (i.e. how can a Midi file be converted/translated for OPL3 FM playback?). I know many composers used MT-32 as the baseline, but really no idea where to start -- I intend to get an MT-32 ASAP, but they are quite costly, so emulation may be required. Please guide me to a good starting point to get me educated on this topic, also I need to know what software I should be looking for to do the tracking. I would prefer to be using DOS or win9x based software.
Also, I have a much more modern Roland SH-201 keyboard I use to control my modern PC which I prefer to use, I'm assuming when I get a proper midi interface for my old PC that I shouldn't have any trouble using this keyboard?
2. Effects / Digitized sound - pretty much same as above but I need to be able to use a microphone line on my sound card to record audio and tweak them for sound effects. Not quite sure where to start here, but I know sound effects are different from music files for sound blasters.
3. PROGRAMMING - I've dabbled with the Sound Blaster code I've come across in the books I have, but haven't been able to get a peep of sound out of my CT1600 or CT3600 yet (strangely). Any books or web pages out there that provide thorough discussion on the necessary code to properly read and load in driver versions and play / stop files into my project? This includes both music and digitized sound effects. I also need to learn how to load in and play general midi files, and any others that are typical of DOS era games. Also, I can't seem to find much information on programming the PC speaker outside of a generic beep in my 80x86 asm book, so if you know about that please point me in the proper direction.
edit: my engine is written in C and asm (286 mode), if that helps.
I've ordered a book called "Sound Blaster The Official Book" on a whim, but not sure if that will contain discussion on programming.
Thanks for any help guys!
Edit 1: I've just found out about Voyetra "Sequencer Plus Gold", seeing what I can learn about that to start.
Sup. I like computers. Are you a computer?