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Using a Roland SC-55 with Syndicate

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First post, by MaverickUK

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I treated myself to a Roland SC-55 MK2 a while back that I'm absolutely loving hearing whilst playing games that use General MIDI or SC-55 specific sound tracks.

However some of the older games in my collection are targeted specifically for Adlib music, like Syndicate.

Is it possible to patch the EXE file so that it sends music to the external MIDI output that is connected to my SC-55?

My gut feeling is that internally the music for Syndicate isn't in MIDI format, so it's not that simple. But I thought I'd come and ask the experts!

http://www.strifestreams.com // Regular nuggets of retro gaming

Reply 1 of 7, by Scali

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Indeed, it seems it only supports Sound Blaster. In which case it's safe to assume the music is not in MIDI format, and it will be pretty much impossible to make it work with General MIDI/SC-55.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 3 of 7, by root42

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Indeed, if the games were written for OPL only, I would take them as is.

A fun little patch though is the Sierra AGI MIDI out patch, which adds a kind of cheap MIDI support to AGI games:

http://www.sierrahelp.com/AGI/Hacks/AGI-MIDI.html

works with stuff like Space Quest 1, 2, King's Quest 1-3 etc. Needs a rather modern version of the interpreter though. Early releases won't work.

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Reply 4 of 7, by MaverickUK

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kolderman wrote:

Why not just enjoy the wonders of the opl3 for games that only use it? It is just as important part of the retro computing experience as true midi.

I do appreciate the OPL2/3 sound and would agree that some games sound better this way.

I suppose it's more that as I've discovered what a difference my SC-55 makes to games like Blood, Duke3D and even SimCity 2000 I'm curious how some of my other favorites could sound.

root42 wrote:
Indeed, if the games were written for OPL only, I would take them as is. […]
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Indeed, if the games were written for OPL only, I would take them as is.

A fun little patch though is the Sierra AGI MIDI out patch, which adds a kind of cheap MIDI support to AGI games:

http://www.sierrahelp.com/AGI/Hacks/AGI-MIDI.html

works with stuff like Space Quest 1, 2, King's Quest 1-3 etc. Needs a rather modern version of the interpreter though. Early releases won't work.

Very interesting, I wasn't aware of this. I'll give this a go 😀

http://www.strifestreams.com // Regular nuggets of retro gaming

Reply 5 of 7, by derSammler

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MaverickUK wrote:

I suppose it's more that as I've discovered what a difference my SC-55 makes to games like Blood, Duke3D and even SimCity 2000 I'm curious how some of my other favorites could sound.

Well, Syndicate has no MIDI soundtrack composed for a GM device like the SC-55. Even if you could hack it somehow to make the Adlib music playing over MIDI, it would sound awful.

Reply 6 of 7, by gdjacobs

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You would have to do a complete musical arrangement in MIDI for a GS or GM sound bank to make this work.

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