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Sierra/Dynamix sound driver hacking

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Reply 300 of 332, by NewRisingSun

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Reposting my SQ3 MTBLAST driver. I have added the fact that it distinguishes between MT-32-recorded PCM sound effects and other PCM sound effects to the driver title, as displayed in the INSTALL program, to differentiate it better from the KQ1SCI MTBLAST.DRV driver.

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    mtblast_sq3.zip
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    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 301 of 332, by Guybrush_3pwood

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Hello, i have the german (and mulitilingual) version of "The even more incredible Machine". How can I install the sound patch? My game has no sierra.exe file! There is only a tim.exe
Is the somebody who can help me? I would like to use MT-32 + Sound Blaster correctly at once! Or is GM + Soundblaster better? Which do you recommend?

Reply 303 of 332, by Guybrush_3pwood

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Okay, thank you. My version doesn't seem to have the CD audio. So I would like to use Roland (MT-32) + Soundblaster. But for perfect sound I think that the patch from site 8 of this forum is necessary. Is there anyone who can help me to install it on my German (and mulitilanguage-) version of "The even more incredible Machine" which doesn't have any sierra.exe. It has only a tim.exe.

(During the install of the game in the DOSBox you have to choose your language.)

Reply 304 of 332, by Kill0byte

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Hey, I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but it's a Dynamix audio-related question. Would it be possible, and if so has anyone attempted, to have the voice acting from the sega cd version of Rise of the Dragon work with the dos version? It would be awesome to have the graphics of the dos version with the excellent voice acting from the sega cd version, which is sadly lacking in the graphics department.

Reply 305 of 332, by Spikey

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Yeah, I would love that too. They are completely coded/programmed differently, so it is not a simple patch or fix. I'm sure it could be done, but the effort required is probably prohibitive. Curious to hear NewRisingSun's opinion.

Guybrush: I advise against using Roland MT-32 for TIM games, the games were composed for Roland GM (SC-55).
For the TIMEM driver, maybe try editing the batch file to point to TIM.EXE instead of SIERRA.EXE.

Reply 306 of 332, by Guybrush_3pwood

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Hello Spikey,

thank you, at a first glance this seem to work. But now there is a continous repeat of one "thud"-noise of the bowling ball in the intro sequence and a very annoying repeat of the "Whew!"-Sample when you have solved one level. Perhaps even more continious repeats, when I would play further.

Can you help here too?

Reply 307 of 332, by ahyeadude

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Any help on fixing the crackling speech audio on Gabriel Knight 1? Thinking it is related to similar fixes tikalat made to Quest for Glory IV and Police Quest IV. Specifically this:

ADPCM (CD)
- Repair peak overflows
- Reduce isolated noise

All other audio is fine and the speech just sounds like it is clipping in higher volume parts of the audio. Running this on a P133 with Yamaha YMF-719.

Reply 308 of 332, by Spikey

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You playing Win or DOS? Either way, chances are it's an audio buffer size issue. Controlled by audiosize or similar parameter in resource.cfg/resource.win.

Reply 309 of 332, by ahyeadude

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Thanks, seems to be working better.

Another question. I use 300H for my General Midi output. I have used the Sierra Midi Driver Port Changer from here:

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Utilities/SoundUtilities.html

This works fine on LSL6, GK. But, for TIM2, it does not seem to work. Any way to change the address in TIM2?

Reply 310 of 332, by Spikey

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This is a lazy reply, but use digital audio instead of MIDI.

I have never played TIM games with MIDI, only CD audio, so I'm not sure of the issue you're having. Is it MIDI not playing while sound effects do play, or is it a conflict which causes lockups, digital sound not to play, etc?

Reply 311 of 332, by kode54

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I'm not sure if it's a demo version or a lazily packaged pirate "abandonware" copy that I played all those years ago, but I had TIM 3 and it had HMI MIDI sequences that looped. No CD to speak of.

I also notice the popular rip of Betrayal at Krondor only has two of the three enemy encounter themes. At least, from the version I played but never completed ages ago. It was a full version of the game, with no CD audio, that was bundled with a magazine CD, along with a demo version of Betrayal in Antara, which ran unplayably slow on the machine I had at the time. My favorite part of this demo was how I had a choice between using Sound Blaster audio and FM music, which included occasional bits of spoken audio, and a sampled thunderclap for the intro sequence, and a sampled chain rattle for the very brief cutscene animation of Gorath reaching up with his manacled hands in the opening story sequence, and some voice clips for character encounters. Or you can have General MIDI or MT-32 music, and absolutely none of the digital effects. This is probably the only Sierra game I am aware of that doesn't make separate configuration options for both digital audio and the music device.

Reply 312 of 332, by Spikey

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TIM2 and 3 had both I believe, defaulted to CD audio unless it wasn't present or the capabilities weren't there, then you got MIDI.

Interesting re BAK. When you say 2 of the 3 encounter themes, do you mean CD audio? If you're talking MIDI, there is no complete rip or recording, only a few themes recorded by QuestStudios yonks ago. I have the original soundtrack extracted, but it's not looped or edited, as is in game.
You said Antara was the demo, then Krondor, so I am confused as to what you mean by the second part. Did you mean Krondor had sound effects that don't play if you select MIDI music?
If so, I think in this very thread someone added support for MIDI+digital FX. 😀 Also, it is a General MIDI game, if you didn't know that. MT-32 is legacy support in this game.

Reply 313 of 332, by maxtherabbit

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I'm having some trouble with the TIM patch. When I select General MIDI or PC speaker in the install program all is well, but if I choose Sound Blaster or run SETBLAST after install to get MIDI + digital sounds, my mouse doesn't work in the game.

Using cute mouse 1.9.1. If I don't touch the mouse, the keyboard will work fine. If I move or click the mouse, the game stops responding to all input, but the attract loop keeps playing.

Doesn't happen on dosbox, only real hardware

Reply 314 of 332, by C0deHunter

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OK,
On my real retro PIII system, I am using MUNT for MT-32 compatible games, and although the music seem to fine (I can also visually confirm the instruments being played on MUNT's virtual LCD), the sound effects however, sound weird. When I go into the SETUP section of a game, and set the sound effects to Sound Blaster, they still sound weird.

- PIII-800E
- Abit BH-6
- 256MB SD-RAM PC100
- AWE64 Gold
- Sound Canvas 55 MKII
- SoftMPU

- Windows 98SE (but I am using PhilsComputerLab *pure* DOS option to play the launch the game from a DOS prompt)

The games that I have tried so far that have the sound effect issue (sound weird)

Prince of Persia
Gods
Space Quest III

Are there (community-made) patches available for these games?
Any help is really appreciated!

PIII-800E | Abit BH-6 | GeForce FX 5200 | 64MB SD-RAM PC100 | AWE64 Gold | Sound Canvas 55 MKII | SoftMPU | 16GBGB Transcend CF as C:\ and 64GB Transcend CF D:\ (Games) | OS: MS-DOS 7.1-Win98SE-WinME-Win2K Pro (multi-OS menu Using System Commander 2K)

Reply 315 of 332, by collector

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SQ3 does not have a separate drivers for music and SB sound effects. You can choose AdLib, IBM feature card, Tandy Sound, MT-32, Casio or PC speaker. There is an after market driver (MTBLAST.DRV) that is an MT-32 driver with the SBdriver appended to the end that will give you SB sound effects and MT-32 music.

Here it is recorded from DOSBox. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a6OP9JWNxk

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

Reply 316 of 332, by C0deHunter

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Great! How do I apply this patch to the game?
When I simply copied over the files onto the games folder, I still didn’t get any sound effects

PIII-800E | Abit BH-6 | GeForce FX 5200 | 64MB SD-RAM PC100 | AWE64 Gold | Sound Canvas 55 MKII | SoftMPU | 16GBGB Transcend CF as C:\ and 64GB Transcend CF D:\ (Games) | OS: MS-DOS 7.1-Win98SE-WinME-Win2K Pro (multi-OS menu Using System Commander 2K)

Reply 317 of 332, by Spikey

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You need to edit resource.cfg and change the line:

soundDrv = MT32.DRV

to

soundDrv = MTBLAST.DRV

You can't do this via the install program, you must edit the .CFG file.

Reply 318 of 332, by C0deHunter

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Thanks! I still need to copy these files inside the game folder (after editing the .cfg file obviously), right?

PIII-800E | Abit BH-6 | GeForce FX 5200 | 64MB SD-RAM PC100 | AWE64 Gold | Sound Canvas 55 MKII | SoftMPU | 16GBGB Transcend CF as C:\ and 64GB Transcend CF D:\ (Games) | OS: MS-DOS 7.1-Win98SE-WinME-Win2K Pro (multi-OS menu Using System Commander 2K)