ericvids wrote on 2021-10-25, 20:45:

I wasn't getting this error, and I spent a few hours trying to reproduce your problem, then I realized something: I've seen the […]
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Bondi wrote on 2021-10-25, 14:04:

Digital sound is working now, as well as adlib music (did not copy MIDI folder yet). Cool! But the game crashes sometimes now wi […]
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Digital sound is working now, as well as adlib music (did not copy MIDI folder yet). Cool!
But the game crashes sometimes now with this message (mostly after I kill someboby)
IMG_3259.jpg

Edit. Also noticed that Wolf3d detects the card as Sound Blaster now (it was detected as Adlib before)

I wasn't getting this error, and I spent a few hours trying to reproduce your problem, then I realized something: I've seen the error before. It was when I tried to use the registered version EXE on shareware data files.

So I copied over the shareware files, and sure enough, it gave me the same exact error. 😜

I've uploaded both registered and shareware versions so you can see which one works with your setup properly. (Are you using .WL1 data files? Those are shareware.)

ALSO: I've got Covox support working on this build (I think). Do you have the hardware to test it? If so, the way to enable it is to add the SS# parameter to WOLF3DSW.EXE with # corresponding to your parallel port. (So if you plugged it into LPT2, you'd enter "WOLF3DSW SS2"). Then make sure Covox/Sound Source is selected in the Sound menu.

AND ALSO: Since the MPU-401 component is just one feature out of many at this point (and as Bondi eventually found out, wolfdosmpu works without the MIDI files in place and just reverts to OPL2 music), I am considering changing the name of the project to just "wolfdos". What do you guys think? 😀 It can't be "fastwolf" (like fastdoom) because it isn't faster. 😉 (Also, I probably won't rename the exe files since the suffixes are pretty descriptive, with M describing "music/minimum fixes" and W describing the WASD controls.)

Oh, sorry you spent so much time because of my stupidity. I have different versions on different laptops.
I have a covox and will be able to test it later during today.
And please don't change the names. i think we got used to them, and changing will lead even more confusion.

Bondi wrote on 2021-10-26, 05:54:

Oh, sorry you spent so much time because of my stupidity. I have different versions on different laptops.
I have a covox and will be able to test it later during today.
And please don't change the names. i think we got used to them, and changing will lead even more confusion.

No worries! I'm learning too. I'm currently writing a failsafe to prevent people from interchanging them.

Okay, won't change the name. You're right, it would add confusion, and I guess MPU support is what made this mod exist in the first place.

ericvids wrote on 2021-10-26, 08:50:

Bondi wrote on 2021-10-26, 05:54:

Oh, sorry you spent so much time because of my stupidity. I have different versions on different laptops.
I have a covox and will be able to test it later during today.
And please don't change the names. i think we got used to them, and changing will lead even more confusion.

No worries! I'm learning too. I'm currently writing a failsafe to prevent people from interchanging them.

Okay, won't change the name. You're right, it would add confusion, and I guess MPU support is what made this mod exist in the first place.

Tried Covox, and works perfectly.
As well as SB Direct Mode. So direct mode is enabled only if BLASTER variable contains only port address A220 and no DMA specified. Once DMA (D1) is present it uses it. Right?

Bondi wrote on 2021-10-26, 09:21:

Tried Covox, and works perfectly.
As well as SB Direct Mode. So direct mode is enabled only if BLASTER variable contains only port address A220 and no DMA specified. Once DMA (D1) is present it uses it. Right?

Yup, DMA is used as soon as you put in the D option in the BLASTER var. Technically you also need an interrupt number if you use DMA (specified by the I option; wolf3d just defaults to 7).

Update: Version 1.42 is out! You can grab the new EXE files from: https://github.com/ericvids/wolfdosmpu/releases

Major changes:

• Now detects whether proper data files have been provided for the EXE used. The game won't crash or hang your PC unexpectedly anymore in case you provide the wrong data files!
• Added "always run" option for modern-controls version. Beware: Always-running in Wolf3D is a lot less fluid than always-running in later games like Doom or Quake (due to the lack of acceleration/deceleration), and is not recommended for people with motion sickness.

Minor changes:

• Sound and Controls menus' item positions are tweaked a little bit for consistency.
• Fixed Change View dialog becoming unresponsive to user input during low-memory conditions.
• Now allows MPU-401 support even if AdLib is manually disabled via the "noal" command-line parameter. (The MPU code is partially dependent on the AdLib code, and previous wolfdosmpu versions disabled music altogether if "noal" was used.)
• Now does not disable the Sound Blaster when "noal" is specified (like the original Wolf3D did); it now disables just the OPL2 sound effects. Hearing PC Speaker sound effects alongside digitized grunts and Roland MIDI music is weird at first, yet it grows on you...
• Now allows BLASTER environment variable to specify the MPU port even if the Sound Blaster is manually disabled via the "nosb" command-line parameter.
• Now sets "nopro" internally if BLASTER variable is present and does not have the T option (or is set to 0, 1, or 3). This way, DMA-less SB-compatible cards are given the option to enable Pro extensions.

Just wanted to quickly say THANK YOU - I got Wolf3D on GOG a little while back, and your mod gave me a good reason to play it on my Pentium 233 MMX with a Roland SC-55. Everything works flawlessly, and I really appreciate the modern controls and the automap with the marked secrets. 😀

+1 on the thankyou's this is really nicely done 👍Tried it just now on my Cyrix 233MHz machine and it worked like a charm. The music sounds great on my X2GS and the modern controls option is a game changer! (pun intended)

Thank you BraveToaster and badmojo for the kind words and feedback!

To thank you for your support, I've release a NEW version of wolfdosmpu! Version 1.43 is now available at github.

Modern-controls changes:

• Automap now makes doors glow if they have not been opened (more accurately, "haven't been seen open"), to better visualize unexplored areas in a busy map. However, doors will only start glowing on levels started on version 1.43 onwards (i.e., your old savegames will still work fine, but no doors will glow until you proceed to the next level).
• Automap tracing has been improved to cut off visibility at unopened doors. This improvement reduces automap errors where visibility would "seep through" areas that the player hasn't explored yet but has already been "seen" by the ray-casting engine, which is caused by precision errors when checking for wall collisions. This issue also affects other source ports and derivative games that rely on the ray-casting engine for automapping, such as ECWolf and the DOS version of Super 3-D Noah's Ark. (The actual precision errors are left untouched because fixing them may affect the speed and determinism of the renderer and may cause subtle differences in gameplay.)
  
  Automap with no door cut-off (note the stray ray-traced line at the bottom-left door):

  

  Automap with door cut-off:

  

• Now marks previously-seen stationary enemies on the map if they are the only ones left and you have seen all of them (only on "Show hints if clear" automap mode or higher, renamed from "Show secrets if clear"). The rationale for this is that the automap is supposed to help the player determine where enemies may still be hiding, and if these stationary enemies were seen but never alerted, they should obviously remain where they are. If they are not marked (and the map is already mostly explored), then the player is forced to explore every part of the level again, which just wastes time and adds to frustration. However, if there are any moving enemies left (aside from ghosts), no enemy positions will be marked unless the player sees them directly, because their positions should be uncertain to the player.
• Fixed modern-controls bug where items can still be picked up even when they are made inaccessible by pushing a secret wall on top of them. This bug did not affect the MPU-only version because the spotvis algorithm was modified only in the modern-controls version (to support showing walls on the automap).

Global changes:

• Fixed a classic bug where pushwall spots reactivate when another pushwall is pushed into its place and the user saves and reloads the game. To reenable the previous behavior, use new COMP flag 32.
• Fixed so that the OPL2 device is cleaned up twice on system exit. The original EXEs were actually doing this second clean-up in the main game code, but it does not respect the "noal" option, so it was #ifdef-ed out for safety. But then I later noticed that not cleaning up twice caused the game to sometimes not detect the OPL2 properly on the next startup, so I reimplemented it with proper support for "noal". This might be a DOSBox-only thing, but I'm not taking chances.
• Fixed a classic bug that causes sounds to get cut off at the last segment (which sometimes even causes lower-priority digitized sounds to never play again).
• Fixed a classic bug where the engine tries (and fails) to play back both digitized and non-digitized PC Speaker sounds simultaneously. What for? See the next fix. 😉
• If no Disney Sound Source is present (or if the "noss" command-line parameter is supplied), its menu option is now replaced with the glorious PC Speaker option. For DOSBox users, it is recommended to set the volume of the emulated PC Speaker device to 40 (or below) using the DOSBox command line "MIXER SPKR 40" for proper loudness relative to the emulated SB and FM devices.
• Door sound effects now revert to their non-digitized counterparts when playing on PC Speaker because the samples are too noisy and unintelligible (and play very often in a level); hopefully this makes PC Speaker digitized sound much more tolerable.

Here's a demo video of the game using PC Speaker digitized sound and Roland CM-300 music (gotta love that combination, hahaha!):

Don't click my teaser image 😁, click this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpOxBf6-9_g

Nice to see you are still working on features / bugfixes! I like reading those detailed changelogs. I have yet to test the added music volume control a few versions back, but thanks for following up my request so quickly.

Might you be looking to implement more (modern) features, one feature came to mind watching your gameplay video (loved the PC speaker sounds btw 😃): an optional additional screen size that gets rid of the big borders around the screen. I don't really know if this is at all feasible though, since it must require more system resources for zooming the picture.

Good to see that the dummied out PC Speaker digitized sound within the sound menu. This feature can be still enabled on the original executables by hexediting the game configuration file, one of the reasons why it wasn't on the menu besides the sound quality was due to high CPU usage especially on slower computers.

mOBSCENE wrote on 2021-11-03, 13:07:

Might you be looking to implement more (modern) features, one feature came to mind watching your gameplay video (loved the PC speaker sounds btw 😃): an optional additional screen size that gets rid of the big borders around the screen. I don't really know if this is at all feasible though, since it must require more system resources for zooming the picture.

Oh, we MIGHT run into a problem there. Obviously there's the difficulty of implementation (Wolf3D has this weird thing of generating a ray for each vertical column of pixels and then calling runtime-generated machine-language snippets of code to draw EACH case of vertical column, and I would have to modify that to include the largest screen possible). But the bigger issue is that Wolf3D uses the same ray-casting procedure for rendering AND for determining visible spots in the map, which tie directly into everything in the game logic (from picking up items to whether you damage an enemy and by how much (!!!) ). This means that playing at different screen sizes actually CHANGES gameplay. You can see this in action in the demo loop -- try them at different screen sizes, and you'll notice that sometimes the input desyncs and you get funny things like BJ relentlessly firing his chaingun ... at a wall.

Not saying it's not feasible though (after all, even the framerate changes the gameplay too, which is why the demos were locked to 17.5fps)... but as always, it will depend on whether I have free time. (The past Halloween happened to give me some free time, but I'll be busy soon thereafter...) And I want to do it "right" (i.e., at least not break demo compatibility with the next-largest screen).

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-11-03, 13:19:

Good to see that the dummied out PC Speaker digitized sound within the sound menu. This feature can be still enabled on the original executables by hexediting the game configuration file, one of the reasons why it wasn't on the menu besides the sound quality was due to high CPU usage especially on slower computers.

Yep, it was mostly due to the high CPU usage according to the Game Engine Black Book, but then I had to use that same interrupt service used by the PC digitized sound code to implement support for SB direct (non-DMA) and Covox mode. The guy who requested it, Bondi, said SB direct and Covox worked fine on real hardware, so I figured the PC speaker should work fine too. And since I noticed that the only sound I really hated on PC speaker was the door closing sound, I just made a special case to not play it (along with the door opening sound because otherwise the disparity sounds strange).

More great improvements, I'm loving this! Apologies if this has been asked already and / or is offensive given the crux of this whole project is MIDI, but is it possible to switch back to FM? I see in the menu that music can be switch off but there will be times when I'm in the mood for good old OPL3 and all of the other fixes are going to be hard to un-see. If OPL3 means original controls then I'm going to be faced with a difficult decision 😬

badmojo wrote on 2021-11-04, 04:41:

More great improvements, I'm loving this! Apologies if this has been asked already and / or is offensive given the crux of this whole project is MIDI, but is it possible to switch back to FM? I see in the menu that music can be switch off but there will be times when I'm in the mood for good old OPL3 and all of the other fixes are going to be hard to un-see. If OPL3 means original controls then I'm going to be faced with a difficult decision 😬

The game does not actually require the music files to run. The game will revert to OPL2 if the MUSIC directory is missing. 😉

You can rename the directory to MUSIC.BAK if you just want to temporarily switch the MPU support off.

ericvids wrote on 2021-11-04, 14:18:

You can rename the directory to MUSIC.BAK if you just want to temporarily switch the MPU support off.

Music to my ears (pun intended). Thanks again 👍

ericvids,
I built a DOS shareware pack VHD that focuses on making games/music/apps/etc in DOS easily accessible for people on the MiSTer FPGA DOS PC Core. If not obvious this would fully work on any other DOS machine or in PCem/86Box as well. I run this setup on my IBM PCJr, 286, 386, and K6-2 machine as well now.

I would like to include an option for your MIDI+Automap version in the pack and wanted to get your approval to include it? I can have my update script from github pull directly from your repo to get the latest and greatest.

If you want to check out our new setup and DOS frontend I did a recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNWNHwluRzk

flynnsbit wrote on 2021-11-05, 15:26:

I would like to include an option for your MIDI+Automap version in the pack and wanted to get your approval to include it? I can have my update script from github pull directly from your repo to get the latest and greatest.

Wow, I'd be honored! Sure, I'd be happy to have wolfdosmpu in there!

(Now I have to go and make sure I don't have any major bugs, hahaha!)

Cool and thank you. I'll set it up to pull from https://api.github.com/repos/ericvids/wolfdos … releases/latest that way it will only pull a full release. You can do a pre-release and my script will skip that one.

By the way, this build is awesome. I realized I didn't actually give you a compliment on all the work you did. Being able to quickly switch the audio types and have some MIDI love in Wolf3d sounds so good. Love the automap as well. We were having to pull those mods separately before.
Quick Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS4_POOz9BM

Finally got the chance to give this a shot today and I'm very impressed. The MIDI sounds great coming from my SC-88 and MT-32 alike. Also, the improvements/fixes are very useful and make the game more enjoyable.

I ran into a little issue with my setup. I've got an AWE64 (set to adress 300) but also a dedicated MPU401 card (set to 330). Since Wolf3d gets its port info from the BLASTER settings, I can't use my MPU401 for the MIDI because it'll look for adress 300. Of course I can connect my cable to the AWE64 midi port if I want to play Wolf3d with MIDI, but I was wondering if there's a software solution for this? Maybe a parameter that overrides the MPU adress?

Hezus wrote on 2021-11-14, 18:05:

I ran into a little issue with my setup. I've got an AWE64 (set to adress 300) but also a dedicated MPU401 card (set to 330). Since Wolf3d gets its port info from the BLASTER settings, I can't use my MPU401 for the MIDI because it'll look for adress 300. Of course I can connect my cable to the AWE64 midi port if I want to play Wolf3d with MIDI, but I was wondering if there's a software solution for this? Maybe a parameter that overrides the MPU adress?

You can change the P value from the BLASTER environment variable to 330h simply by using the SET command. For example:

1SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6

This command can also be used outside batch files and I assume that you use IRQ 5 for the sound card.

Thanks! Made a little batch file that changes the setting and then loads wolf3d. Just setting SET BLASTER=P330 seems enough to make it work.