SONICWSS.EXE is a build using the WSS sound library for audio output instead of Allegro. (USE_ALLEGRO4=1 DOS=1 WSSAUDIO=1 CXXFLA […]
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SONICWSS.EXE is a build using the WSS sound library for audio output instead of Allegro. (USE_ALLEGRO4=1 DOS=1 WSSAUDIO=1 CXXFLAGS=-Ofast)
SONICWSM.EXE is the same but it loads files completely in memory. (USE_ALLEGRO4=1 DOS=1 WSSAUDIO=1 MEMORYIO=1 CXXFLAGS=-Ofast) [this can be good if you got 128MB+ RAM and loading from slow media]
The WSS sound library supports newer sound cards compared to Allegro, like the ones using HDA or AC'97 codecs.
Nonetheless, despite WSS finding your sound card, you may find you don't hear anything... this may happen if the BIOS doesn't initialize the sound card properly, and so you need to initialize it somehow. (like booting another OS and rebooting, running a TSR driver and then removing it, etc.)
The WSS library support in the game first tries to initialize a HDA sound card... then if it fails an AC97 sound card, and then as a last fallback a SB-compatible sound card. WSS supports more sound cards actually, but it'd be hard to do auto detection in another way...
you need to change sound card ID number in the code and recompile for now.
Grab the other needed files (CWSDPMI.EXE and SETTINGS.INI) from the previous release (20210201).