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SoftMPU project needs your help! (game & sound card testing)

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Reply 440 of 454, by megatron-uk

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Second game:

Frederik Pohl's Gateway

- Confirm there's no music without SoftMPU loaded: No MIDI output at all when SoftMPU is not running
- Is there music with SoftMPU loaded (SB on IRQ2/9 if available)?: Yes
- Is there music with SoftMPU loaded (SB on IRQ5 or 7)?: Yes
- Does the game allow a user-specified IRQ?: Yes: use the command line format gate.exe mt32 IRQ BASE; e.g. gate.exe mt32 7 330
- Does the game produce buffer overflows on a Rev.0 MT-32?: Untested - no visual output on my mt32pi install

There is a problem with Gateway, however, although the music plays, the game will constantly hard lock when the Legend Entertainment screen fades to the 'Gateway' main title screen. The above occurs with/without the 'legmpu.com' MIDI playback bugfix TSR loaded as available in these forums.

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Reply 441 of 454, by megatron-uk

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Third game:

Frederik Pohl's Gateway II: Homeworld

- Confirm there's no music without SoftMPU loaded: No MIDI output at all when SoftMPU is not running
- Is there music with SoftMPU loaded (SB on IRQ2/9 if available)?: Yes
- Is there music with SoftMPU loaded (SB on IRQ5 or 7)?: Yes
- Does the game allow a user-specified IRQ?: Yes: use the command line format gate.exe mt32 IRQ BASE; e.g. gate.exe mt32 7 330
- Does the game produce buffer overflows on a Rev.0 MT-32?: Untested - no visual output on my mt32pi install

There is a problem with Gateway II, however, although the music plays, the game will constantly hard lock when the Legend Entertainment screen fades to the 'Homeworld' main title screen. The above occurs with/without the 'legmpu.com' MIDI playback bugfix TSR loaded as available in these forums.

Exact same symptoms as with the original Gateway.

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Reply 442 of 454, by megatron-uk

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Also just checked another Legend Entertainment game; Superhero League of Hoboken... exactly the same symptoms; the game has no MIDI without SoftMPU, with it loaded the music plays throughout the introduction, but the introductory animation locks up part way through... much later than Gateway or Homeworld (which are usually just after the main title screen is shown).

Just as with the other Legend games, if you use Adlib music the game runs perfectly and doesn't lock up.

It is only when SoftMPU is used that the Legend games hang.

I see all three titles mentioned here are supposed to be working... could it possibly be something specific to SoftMPU on the ess1868f card with these games?

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Reply 443 of 454, by megatron-uk

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Has anyone had similar lockup problems with the Legend Entertainment titles when used with SoftMPU?

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Reply 444 of 454, by PlunderBunny

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megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-10, 14:40:
Also just checked another Legend Entertainment game; Superhero League of Hoboken... exactly the same symptoms; the game has no M […]
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Also just checked another Legend Entertainment game; Superhero League of Hoboken... exactly the same symptoms; the game has no MIDI without SoftMPU, with it loaded the music plays throughout the introduction, but the introductory animation locks up part way through... much later than Gateway or Homeworld (which are usually just after the main title screen is shown).

Just as with the other Legend games, if you use Adlib music the game runs perfectly and doesn't lock up.

It is only when SoftMPU is used that the Legend games hang.

I see all three titles mentioned here are supposed to be working... could it possibly be something specific to SoftMPU on the ess1868f card with these games?

You're doing the Lord's work here, going through and testing the stuff on the compatibility list! 😁 And glad to see other people interested in Superhero League of Hoboken, in my opinion it has never gotten the love it deserves.

I've had some trouble with Superhero League of Hoboken too, but interestingly we have DIFFERENT problems! I didn't have an issue with lockups on Superhero League of Hoboken, I just straight-up get no MIDI at all when using SoftMPU and an MT32-Pi with my MAD 16 Pro sound card. When I was trying to get this working a few months back, kahuna was testing Hoboken with me and they were able to get MIDI but the audio would hang when the voiceover started in the intro (i.e. when digitized sound started), so I assume it's a problem caused by shared IRQ. They ended up just getting a PC-MIDI card, that's my long-term goal once they're back in stock and I have the money to spare on about $130 of retro sound equipment.

What's in your LEGEND.INI config file for Superhero League of Hoboken?

realnc suggested earlier in the thread trying to configure the Soundblaster for IRQ 2/9, there are some games that need that, that'd be worth a shot.

You could also try finding and running LEGMPU.COM, a TSR that (as I understand it) corrects a timing quirk with Legend Entertainment games' implementation of MIDI. It doesn't sound like that's actually your problem, but it can't hurt to try it out. Link to the thread with a download for it here: Gateway 2 (and others) MT-32 MIDI tempo off?

Reply 445 of 454, by megatron-uk

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I've recently swapped the ES1868F with a Yamaha YMF719 as the host for the WP32 McCake and these Legend Entertainment titles are still giving me grief.

Everything else I've tested both cards with, along with SoftMPU has worked. The games which don't work regardless of SoftMPU loaded or not are:

Gateway^
Gateway II^
Superhero League of Hoboken^
Gabriel Knight*
Police Quest 4*
Quest for Glory 4*
Leisure Suit Larry 6*
Ringworld Revenge of the Patriarch

^ The game locks up at some point in the intro when started with SoftMPU
* I believe these should all work without SoftMPU, but although I get no errors about initialising MIDI, I get no music either. Sound effects are fine.

I have two slight differences in behaviour with the ESS1868F vs the YMF719 cards with the Legend titles;

- With the ESS card I can set unisound to use IRQ2 (or 9), and SoftMPU will happily detect the MPU interface (I use it at 5 or 7 most of the time).
- With the Yamaha card although Unisound will initialise the card at IRQ2 (or 9), SoftMPU will not detect it when set to that number. It's happy at normal IRQ values such as 5 and 7 though.

Neither card set to any combination of IRQ stops the Legend games from locking up. The games work fine in Adlib mode, and the same copy of those games works fine on a 286 with a real Roland MPU401 card.
I have tried with and without the LEGMPU.COM tsr, as well as the alternative GATEFIX.EXE loader. Neither of those make any difference to the lockups.

I have 43 other titles that work great with SoftMPU loaded. There are a couple in here which I don't believe are intelligent-mode examples (Bloodnet?), but without SoftMPU loaded I got no MIDI output at all, or error messages:

Another World
Cool Croc Twins
Flash Back
Gods
Magic Pockets
BloodNet
Codename: Iceman
Conquest of Camelot
Conquest of the Longbow
Elvira
Elvira 2 The Jaws of Cerberus
Future Wars
Kings Quest 1
Kings Quest 4
Laura Bow
Laura Bow 2
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry 2
Leisure Suit Larry 3
Leisure Suit Larry 5
Monkey Island 2 LeChucks Revenge
Police Quest 1
Police Quest 2
Police Quest 3
Quest for Glory 1
Quest for Glory 2
Quest for Glory 3
Space Quest 1
Space Quest 3
Space Quest 4
Star Trek Judgement Rites
The Secret of Monkey Island
Mega Traveller 2
Ultima VI
Ultima Worlds of Adventure Martian Dreams
Ultima Worlds of Adventure The Savage Empire
A-Train
Populous
Wing Commander
Wing Commander 2

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Reply 446 of 454, by PlunderBunny

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megatron-uk wrote on 2024-05-05, 11:26:
The games which don't work regardless of SoftMPU loaded or not are: […]
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The games which don't work regardless of SoftMPU loaded or not are:

Gateway^
Gateway II^
Superhero League of Hoboken^
Gabriel Knight*
Police Quest 4*
Quest for Glory 4*
Leisure Suit Larry 6*
Ringworld Revenge of the Patriarch

^ The game locks up at some point in the intro when started with SoftMPU
* I believe these should all work without SoftMPU, but although I get no errors about initialising MIDI, I get no music either. Sound effects are fine.

Excellent information to have!! After I spent way too long trying to get Superhero League of Hoboken working with SoftMPU, I had my suspicions that some of the games that are on the compatibility list might not be compatible, though I hadn't gotten around to testing much else. Is there anyone who can confirm that they've been able to get any of those games working with SoftMPU?

Also unless I'm mistaken, and just to make all the variables clear, of those games you mentioned as not working I think only Gateway, Gateway II, and Superhero League of Hoboken are intelligent mode games, correct me if I'm wrong.

Interestingly, the intelligent-mode games you have listed as not working (Gateway 1&2 and Superhero League of Hoboken) are all games that are listed as using MPU interrupts on the SoftMPU github compatibility list... that leads me to believe that there might be some configuration-for-MPU-interrupt-voodoo involved in getting SoftMPU working with them that I'm not aware of!

At some point in the near future I'm planning on throwing together a HardMPU card and trying to get that to work with SLH, I'll post the results of that here once I've got it done.

Reply 447 of 454, by megatron-uk

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Yes, that's correct - of the games tested so far, the Legend Entertainment games are the only intelligent-mode titles that don't appear to work. Or rather, they *do* work, but cause the game to lockup. The games seem to accept the IRQ as assigned to SoftMPU, but then we get that lockup part way through the intro.

Those games are notoriously buggy in their MIDI implementation of course.

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Reply 448 of 454, by Omarkoman

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hi all, I hope someone can help here.

I bought S2P from Serda shop in hope to get some nice General MIDI music on my new Pocket386 through LPT port.

I used the softmpu to configure the S2P connected through LPT1 port and it says device detected and MPU-401 active on port 330.

2024-05-24-11-37-27-S2-P-not-working-You-Tube.png

Issue is I get no sound in games like Monkey island using r parameter or when I run duke3d setup.exe or SamnMax setmuse I get error when selecting General Midi at 330 port saying no MPU401 detected.

I am not sure what else to try to get it working, any ideas ?

Reply 449 of 454, by bjwil1991

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Uh, how did you get the LPT1 as the output on there? Was it from their site or from here?

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Reply 450 of 454, by bjwil1991

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megatron-uk wrote on 2024-05-06, 07:12:

Yes, that's correct - of the games tested so far, the Legend Entertainment games are the only intelligent-mode titles that don't appear to work. Or rather, they *do* work, but cause the game to lockup. The games seem to accept the IRQ as assigned to SoftMPU, but then we get that lockup part way through the intro.

Those games are notoriously buggy in their MIDI implementation of course.

Before I went to MPU-401 cards, I never had issues with Legend Entertainment games locking up with SoftMPU. I do, however, recommend you get a program that'll mark the SoftMPU TSR program and release it after the game ends.

http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/pc/garbo/pc/memutil/tsrcom35.zip

Here's an example of setting it up:

C:\SFTMPU.bat

@echo off
MARK
SOFTMPU /MPU:330 /SB:220 /I:5
C:\LEGEND.BAT

@echo off
call SFTMPU.BAT
choice /c:12E /M "Which Gateway Game do you want to play: [1] or [2] or [E]xit "
IF ERRORLEVEL 3 GOTO END
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO GW2HW
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO GW1

:GW1
cd GATE
GATE MT32 5 330
goto END

:GW2HW
cd GATEWAY2
HOME MT32 5 330
goto END

:END
RELEASE

I've done this on my 386 and 486 since there's one game that doesn't send the SYSEX commands at the right pace to the MT-32 and it'll call the batch file, load the game, and close the TSR program after I exit the game.

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Reply 451 of 454, by Omarkoman

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bjwil1991 wrote on 2024-05-24, 04:34:

Uh, how did you get the LPT1 as the output on there? Was it from their site or from here?

what do you mean ? its one of the options the software offers and is listed in instructions from the S2P manufacturer Serda, also see in many YT videos of the product.

update - I have S2P device produce music but only in SOME games. Eg original Monkey Island works with r parameter when the S2P is in MT32 emulation mode but the Talkie version doesnt. Few other games work like Legend of Kyrandia, Kings Quest 3 for MT32 music. So looks like it does depend on game and how it was programmed.

The softmpu is not a solution for ALL games that support general Midi on port 330 and appears to be more trial and error depending how the game was programmed.

Reply 452 of 454, by bjwil1991

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Ohhhhhh. Parallel General MIDI, eh? I should get one for my 386 laptop.

I wonder if there'll be an MPU-401 parallel card? Hmm...🤔

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Reply 453 of 454, by badmojo

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megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-12, 09:38:

Has anyone had similar lockup problems with the Legend Entertainment titles when used with SoftMPU?

Sorry for the very late reply but no, Gateway works fine for me with SoftMPU and a McCake. I'm using a YMF719 and for what it's worth it worked with EMM386 loaded or not loaded.

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Reply 454 of 454, by Peter Swinkels

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spiffythedog wrote on 2022-12-06, 03:16:
Here are a few more games that seem to require intelligent mode to run correctly. I tested these on a virtual Intel Pentium 75 v […]
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Here are a few more games that seem to require intelligent mode to run correctly. I tested these on a virtual Intel Pentium 75 via the MPU-401 interface of an emulated SBAWE32 PnP using Munt, loopMIDI and 86Box (I get inconsistent results using PCem and DOSBox ECE or similar forks):

  • The Bard's Tale Construction Set
  • The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate
  • Car & Driver
  • Cartooners
  • Centurion: Defender of Rome
  • Daughter of Serpents
  • Gods
  • Hard Nova
  • The Immortal
  • Indianapolis 500
  • Keef the Thief
  • The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes
  • Low Blow
  • Lure of the Temptress
  • Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen
  • Might and Magic: Swords of Xeen
  • Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen
  • Might and Magic: World of Xeen
  • Sierra On-Line Christmas Card 1988
  • Spot: The Video Game
  • Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 - Martian Dreams
  • Wing Commander: Academy
  • Worlds of Legend: Son of the Empire
  • Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire

All of these games either crashed or were silent (silent after the logo in the case of the M&M Xeen series) without running SoftMPU first. Strangely enough, both Ultima VI and Bad Blood seem to output MT-32 just fine on this build without having to load SoftMPU, despite them being documented as requiring intelligent mode. Chalk it up to the emulation maybe? Or does a UART interface cause crashes and other irregularities later on in the game?

This is very interesting, as far as I know the following games you listed share the same music file format:
Car & Driver
Cartooners
Centurion: Defender of Rome
Hard Nova
Indianapolis 500 (newly found)
Keef the Thief
The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes
Low Blow

I would need to check out those other titles some time. - Done.

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