First post, by Hisymak
Hello!
I'm looking for DOS games which supported standard MIDI files playback through OPL2 / OPL3 synthesizer and therefore contained OPL instrument patches for all General MIDI instruments, either inside the game executable, or in an external file dedicated for this or inside their resource archive. Mostly these games contained a 175 or 256 - entry table of entries in SBI (or some other) format merged together. (Contrarily some mostly older games used their dedicated format for OPL music, which contained the OPL instrument patches directly inside the music file itself, like CMF, IMF, ADL and other formats).
So far I know anout these games and the different formats they use:
- Hocus Pocus, ROTT v1.2: Table of 11-byte entries in SBI format, plus percussion mapping table. Stored inside game executable.
- ROTT v1.3: Table of 12-byte entries (SBI format plus one byte for fixed note number, used for percussion instruments). Without percussion mapping table. Stored inside game executable.
- Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior (probably also NAM, Blood): Table of 13-byte entries (SBI format plus one byte for fixed note number and one unknown byte). Stored in .TMB files inside the resource archive.
- Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife (probably also Raptor): Table of 36-byte entries (custom format which supports up to 2 voices per instrument and fine tuning of the second voice). Stored in GENMIDI lump inside .WAD resource archive.
I also found that some games used very similar or exactly same instrument patches. I could divide them into these groups:
- Hocus Pocus, ROTT v1.3: produced by "The Fat Man", seem exactly same for both games. I've also heard they were used in Windows MIDI playback and many other games.
- ROTT v1.2: probably by Lee Jackson. These patches are incomplete - there are only patches for instruments which were really used in the game's music, for other instruments there's always same dummy/fallback patch.
- Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior, NAM: probably by Apogee/3D Realms. They are very similar (or probably exactly same) across these games.
- Blood: has its unique patches.
- Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Raptor: use very similar patches, but there are slight (and noticeable) differences between them.
So any other games like this you know, the format they use, and the author of the patches (and similarities to other games)?