KS Music transfer to original game

[Mace]

I'm pretty sure dosbox will already map MT32 music to your regular windows MIDI player by makind sure emulation is enabled in your config file. The main problem is that your windows MIDI mapper doesn't have the original custom sound samples from the MT32.

You are right and I did not even think about that one(ofcourse it is useless for my setup(or is it? I'll look into that)

The idea is indeed described here: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Sound#Roland

Now there are two issues here: Dosbox routes using General Midi, the MT32 is not compliant to the General Midi standard, so not all instruments are mapped correctly, and you need to remap those instruments to the Mt32 setup, all the utils I find for this to the opposite. And as for the samples of your windows Midi, you could install a better software synthesizer with a more impressive sample score, or if you have access to a real midi synthesizer, use that.

And sylvester you can't put the remastered music back into the original game since KS does not use MIDI but PCM digital audio.

This is an awful amount of work, but you can apply thesame settings to all other MT32-using games.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Privateer does, but WC2 still only lets you pick one card for both Music and SFX.

Wing Commander II has an option for multiple cards; you can do the music and effects through the MT-32/LAPC-I and the speech through a Sound Blaster together. It's pretty neat!

(I believe you configure it for your MIDI setup and then it will ask if you want speech--that's where the option to add the SB is.)

What is the status of MT-32 emulation, anyway? Have people actually extracted the special samples Wing Commander uses for explosions and mass driver plops and such, or are they lost to time? The effects sound pretty great on the real deal.

 

[Mace]

By the real deal you mean the external MT-32 consumer line(which is rare around here). You could extract/resample the original effects, but they are copyrighted by the Roland corporation. Same thing goes with the emulator that needs the original ROMS.

But you could indeed in Wing2 select a Voice card, that only does the voices, but the sound effects(tigers claw exploding in the intro for example still uses the xylophone-sound for the explosions), so you are firing you xylophone and plucked guitar strings until you here a chinese gong followed by a few cymbal crashes..

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The xylophones and whatnot are because whatever system you're using to replace the MT-32 doesn't have the bank of neat special effects sounds it used. I'm wondering if there's an emulator that simulates those, either the original sounds or some set of sound-alikes...

(I use the internal card, the LAPC-I, in my system--works great, but probably an even bigger pain to find than an MT-32.)

 

[Madman]

Disabling Dosbox's default Expanded memory manager, only allocate XMS and use MS-DOS included(I used 5.0's) EMM386. (also limit your amount of RAM to 4096KB)

Note: I did not do this using normal Dosbox, I did it with DosXbox, wich in turn is an Xport-port of Dosbox.

And yes, when the music changes you get an initial slowdown(this however gets loaded into cache)

...But the best option for GUS-to-MT32 emulation is obtaining an old computer from a garage sale...

Can you be a little more detailed about this? I've got my gus etc set up fine. Changed my dosbox section in my config to:
[dosbox]
language=
machine=svga_s3
captures=capture
memsize=4
and the dos section to
[dos]
xms=true
ems=false
umb=false
keyboardlayout=auto

i then expanded emm386.exe out from the dos disks and ran it - only to get
"EMM386 driver not installed."

Maybe i'm being a bit dopey, but what did i miss!

 

[Mace]

Your config says EMS=false, set that to true and you have an Expanded Memory System.

However, this does not appear to be VCPI-compliant. I would need to look further into this but if you allocate Extended Memory you can convert it to Expanded memory using EMM386.exe, called from config.sys. I reverted to EMM386 since I do know Qemm does not work in dosbox. I used my EMM386 from dos 5.0, and I think Windows 3.11 includes thesame version.

But, since Loaf his comment and googling a little I learned MT-32 can be mapped native, so no need for a GUS emulation of that device in dosbox. I need to work out how this relates to my setup, wich is somewhat unconventional.

Also LOAF, the MT-32 and others alike it have certain properties regular wavetable boards do not have. There is a big difference between mapping sound effects to instruments, or have a system that actually generates them in the way they were designed to do so.

 

[Madman]

as you say, the dosbox ems is not vcpi, so i disabled it and loaded the xms (since himem.sys can't be used) but emm386 wont load into that environment (i couldn't get my copy of dos 5's emm386 out, due to lack of a floppy drive!

the 'native' emulation of mt32 doesnt emulate, it just maps it out to the existing GM driver in windows - leaving you with poor sound as mt32 channels dont contain the same info as mt32.

Gulikoza made a dosbox port with mt32 support (which needs roms from the mt32) which works quite nicely, but is inclined to be a bit buggy (especially sound effects like afterburners)

 

[Mace]

Madman,

can you be specific about the error EMM386 gives you? Also, all that is wrong with the instruments is that they are mapped wrong, you can remap them on your (software) synth.

Now this Dosbox MT32 emulator thingie sounds need, but you would need the ROMs anyway, if it is of any real importance to you get a USB to MIDI convertor from a radioshack or a music store, and hook up a real MT32 to it, and set that as MIDI output.

(Actually I am begging my brother to sell me his old Roland D-110, but that is not just for WC, but for all old games.)

 

[Madman]

the issue is that emm386 simply wont load unless it's mounted as a device in config.sys - which dosbox doesnt have. However you can use device.com from the mighty QEMM to mount it - doing that allows you to run wc2 with megaem support - but unfortunately, lots of other things wont due to emm386 requiring protected mode - which dosbox is unable to run more than one program in.

 

[Mace]

Madman,

I think we agreed on the fact that for MT-32 playback there is no more need for Mega-em, and better to adress the midi mapper, getting EMS functional on dosbox is a neat trick to do, but not a requirement for this issue.

ANY emulator for such a unique piece of hardware won't match the original perfectly. And the sound effects for sure. Live with xylophoning the kilrathi unless you really want to invest some money and buy a used fully MT-32 compatible device.

-Edit- If you can not run himem.sys, look on a windows '95/98 CD for "xmsmmgr.exe", to get your extended memory adressed, that is a requirement for EMM386 to be able to run, and I would appreciate it if you just stated the error feedback the program(emm386.exe) gives you, instead of "it just does not work"

 

[Madman]

i then expanded emm386.exe out from the dos disks and ran it - only to get
"EMM386 driver not installed."

I'm not sure megaem is a worse solution than "fixing the midi-mapper" mostly because the aforementioned fix is done my megaem - why do it again!

I've now got megaem working fine anyway, my point wasnt the lack of himem.sys - just that emm needs to be mounted in a "device=emm386.exe /RAM 4096" style command in the config.sys. since dosbox doesnt have that support, an alternative method is needed - qemm's device.com works fine. Alternatively you could use a hdd image and boot into true dos WITHIN dosbox (although that presents it's own problems, such as the GUS dissapearing - at least in my current setup)

 

[Mace]

Well, Mega-em takes its recources and you are running an emulator through an emulator, avoiding this and re-routing(mapping) on the shell running the emulator would avoid some serious slowdown issues...

 

[Silanda]

(Actually I am begging my brother to sell me his old Roland D-110, but that is not just for WC, but for all old games.)

Don't waste your money, the D-110 is not MT-32 compatible. It uses the same synthesis method, and accepts the same SYSEX messages but the D-110's samples are in different locations to the MT-32's (and some are possibly different anyway). As a result MT-32 music will sound like garbage on the D-110 as the wrong samples will be used.

There are a couple of games that do support (with a patch) the D-110, but it's just not worth it if you want it only for games.