Some funny sounds

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David
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Some funny sounds

Post by David »

1)
Use digisnd*.dat of v1.0 with the exe of v1.3.
Pause when the level door is closing.

2)
Start 1.3 with "midi".
Listen to the sound effects of footstep, loose floor, etc.
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Re: Some funny sounds

Post by doppelganger »

David wrote:Listen to the sound effects of footstep, loose floor, etc.
Setting sounds to Roland in 1.3 is funny. You know, the the trumpet for the prince's footsteps, and so on?
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Norbert
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Re: Some funny sounds

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Neither gives me any sound.
I tried changing the device to alsa (mididevice=alsa) in dosbox-0.74.conf, but that didn't help.
I remember being able to use MIDI though, so something must've changed on my PC.
Oh well.
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Re: Some funny sounds

Post by Andrew »

doppelganger wrote:
David wrote:Listen to the sound effects of footstep, loose floor, etc.
Setting sounds to Roland in 1.3 is funny. You know, the the trumpet for the prince's footsteps, and so on?
Yeah, and the sword clash and guard strike sounds are hilarious too! :D

Of course, I hope you guys know that this is purely DOSBox's fault. The official version's devs for some puzzling reason are extremely reluctant to integrate patches contributed by the community for better hardware compatibility. If you use one of the unofficial DOSBox builds with these patches instead, you'll see just how great the MT-32 sounds. I especially love the sword swish and the metal clang of the chompers, among others.

Also, here's a really interesting fact. The MT-32 included an LCD screen, as you can see on Wikipedia:

Image

Did you know that games sometimes deliberately included MIDI messages that could be viewed on that LCD? PoP 1 and 2 do it too! If you configure DOSBox to use the MT-32, PoP1 prints the following message:

MT32: LCD-Message: The Princess awaits.

PoP2 prints the following:

MT32: LCD-Message: The saga continues..
MT32: LCD-Message: <<<<<<Beware!!>>>>>>


Those were the ones I saw at the beginning of both games. I don't know if any others are printed subsequently since I didn't play through, but it was fun seeing these for the first time.

P.S. Bonus points to whoever figures out where exactly those messages are stored. I couldn't find the strings in the EXEs, nor in the PR-extracted MIDIs either.
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Re: Some funny sounds

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Norbert wrote:I remember being able to use MIDI though, so something must've changed on my PC.
Oh, actually, because of Andrew's post I remember how I used it.
I used ykhwong's 32-bit binary, with MT32_CONTROL.ROM, MT32_PCM.ROM, and 32-bit libsdl-sound1.2:i386 libphysfs1:i386 on my 64-bit machine.
Kinda related stuff here.
So, yeah, it works for me again. :)

Good thing I don't need to compile from the source, because it's a mess.
And that's not even including having to patch SDL 1.2 with OpenGL-HQ.
For starters, it requires dos2unix on everything.
Then it needs an include #include <cstdlib> in include/bios_disk.h, removal of Sound_GetDuration() from src/dos/cdrom_image.cpp, comment out tbb includes in src/gui/sdlmain.cpp, and so on.

By the way, gulikoza's version has no Linux binary and compiling is also a mess.
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Re: Some funny sounds

Post by musa »

Andrew wrote: P.S. Bonus points to whoever figures out where exactly those messages are stored. I couldn't find the strings in the EXEs, nor in the PR-extracted MIDIs either.
The messages are stored in midi info.bin (PoP1) and PRESET41.DEF (PoP2). It seems to be psuedo-MIDI sysex stuff but I don't know if it can be opened by any MIDI editor.
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Re: Some funny sounds

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musa wrote:The messages are stored in midi info.bin (PoP1) and PRESET41.DEF (PoP2). It seems to be psuedo-MIDI sysex stuff but I don't know if it can be opened by any MIDI editor.
Thanks! How did you manage to decode the files though in order to locate those strings in them?
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Re: Some funny sounds

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musa wrote:The messages are stored in midi info.bin (PoP1) and PRESET41.DEF (PoP2). It seems to be psuedo-MIDI sysex stuff but I don't know if it can be opened by any MIDI editor.
I'm afraid neither of those is correct. As far as I can tell PoP1 doesn't even have an INFO.BIN file. :P
[Edit: And extracted with PR, then the PoP1 text is in res65535.bin, not in "pcs info 2.bin" and "midi info 1.bin", the only BIN files available.]

The answer is PRINCE.DAT for PoP1 and SNDDRVRS/PRESET40.DEF for PoP2.
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Re: Some funny sounds

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Andrew wrote:
musa wrote:The messages are stored in midi info.bin (PoP1) and PRESET41.DEF (PoP2). It seems to be psuedo-MIDI sysex stuff but I don't know if it can be opened by any MIDI editor.
Thanks! How did you manage to decode the files though in order to locate those strings in them?
I didn't. I just found them there while looking at the files.
Norbert wrote:
musa wrote:The messages are stored in midi info.bin (PoP1) and PRESET41.DEF (PoP2). It seems to be psuedo-MIDI sysex stuff but I don't know if it can be opened by any MIDI editor.
I'm afraid neither of those is correct. As far as I can tell PoP1 doesn't even have an INFO.BIN file. :P

The answer is PRINCE.DAT for PoP1 and SNDDRVRS/PRESET40.DEF for PoP2.
Thanks. I forgot which file it is. As for PoP1 I meant the file extracted in PR.
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Re: Some funny sounds

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musa wrote:Thanks. I forgot which file it is. As for PoP1 I meant the file extracted in PR.
Just updated my post with...
Norbert wrote:[Edit: And extracted with PR, then the PoP1 text is in res65535.bin, not in "pcs info 2.bin" and "midi info 1.bin", the only BIN files available.]
...so with PR it's in res65535.bin.
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Re: Some funny sounds

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Norbert wrote:I'm afraid neither of those is correct. As far as I can tell PoP1 doesn't even have an INFO.BIN file. :P
To be fair he actually did write "midi info.bin", but probably the space confused you. Even though his memory failed him regarding the precise file names, it was clear to me at least that he was referring to the PR-extracted "midi info 1.bin".
Norbert wrote:The answer is PRINCE.DAT for PoP1 and SNDDRVRS/PRESET40.DEF for PoP2.
Ah, I was searching for whole words so no wonder the search returned no hits. There don't seem to be any more messages BTW.
Last edited by Andrew on December 17th, 2015, 1:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Norbert
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Re: Some funny sounds

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Andrew wrote:[...], it was clear to me at least that he was referring to the PR-extracted "midi info 1.bin".
It was clear to me when, after I thought 'Wait, maybe the BIN file that musa mentioned is one of the PR-extracted files.', I recursively searched for a BIN file. That's when I found the similarly named BIN file. :)
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Re: Some funny sounds

Post by David »

Andrew wrote: Did you know that games sometimes deliberately included MIDI messages that could be viewed on that LCD?
I'm pretty sure someone already mentioned this, after I noticed the PoP2 messages in one of the files.
Andrew wrote: If you use one of the unofficial DOSBox builds with these patches instead, you'll see just how great the MT-32 sounds.
I also tried this in a version labeled "20130124". (It's an "ykhwong" version.)
Its debugger logs things like this: "ALL:Sysex message size 138" and "MISC:MPU-401:Reset FF".
But the sounds are the same as in the official version.
I don't see "LCD-Message" type logs either.
I think I need a different/newer version for that.

Update: The newest version does the same.
Andrew wrote: MT32: LCD-Message: The Princess awaits.
The "Loading" takes much longer in MT-32 mode.
Is this a hint? :)
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Re: Some funny sounds

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David wrote:I'm pretty sure someone already mentioned this, after I noticed the PoP2 messages in one of the files.
Ah, it was news to me since I seem to have missed that post (and can't locate it either).
David wrote:Update: The newest version does the same.
The Jan. 25. 2015 build works fine for me. Did you remember to place the Roland MT32_CONTROL.ROM and MT32_PCM.ROM files in the same dir as the DOSBox EXE?
David wrote:
Andrew wrote:MT32: LCD-Message: The Princess awaits.
The "Loading" takes much longer in MT-32 mode.
Is this a hint? :)
:D
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Re: Some funny sounds

Post by David »

Andrew wrote: The Jan. 25. 2015 build works fine for me. Did you remember to place the Roland MT32_CONTROL.ROM and MT32_PCM.ROM files in the same dir as the DOSBox EXE?
I downloaded the files now, and copied them there.
However, nothing seems to be different.
The sound effects are still the "funny" ones, and I see no "MT32: LCD-Message".

Update:
I installed MUNT: http://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/
And selected mididevice=1 in dosbox.conf.
(I had to copy the *.ROM files to system32.)
Now the sound is different (better), but still no "MT32: LCD-Message" in the log.
What am I doing wrong?

Update:
Forget that.
I have to set: mididevice=mt32 in dosbox.conf.
Now it works!
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