[Timmah!]

Hi everyone!
I'm after anything that can help me with my midi soundsets. Right now, it's using general midi which I really can't stand. I'm looking for a way to get the Soundblaster 16 sounds as that's the one I grew up with. Can anybody help?

Cheers!

[mjr4077au]

Timmah!, on 18 July 2019 - 10:16 PM, said:

Hi everyone!
I'm after anything that can help me with my midi soundsets. Right now, it's using general midi which I really can't stand. I'm looking for a way to get the Soundblaster 16 sounds as that's the one I grew up with. Can anybody help?

Cheers!

The sound you're speaking of is Yamaha YMF-262 (OPL3).

This is an OPL3 MIDI driver you could use: https://github.com/d...PL3EMU/releases

This is a MIDI mapper you can use to change what Windows plays MIDI with: https://coolsoft.alt...g/en/midimapper

EDIT: Just tested and works great

[Timmah!]

Mitch Richters, on 18 July 2019 - 10:28 PM, said:

The sound you're speaking of is Yamaha YMF-262 (OPL3).

This is an OPL3 MIDI driver you could use: https://github.com/d...PL3EMU/releases

This is a MIDI mapper you can use to change what Windows plays MIDI with: https://coolsoft.alt...g/en/midimapper

EDIT: Just tested and works great

Legend! Thanks mate, I'll give it a go now. Much appreciated!

EDIT: I've installed it and set the midi mapper to the OPL3 but there's no change in the game. Am I missing an important step?

[mjr4077au]

Timmah!, on 18 July 2019 - 11:59 PM, said:

Legend! Thanks mate, I'll give it a go now. Much appreciated!

EDIT: I've installed it and set the midi mapper to the OPL3 but there's no change in the game. Am I missing an important step?

What source are you using for data? I had this issue the other day. Basically EDuke32 was picking up Megaton data and it has SC-55 .ogg files in it. Perhaps you're doing the same?

What you can do is copy the duke3d.grp file to your EDuke32 directory, make a shortcut to eduke32.exe and in the shortcut properties, add "-usecwd" (without quotes). This tells eduke32.exe not to scan the registry for other areas where game data might be.

[MusicallyInspired]

The OPL3 driver won't sound exactly the way you remember. It might be a better idea to use High Treason's OPL music pack which was recorded from the actual game in DOS which uses the game's proper OPL patches. The thread links are mostly dead now though and it's not hosted on hrp.duke4.net any longer it seems. Here are the direct links to V2.0 of the pack that still work.

http://www.mediafire....part1.rar/file
http://www.mediafire....part2.rar/file

[Timmah!]

MusicallyInspired, on 19 July 2019 - 04:45 AM, said:

The OPL3 driver won't sound exactly the way you remember. It might be a better idea to use High Treason's OPL music pack which was recorded from the actual game in DOS which uses the game's proper OPL patches. The thread links are mostly dead now though and it's not hosted on hrp.duke4.net any longer it seems. Here are the direct links to V2.0 of the pack that still work.

http://www.mediafire....part1.rar/file
http://www.mediafire....part2.rar/file

I'm aware it won't be exactly how I remember, I've looked at examples online of what the OPL3 sounds like when it's working. Thanks for the link though! I'll give it a go

[Nuke.YKT]

There's no ideal solution right now unfortunately. I see two suggested solutions here, but let me left some notes about these:
1) OPL3 emulation via driver. First, OPL3 emulation of this driver is 99.9% accurate and it's indistinguishable from real hardware (In fact i'm the original author of this driver and wrote it's OPL3 emulation code, so i know what i'm saying). The problem of this solution arises from Duke's EMIDI format, which allows to composer to tweak composition depending on user's hardware (GM, SC, Adlib, SB, GUS etc). EDuke32 hardcodes this parameter to GM because it has no idea which kind of midi device user has and thus some tracks sound different than intended sound with OPL3 emulation(AHGEEZ.MID for example).
2) HT's OPL music pack. Well, this is not even OPL actually, but rather is inaccurate OPL clone by Creative called CQM (I think all decent software OPL emulators beat this in terms of accuracy). I don't recommend this.

For now i'd recommend to stick with OPL3 driver.
Also, if you're not aware, EDuke32 will have OPL3 emulation in future. My EDuke32 based ports NBlood and NRedneck/Rednukem already have this option.

[mjr4077au]

Nuke.YKT, on 19 July 2019 - 10:14 PM, said:

There's no ideal solution right now unfortunately. I see two suggested solutions here, but let me left some notes about these:
1) OPL3 emulation via driver. First, OPL3 emulation of this driver is 99.9% accurate and it's indistinguishable from real hardware (In fact i'm the original author of this driver and wrote it's OPL3 emulation code, so i know what i'm saying). The problem of this solution arises from Duke's EMIDI format, which allows to composer to tweak composition depending on user's hardware (GM, SC, Adlib, SB, GUS etc). EDuke32 hardcodes this parameter to GM because it has no idea which kind of midi device user has and thus some tracks sound different than intended sound with OPL3 emulation(AHGEEZ.MID for example).
2) HT's OPL music pack. Well, this is not even OPL actually, but rather is inaccurate OPL clone by Creative called CQM (I think all decent software OPL emulators beat this in terms of accuracy). I don't recommend this.

For now i'd recommend to stick with OPL3 driver.
Also, if you're not aware, EDuke32 will have OPL3 emulation in future. My EDuke32 based ports NBlood and NRedneck/Rednukem already have this option.

Apologies as I don't mean the hijack the thread, but curious if there's ever been discussions about merging your forks back into the upstream code? I guess similar to how GZDoom can play any Doom engine game like Hexen, Heretic, Strife etc.