[TerminX]

I totally keep forgetting to add the Duke4 hosted site you requested for this. I will do it soon, I swear!

[MusicallyInspired]

No rush .

The other popular MIDI devices of the 90s were the Yamaha one someone mentioned, the MT-32 (an older Roland model that lost support as time went on, the SC-55 replaced it), and everything else were wavetable cards like the AWE32/64, Gravis Ultrasound, and the like. The Gravis Ultrasound had a huge following. But the quality wasn't at the same level as the SC-55 (at least in my opinion). I think it was something more akin to nostalgia like people preferring Amiga soundtracks (which I think sound absolutely awful) to MT-32 or something.

On the website TX mentioned, I've written up a sort of "history of game music' article on many of the different MODs. All to explain why I'm making these packs to begin with. Soon as TX gets the site hosted you can read it there.

And regarding Doom, I might just record my own soundtracks for those anyway. Just to make sure it's done right. I've seen various Doomsday music packs for Doom and Doom 2 but they seem to take some creative liberties with the mixing and whatnot. Whatever the case, I'll be doing them myself anyway.

EDIT: By the way, on this new website eventually I'll also be recording soundtracks for old vanilla Duke MODs and even taking request for games or custom MOD soundtracks, for if you're making a MOD and you have your own MIDIs but want the SC-55 feel to them.

[MusicallyInspired]

My SC-55 music packs have found a home here at Duke4.net:

Roland SC-55 Music Packs

Currently, I have downloadable music packs in OGG form in regular ZIPs for Duke Nukem 3D, Nuclear Winter & Caribbean Vacation, Rise of the Triad, Shadow Warrior (demo), Blood, Descent I, and Descent II. I'll also have MP3 and FLAC options in the future as well. I still have more games to do that were made for the SC-55 so expect the list to grow.

I'll also be converting soundtracks for the various TCs that have been made over the years (the one's with original MIDIs) and I'll also be taking requests if you have some MIDIs you want to digitize for a new MOD or something.

[ReaperMan]

Nice website MusicallyInspired. When do you think you'll be done with all the packs?

[MusicallyInspired]

I'll do them over time. I'm starting school on the 7th and I have other commercial musical obligations, but I'll fit in the time to do it over the next few months. It's only recording after all.

[Hendricks266]

If you could fit it into your schedule, could you also record the soundtrack to Raptor?

http://hendricks266....f/Raptor_OSV.7z

It's in MUS, I also included conversions to MID with some old DOS tool.

I ask because:
1. I've always known the music under Sound Blaster in DOS.
2. When played with Windows MIDI, they sound like shit.
3. The recently released 2010 Edition, with WAV music, sounds even shittier.

I should really record them with a Sound Blaster, as they sound best IMO.

[MusicallyInspired]

Does the original game support the SC-55 as a playback option?

[Hendricks266]

[MusicallyInspired]

On the list it goes...

[MusicallyInspired]

New updates:

-Descent I MP3 Pack
-Shadow Warrior FLAC Pack
-Blood FLAC Pack
-Descent II FLAC Pack

[Hendricks266]

Thank you very much.

[Kaden Kyarel]

I look forward to hearing your recordings of the id games' music. I know there's another guy doing recordings here on the internet at sycraft.org but he's doing updates with instruments and stuff. I would love to hear these tracks they way they were recorded originally =D

Thanks for your work so far, the Descent soundtrack is awesome... gonna grab the Duke3d tracks and give them a listen as well

[Hendricks266]

Kaden Kyarel, on Nov 20 2010, 11:52 PM, said:

I look forward to hearing your recordings of the id games' music. I know there's another guy doing recordings here on the internet at sycraft.org but he's doing updates with instruments and stuff. I would love to hear these tracks they way they were recorded originally =D

Thanks for your work so far, the Descent soundtrack is awesome... gonna grab the Duke3d tracks and give them a listen as well

Hendricks266, on Aug 23 2010, 07:56 PM, said:

Here's the Doom and Doom II music packs recorded from an SC-155.

Unfortunately, there is no Roland pack of Final Doom: TNT: Evilution (Plutonia recycled other music), let alone Heretic, Hexen, Strife, or Chex Quest.

Hendricks266, on Aug 23 2010, 08:57 PM, said:

Anyway, I now remember that "Intermission from DOOM" from that pack is cut off slightly in the beginning. Pisses me off. I just hacked together a quick fix for myself.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm going to eventually do the id stuff but I want to make sure I have proper MIDI files to record from. I found some archives of id MIDI soundtracks online but I don't know if they've been converted somehow or just straight extracted from the game files. I'd like to get the original MUS files, in a perfect world. But I haven't found them yet. I don't own the id games myself. Just demos.

[Kaden Kyarel]

I could extract the MUS files for you, I've got all the Doom games: Ultimate Doom; Doom II; Final Doom(Plutonia and Evilution); Heretic Shadow of the Serpent Riders; Hexen; Hexen Deathkings of the Dark Citadel

though IIRC the final doom games use mixes of doom and doom2 music, and Hexen Deathkings uses a shuffle of the original Hexen music... either way I can get you the MUS tracks

[Hendricks266]

http://hendricks266...._engine_OSVs.7z

Containing all the MUS files from all released games running under the DOOM engine.

The Ultimate DOOM
DOOM II: Hell on Earth
Final DOOM: TNT: Evilution
(Final DOOM: The Plutonia Experiment)
Heretic
(Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders)
HeXen: Beyond Heretic
(HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel)
Strife
Chex Quest
Chex Quest 3 (contains 1 & 2)

[MusicallyInspired]

That would be fan-flipping-tastic!

[Kaden Kyarel]

Ok, so I extracted the MUS files from my Ultimate Doom wad, and did some crawling across google. While in the wad file itself there's a MUS file for each of the 9 levels in the original 3 episodes and none for the 4th episode, there are apparently only 23 tracks used in the entire game.

So I removed the copies and wrote a small text file that lists which levels go with which tracks, and the tracks' titles.

Updates will follow with more MUS packs

 Doom1MUS.zip (137.03K)
Number of downloads: 1029
 Doom2MUS.zip (149.45K)
Number of downloads: 957
 TNTMUS.zip (41.29K)
Number of downloads: 988

[Hendricks266]

Looks like we posted at the same time, MI.

[MusicallyInspired]

Lol thanks, guys.

[NightFright]

You probably knew about this already, but want to bring it to general attention, anyway: The OGG soundtrack for ROTT is currently useless for WinROTT(GL) since the port only supports MP3 format.

[Kaden Kyarel]

I downloaded Hendrick's Doom Engine MUS pack, and noticed between Doom and DoomII there was one misplaced file (d_doom.mus belongs in DoomII). Since Plutonia used tracks from Doom and DoomII there's no point in including it's mix of music. TNT uses some new music with DoomII music filling in the blanks so I'll separate out the new music, that way MI doesn't end up re-recording music already done.

These soundtracks are going to be used in ports of the games, right? I know Doomsday has the capability to assign assets like music files to whichever level they belong in by using a reference file. So the extra copies of tracks in Doom and DoomII, the Doom/II mix of tracks in Plutonia, and the DoomII and extra copies of TNT tracks don't really need to be included.

Not to bash Hendricks' contribution to these projects. It looks like his collection of games supersedes my own =P I just finally added Heretic to mine. Since my job is on-call and I haven't been getting many calls I've got a lot of time on my hands, so I'll continue my research into the soundtracks of the games I do own to lessen the work on MusicallyInspired's end.

That said I've only got the Raven Software games to deal with now. Unfortunately I haven't gotten Strife yet, and I really know nothing about the Chex Quest games =P

[MusicallyInspired]

I had no idea WinROTT didn't support OGGs. I thought it did. Strange that nobody told me before now.

[Kaden Kyarel]

Found nice collection of info at the Doom Wiki.

I'm not sure how much it matters to you(I like my music files to have as much info as I can find about them =P), but I've updated the TNT_MUS_Soundtrack.txt file with song titles for the TNT tracks.
 TNT_MUS_Soundtrack.txt (1.21K)
Number of downloads: 1122

I guess for Heretic, they rewrote the engine so that they didn't need a MUS lump for every level, so there are only 22 tracks in the IWAD, and they reuse various tracks in the many levels that didn't get their own. And in Hexen's case they just wrote music for every level in the game, so 35 of the 37 tracks are assigned to the title, intermission, victory screens, and levels. The remaining 2 tracks ended up unused. CHAP_2R wasn't used in Hexen: Beyond Heretic, but it was used in Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. CHARTR wasn't used in either game, but it'd be a shame not to hear it updated as well.

Here's the Soundtrack file for Hexen.
 Hexen_MUS_Soundtrack.txt (1.44K)
Number of downloads: 1028

I sent an email to Raven Software asking their Composer, Kevin Schilder, if he has any info on the tracks for Heretic. If he does not, then I guess the MUS lump names will have to do. If I get a reply with new info for this soundtrack I'll update the file.
 Heretic_MUS_Soundtrack.txt (619bytes)
Number of downloads: 1076

And as for the MUS files themselves, since the IWADs didn't have extra copies of songs like Doom and Doom II did, Hendricks' Doom Engine OSVs archive is perfect for the two Raven games. =D

[Hendricks266]

Kaden Kyarel, on Nov 27 2010, 05:31 AM, said:

I guess for Heretic, they rewrote the engine so that they didn't need a MUS lump for every level, so there are only 22 tracks in the IWAD, and they reuse various tracks in the many levels that didn't get their own. And in Hexen's case they just wrote music for every level in the game, so 35 of the 37 tracks are assigned to the title, intermission, victory screens, and levels. The remaining 2 tracks ended up unused. CHAP_2R wasn't used in Hexen: Beyond Heretic, but it was used in Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. CHARTR wasn't used in either game, but it'd be a shame not to hear it updated as well.

I'm pretty sure id went the one-file-per-level route to allow for easier modding, since ZDoom, DeHackEd, and the like didn't exist originally. As a programmer, I can't think of any reason the engine would not accept reuse of music files.

[Kaden Kyarel]

Yeah, it would be easier to insert new music for any levels that way with the original engine. I haven't looked at the code for any of the engines, but it seems the music for Doom EP4 and Heretic EP4 and EP5 are hard-coded somewhere. Which would mean any music played in those levels couldn't be unique, and same would go for the levels in EP2 and EP3 of Heretic that didn't get their own music. For that matter, it looks like the music played in all Doom/DoomII/Heretic levels are hard-coded. Unless you're using a source port, the music for Doom's E1M1 must be named D_E1M1. Though... I may have missed something in their IWAD files that defines that info =P

I like how Hexen uses a new lump file, SNDINFO, to define which maps got which music as well as what event triggers which sound, an idea the fancy new source ports may have borrowed. And using the MAPINFO lump to define things like sky textures and hub connections was genius, not to mention cdtrack definitions for anyone that wants to make/use their own CD's.

[Nikulas]

i red this topic and i will download all the music here and for the doomsday music pack all the ones for doom and doom2 beside4s the sycraft pack were recorded using the sound card or sound emulation that they were meant for now i am interested to see what they sound like and i do have all the doom/doom2 midi's that i got from using the doomsday engine witch can convert 2 midi's at a time and if D_Evil is not converted correctly then the gunshot will be replaced by a piano. Doom you could replace all the music and with heretic most of episode 3 wad hard coded and i think 2 of episode 2 but with the modren source ports that can support music pack you can change all the music as it's a text document.

[Kaden Kyarel]

Well... no reply from Raven about Heretic's music... so I guess we're stuck with just the basic file names for track info. It would have been cool to have titles and stuff to go with the music =P

[Kaden Kyarel]

M-I, any ideas when we might be listening to some newly recorded, awesome old music?

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm neck-deep in school right now. Essays, tests, exams, final recording sessions, portfolio development. But I'm out in 5 weeks. It'll be at least that long.