Installation suggestions - TTD Win95 CD / Smooth Groove song

[Samu]

Hey all again. I have a Sound Blaster sound card and the awe midi files sound much better than the gm in my opinion. The OpenMSX files are a bit darkish for some weird reason, I don't think it's intended to work that way. They all become 'dark' when one of the track starts playing, then all others following that one become darkish as well. Also, one of the gm midi file has a weird long silence in the end, I don't know why it does that.

But ok, the suggestions, during the installation process:

- Allow the option to pick which midi file type to be copied from the CD: awe, fm or gm, or even all.
- Allow the option to copy additional files: scenarios, save games and heightmaps.

I took the effort to make a list of those files and into which folder they should be placed:

save folder (431 KB):
(temperate)
- trt00.ss1
(sub-tropical)
- trh00.ss1

scenario folder (4.54 MB):
(sub-arctic)
- trc00.ss0
- trc01.ss0
- trc02.ss0
- trc03.ss0
- trc04.ss0
- trc05.ss0
- trc06.ss0
- trc07.ss0
- trc08.ss0
- trc10.ss0
- trc12.ss0
(sub-tropical)
- trh00.ss0
- trh01.ss0
- trh02.ss0
- trh03.ss0
- trh04.ss0
- trh05.ss0
- trh06.ss0
- trh07.ss0
- trh08.ss0
(temperate)
- trt00.ss0
- trt02.ss0
- trt03.ss0
- trt04.ss0
- trt05.ss0
- trt06.ss0
- trt07.ss0
- trt08.ss0
- trt10.ss0
- trt11.ss0
(toyland)
- try00.ss0
- try01.ss0
- try02.ss0
- try03.ss0
- try05.ss0
- try06.ss0
- try07.ss0
- try08.ss0
- try09.ss0
- try10.ss0

scenario\heightmap folder (85.2 KB):
- logo.bmp
- slogo.bmp

[Samu]

I discovered which song is bugged. It's track 8 "Train filled with cash". It plays fine, but when it transits to the next track "Ultimate Run" this one and all following will play in a 'darkish' style. I made a personal playlist and started playing it from track 9 onwards. So far, so good.

Edit: Hmm... apparently it's not track 8. I excluded it, now when it transited from track 7 "Smooth Groove" to track 9 "Ultimate Run", this one still started playing dark.

Edit 2: Confirmed. It's not track 8. Started with 8 to 9, it transitted fine.

Edit 3: Another confirmation, it's not track 9 either. Transition from 9 to 8 was fine. Repeating both tracks come will a clean sound.

Rubidium: I'm testing OpenMSX 0.2.1 tracks, not the official.

Edit 4: Final confirmation, the bugged track is 7 "Smooth Groove" I used it to transit to many other tracks, most of them if not all become darkish.

Edit 5: The whole playlist has just repeated without track 7 on it. It played as intended.

[Rubidium]

OpenTTD doesn't support any the non-gm midi files. Primarily because it itself doesn't play the midi and uses external applications for that. As far as I know none of these support the fm/awe midi files.

[planetmaker]

Rubidium: I'm testing OpenMSX 0.2.1 tracks, not the official.

I cannot reproduce your findings with my clean OpenMSX locally. Also... what do you mean with "not the official"? Are you using a modified version of it? The TTD sound set? A combination?

[Samu]

But I can play them in Winamp just fine. Just had to rename to .mid. I can use the sound control pannel to change which Synth table to play. It works for Winamp, but not for OpenTTD.

EDIT: this was a reply to Rubidium.

[Samu]

Rubidium: I'm testing OpenMSX 0.2.1 tracks, not the official.

I cannot reproduce your findings with my clean OpenMSX locally. Also... what do you mean with "not the official"? Are you using a modified version of it? The TTD sound set? A combination?

I meant the original_windows pack. I'm not using that one atm, it also has a problem, some long silence in one of the tracks.

[Samu]

If you understand music, everytime that song plays, one of the channels will play with an octave down from their intended way.

[Samu]

Hmm, *thinks this might be related to this other topic*
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=48468

I solved that Locomotion problem, I just didn't update the topic. I was using default windows xp drivers and I was getting those noisy sounds. At this time, I think the OpenTTD songs were playing fine, but I'm not totally sure. Then I updated the drivers from Creative site, Locomotion sound issue was solved.

I'm not sure when I installed OpenTTD on this computer, if it was before or after I updated the drivers.

[Samu]

Here's how a awe file sounds like using SB Live! Sw Synth played on Winamp, recorded and saved using Windows Movie Maker.

(I can't upload a bigger file than this, I have a very restricted internet.)

[Samu]

I found the problem.
http://galaxy.uci.agh.edu.pl/~polak/midi/gus.html

In the program `Aleatoric Composer' you can select random or
conditional probabilities for notes over an 8 octave range and
for rhythms from a whole note to a thirty-second note.

That track 7 mid file was (probably) designed for a gravis ultrasound sound card which means it might be a very outdated file.

It needs sort of a patch file, something with a .pat extension and an executable file using that patch settings to play that .mid file correctly.

edit: ok, since I'm not totally sure if this track Smooth Groove was intended for a Gravis UltraSound, I better put that (probably) over there.

Edit 2:

How do I adjust pitchbend sensitivity?
>>Well, I can't be the only GUSser who has discovered the pitch-bending trick,
>>can I? In Windows, I can pitch-bend a full octave up or down. In DOS,
>>playmidi let's me pitch-bend the full range.

This is EXACTLY what's happening when I listen to Smooth Grove. So, from what I can gather, the song can be fixed. How? I don't know honestly... I've only worked with .mod files, not .mid.