Music in SCI0 games

[Doan Sephim]

Music has long been a problem in homemade SCI games, at least for me.

I have settled with using VDMsound and changing my sound driver to mpumidi.drv because the gm.drv jumbles up certain instruments.

I use Anvil to make a midi file and SoundBox to convert the midi to a SCI sound file, but I haven't yet found a way to make the sound faithful to the midi.

VDMsound keeps the instruments in tact, but the tempo is shaky, sometimes slow and sometimes fast...which can be irritating!

Does anyone have any info on getting music to work correctly and easily?

[feydhark]

For me, the best way is run game in DosBox. All sound and music plays exelent in all sierra and fan games, also I chose GM.drv.

[troflip]

It sounds just as bad in DOSBOX for me.  All the timing is off.  It sounds like a bunch of monkeys in a room full of drums.  I've never heard good music from a SCI0 game.

[Doan Sephim]

I have tried out DosBox. When I use the gm.drv it goofs up the instruments, but when I use mpumidi.drv, the music works perfectly well.

Unfortunately the fps were terrible, but then I allocated more cpu to dosbox with ctrl-f12 and the game runs smooth with on-point music and I can run it in full screen (Alt-Enter) with great results. But it is quite a task to do all of that.

Eigen asked me about FreeSci, does anyone have experience with that?

[feydhark]

Look at file "dosbox.conf" and scroll down to sound config - look what sound card is emu` in your Dosbox. Try new v0.70, good luck.

[troflip]

I tried quadrupling, then octupluing the cycles in dosbox.  The music still sounds like it's being played by drunk monkeys.

[Doan Sephim]

Increasing the cycles didn't help my music, it only helped me to get the fps right.
Which sound driver are you using to play the music? gm.drv sometimes makes some instruments sound like drums, in which case it might sound like monkeys without any flair for tempo. have you tried mpumidi.drv?

[Collector]

I allocated more cpu to dosbox with ctrl-f12 and the game runs smooth with on-point music and I can run it in full screen (Alt-Enter) with great results. But it is quite a task to do all of that.

You can automate everything from the dosbox.conf. Once you find the number of cycles that is optimal for your game you can edit the "cycles=" line to whatever value that you need. One of the easiest ways to use DOSBox is to create a DOSBox shortcut and add "-conf [path\to\dosbox.conf]" to the end of the target to specify a unique configuration for that game. You can then add lines to the autoexec section at the bottom to the dosbox.conf mount a "C:" drive and start the game. A double click on this shortcut is all that is needed to start the game with the right cycles, graphics and audio options, etc.