New SCI Resource Viewer Program

[MusicallyInspired]

Somebody dropped by the Janitorial Times (SQ Forum) and showed this little beauty, It even has sound preview support!

http://www.geocities.com/sciviewer

[Doan Sephim]

Wow! That looks pretty awesome! Nice find!

[MusicallyInspired]

There's no extracting ability yet but at least we know sound previewing is possible in the form I mentioned not long ago. If something like this was incorporated into SCI Companion it would absolutely rule! Next is to implement it into SoundBox and implement SoundBox into SCI Companion . Yes, I'm getting ahead of myself I know.

[MusicallyInspired]

Update, there is now exporting capability!

http://www.geocities.com/sciviewer/sv1.zip

[troflip]

I may play around with trying to incorporate sound previewing in SCI Companion...  it doesn't look like the sound resources (for SCI0 anyway) are too different from MIDI.

[Doan Sephim]

Any sound functionality better than what is there is definately encouraged!

[troflip]

I've been able to add basic sound previewing... all the instruments are wrong though.  I hate MIDI.
It shouldn't be too hard to allow importing midi files either.

[MusicallyInspired]

Are you sure the instruments aren't just wrong because the MT-32 instrument lists (especially Sierra's altered ones) are different from the General MIDI standard?

I should also mention as well that I wouldn't be using General MIDI for my SCI0 games. I'll be writing specifically for the MT-32 the same way Sierra did, maybe even with custom patches. I'll just have to figure out how to make the adlib custom patches. Is there a way to do that by any chance?

I'd just like SCI0 to stay away from going entirely General MIDI. The MT-32 is much better. If we can have both, that's fine, I just don't want some automatic General MIDI standard or something going on when it's importing MIDIs into the game.

[troflip]

Are you sure the instruments aren't just wrong because the MT-32 instrument lists (especially Sierra's altered ones) are different from the General MIDI standard?

That may very well be.  The Adlib and Yamaha sound fine.  How do I fix it? 

I should also mention as well that I wouldn't be using General MIDI for my SCI0 games. I'll be writing specifically for the MT-32 the same way Sierra did, maybe even with custom patches. I'll just have to figure out how to make the adlib custom patches. Is there a way to do that by any chance?

Not sure what you're asking here... a way to make custom patches?

[MusicallyInspired]

That may very well be.  The Adlib and Yamaha sound fine.  How do I fix it? 

I wouldn't say it's something that needs fixing. I assume you're using Sierra games to test the sound previewing, right? I don't think there's any way to translate Sierra game stuff to General MIDI since every Sierra game has a completely different instrument patch list and sometimes have instruments or sound effects that you just can't find a General MIDI alternative for. Even if you succeeded for one game it wouldn't work for another. What the program at the top of this thread has is a drop down list where you can select whichever format you want (Yamaha, MT32, General MIDI which SCI0 games don't have unless a General MIDI patch and driver is created for fangames, Digital also which SCI0 doesn't have, and adlib/sound blaster) and then you pick the MIDI output in the program settings and it just puts whatever you've selected in the output you've selected. I say keep it that way. Don't try to translate into General MIDI because it's impossible for every game. Go the route of making a custom General MIDI driver and patch specifically for fangames. But don't let the program translate anything.

Not sure what you're asking here... a way to make custom patches?

Yeah. Is that possible?

[troflip]

I wouldn't say it's something that needs fixing. I assume you're using Sierra games to test the sound previewing, right?

Yes.  I was using codename iceman at the moment...

What the program at the top of this thread has is a drop down list where you can select whichever format you want (Yamaha, MT32, General MIDI which SCI0 games don't have unless a General MIDI patch and driver is created for fangames, Digital also which SCI0 doesn't have, and adlib/sound blaster) and then you pick the MIDI output in the program settings and it just puts whatever you've selected in the output you've selected. I say keep it that way. Don't try to translate into General MIDI because it's impossible for every game.

Yes, that's exactly what I have working now.  The 5 or 6 different synths are built-in to the SCI0 sound resource format.  Each of the 16 channels belongs to one or more of the synths, so you can filter out the channels that don't apply to the particular synth you have chosen.  But I notice that that guy's app and mine have different instruments in some cases.  Specifically for the MT-32... his instruments sound better (e.g. banjo where there should be banjo - wheras I have a piano sound).  But Adlib and others match what I hear with his app.  I dunno - it may just be a bug in my code somewhere.

Go the route of making a custom General MIDI driver and patch specifically for fangames. But don't let the program translate anything.

Well, that goes quite beyond my capabilities at the moment.  Why the need for a custom General MIDI driver?  Why not just use the gm.drv and then everyone knows which instruments are which?  You said General MIDI was no good for some reason?

Not sure what you're asking here... a way to make custom patches?

Yeah. Is that possible?
[/quote]
I'm not sure of the format of SCI0 patch resources.  Even the freesci site doesn't have "specs" for it (except for patch.002).

[MusicallyInspired]

Well, that goes quite beyond my capabilities at the moment.  Why the need for a custom General MIDI driver?  Why not just use the gm.drv and then everyone knows which instruments are which?  You said General MIDI was no good for some reason?

Well if one already exists than great. But officially there isn't a gm.drv bundled with Sierra games that's all I was saying. General MIDI would be fine for the everyday fangame maker who wants to put his favourite MIDIs into the game or even a composer who doesn't have an MT-32. I'm just saying keep the ability to use MT-32 as well since I think MT-32 is better than General MIDI. The only thing is if you can use MT-32, at the moment you'd have to use one of the Sierra game patch files with their own custom instrument list and you can't use your own list. That's why I'm asking about the possibility of making a custom patch file. Would it be very different from a SyxEx file you think? I have no idea I'm just guessing here.

[Collector]

You could probably get more information about what the MT-32 would need from the developers of Munt, the MT-32 emulation project.

[MusicallyInspired]

Sierra's patch files have nothing to do with the MT-32 by itself.

[troflip]

And feature requests for a midi->sci converter?  What is Ravi's soundbox missing?
Do you need to re-assign channels?
Do you need to remove certain tracks? (the tracks in the midi file... which don't necessarily seem to correspond to channels)