Sound

[Lightfoot]

I don't get it, I add a new sound resource and I don't know how to play it.

If I put (Sound:play()) into TitleScreen.sc it plays the Dummy sound 1. So I rewrote Dummy sound 1 with a sound I made in CakeWalk MusicMaker and exported in Soundbox. However I hear no sounds now when I load the TitleScreen.

[Lightfoot]

Is there some kind of special midi format I have to use before adding the resource?

[Patrik]

You'll have to use a special sound driver created by Ravi (the author of soundbox). It can be found at http://www4.ncsu.edu:8030/~rniyenga/sci/mpumidi.zip. If you try playing with sierra's drivers you won't hear a thing.

[Lightfoot]

Where do I put the driver?

[Patrik]

You put the driver in the game directory! Then you will have to edit your resource.cfg so that soundDrv = mpumidi.drv. That'll hopefully do it if you have called the sound resource correctly etc. As for the midi format, I remember that an earlier version of Soundbox wanted midis with format 0 but I believe it'll take midi1 too in the recent version. Haven't really been having much time for Sci-twitching recently. Ought to get to it again though as I have the first pieces of a quite promising game waiting... Heh heh.

[Lightfoot]

Thanks dude, I'll give it a shot when I get home.

Is the PCSpeaker limited to the midi files it can play?

[Lightfoot]

OK it says "Unable to initialize your music hardware." and "Out of heap space"

[Patrik]

Ok, I don't understand what you mean about the pc speaker... You can't possibly mean that you want to play your midis through a pc speaker!?

As for question nr 2, my answer is "Oops, you asked me something I didn't think of". I have been getting that error message some times when I've been running games with incorrect drivers (mostly outdated roland mt-32 drivers), but I don't think I've ran into them with Ravi's drivers... My suggestion is that you look up Ravi's page (from which you got the driver) and check around because it MIGHT be possible that I gave you a link to the wrong driver (though I'm quite sure I didn't). I guess I'm out of advices now, better send Ravi himself an e-mail because he KNOWS what he's talking about and I'm sure he can help you. I only know that I actually got my midis to work some way a couple of months ago. In other words, it SHOULD be working. Question is how... Good luck now, buddy!

[Lightfoot]

Thanks Patrik  

[Patrik]

Any time. Hope I'll see some results of your hard work in the future, he he. Gee, I really can't wait to hear people's own compositions in their SCI games!! Normally I hate midi music, but I guess I changed my mind when I heard the beautiful soundtrack from LSL3. Really, what would those games have been WITHOUT the music? It really is a very essential part of the games. Now, you go send Ravi an e-mail ya hear!!

[Lightfoot]

It may not work on this machine because it has an SiS on board sound card. When I load CakeWalk it says this device is not responding. But it works for everything except midi.

[Patrik]

Well, sound cards sure can be a great pain in the arse. Mine is some VIA-based crap and it used to refuse playing the sound in older SCI games, but then I found Ravi's updated drivers and all of a sudden it worked. Guess those games weren't created for newer cards... BTW you haven't considered giving up Cakewalk? I haven't had the best experiences with that program... I prefer Cubase any time. For BOTH audio and midi recording. Which version of CW are you working with?

[Lightfoot]

I am using MusicMaker 2003

[Patrik]

Oh. Haven't tried that one, no. Is it any good? I'm always interested in trying out new music progs (I AM a musician after all...).