Napalm's Music TSR Discussion

Tools, assembly, and file formats.
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CommanderSpleen
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Napalm's Music TSR Discussion

Post by CommanderSpleen »

I was discussing with Napalm the other day about expanding the music TSR he and lemm have programmed, to support Reality Adlib Tracker files (.RAD). Paramultart has been using the tracker to produce some music for OrbKeen, and it's proving most effective, removing the very approximate process of converting from MIDI to IMF.

Previously I had suggested a utility to convert RAD files to IMF, but since the tracker archive comes with complete source, including a stand-alone player, it's not too difficult, with the right skills, to simply use those files directly.

So this thread is a public outlet for that conversation.

Also I'll quote this buried post:
I think this is the best topic to reply to since this seems to be the one that talks about my TSRMusic app a lot.

I believe the idea first started when I was talking to levellass and she mentioned how cool it would be to get IMF's playing in Keen 1-3. So, I had a hack around and figured out a method that would be as unobtrusive to the original program as possible, so that it would work across all 3 games and perhaps more.

First I'd like to say congratulations to to lemm for finalizing my original assembly source. I'm glad I released it under Creative Commons and thanks for keeping me in the credits.. but add your name to the source as well, you've done a lot of work to it. I remember spending a lot of time getting it all working and playback working. I think my original version had static in-memory IMF file just to test it. It also looks like you've bug fixed some of my playback code. Nice work lemm!

I'd be interested to find out if anyone else is using the TSR in there mods, please let me know.

If people are really interested in this idea and find it useful I might rewrite it in C. If we could formalize ad-lib playback for Keen 1-3 (with or without ad-lib digital sounds as well as music) then perhaps support could also be added to CloneKeen Plus, and we then have platform independent Ad-lib for Keen 1-3. @Gerstrong: If your still about, PM me about this.

Nice to see the code is going to good use.
Actually, it was an idea I was trying to push for years before you appeared, but didn't have the skills myself and couldn't find anyone who did. Though it took several MSN conversations before you took it on, and it may well have been a conversation with levellass that finally convinced you.</totally altruistic history correction>
levellass
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Post by levellass »

I support this; though I can be of no use in implementing it Are there any other formats that may or may not be added?
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Malvineous
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Post by Malvineous »

NY00123 from the PCKF updated my old DRO2IMF utility a couple of weeks ago, so you can always use that to convert RAD (or any other Adlib format) into IMF, via DOSBox.

To prove it works, here are some samples:

neointro.rad neointro.imf
smjoop.rad smjoop.imf

Only shortcomings at the moment seem to be that the IMF files end up quite large, and those which have audio on channel 1 will interfere with the sound effects in Keen Galaxy. But presumably both of those issues wouldn't be a problem with songs composed specifically for a mod.
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

Has anybody used this utility with lemm's v2 patch?

Even testing it with the default v2.0.0.2.zip prefab Keen1 game (adding the two lines from the tsrmus readme to the PAT and adding tsrmus.com to the BAT), it glitches out for me just after the Please Wait screen, with what looks like an error message scattered by the low resolution.
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Post by levellass »

My one level mod combines the V2 patch and music TSR.
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

This is good news. I shall study Minkcraft and see if I can figure out what's going on.

(Arg, I'd forgotten the sheer atmospheric and structural ingenuity of this mod. /o\)

So, when I copy the tsrmus files and patch into the v2 Keen1 base, it still has the same problem. So I'm thinking fresh KeenGraphage or something may be required.

Hmm, but if I copy OrbKeen data into Mink... running my own patch still causes the error, but the Minkcraft patch works.
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

Minkcraft batch file wrote:tsrmusic.com
OrbKeen batch file wrote:tsrmus.com
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hh
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Post by levellass »

So, could this be adapted for Keen Dreams? It'd be nice if so.
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Malvineous
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Post by Malvineous »

Does it need to be? I know they removed the music to save space, but did they remove the music player code as well?
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Post by levellass »

I checked and it appears that they did indeed. Right now my only option is a TSR.
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Post by Paramultart »

Music in KDreams would be awesome.

So has TSR been expanded with .RAD support yet? I wonder what other formats could be thrown in there...
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