I think it's probably impossible because the hardware works too differently. It's like MT32 emulation via General MIDI. It can't be done accurately.

The closest that I've found (still not perfect though) is the rather largish "OPL-3 FM 128M SoundFont" ("OPL-3 FM 128M.sf2") by Zandro Reveille mentioned on this page -> http://www3.telus.net/anapan8/oldscardemu.htm .

According to the description:

"SoundFont created from sampling the GM instruments from an ISA Sound Blaster 16 (with a Yamaha YMF262 FM Operator Type-L V3 chip)."

Download is here -> http://rapidshare.com/files/216640144/OPL-3_FM_128M.sfpack .

If you had a working sb16 system and some patience you could make one

The problem is that General MIDI won't map perfectly to the weirdness and quirks that you could achieve and take advantage of with an FM synth.

Although most games may just use it essentially as a GMIDI synth. But also some games have separate compositions for GMIDI vs. MT32 vs. FM.

I remember that Knights of Xentar had some "meows" in one town... something you won't get with a soundfont.

Some other games used FM to get sound effects, when sound cards with DACs were scarce.

I think it'd be more effective to have a "Virtual OPL-3 Driver" which would be the best opl3 emulator ever, listening on port 338. From that point you would use any FM midi driver you'd want with whatever wacky timbres they have.

"Virtual OPL-3 Driver" does such a thing exist? outside of virtual machines?

leileilol wrote:

I think it'd be more effective to have a "Virtual OPL-3 Driver" which would be the best opl3 emulator ever, listening on port 338. From that point you would use any FM midi driver you'd want with whatever wacky timbres they have.

I don't get why nobody has ever programmed something like this yet. 🤣 If such a thing existed, I'd download it in a heartbeat.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I don't get why nobody has ever programmed something like this yet. 🤣 If such a thing existed, I'd download it in a heartbeat.

I know. It's one of those "too awesome" things to make you'd have to wait 20 years for someone to get off their duff and do it, like the idea of a DOS emulator. I was waiting for one back in 1998. When 2003 rolled over, whoomp there it is.

F found one called RegressionFM 1LX

found it here

http://www.zophar.net/forums/showthread.php?p=99374