General Midi in Xcom games. \ VOGONS

General Midi in Xcom games.

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First post, by khalbrae

Posted on 2009-05-05, 10:20

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I know you've all recently helped me with a Might and Magic issue (and I am very grateful for that.) but I had managed to find and dig out my old Xcom UFO defense and Xcom Terror from the deep Cds and installed them. They work great. Just one minor snag.

Other games when I run them use my windows midi mapper when I set them to General Midi.. Xcom surprisingly doesn't. It's baffling. I want to hear what the game is "supposed" to roughly round like using the Yamaha XG software I got on sale 😉

I mean, my version even has the sounds working in the intro video. The version that was recoded for Windows (which I also have with that retro issue of PC gamer from back in the day) even lacks those sounds.

Here's how it sounds normally with fm synth music. I don't want to record the general midi music but I DO want to listen to and enjoy it with a more symphonic and emersive feeling (though the FM synth is still pretty moody and creepy in the game).

Reply 1 of 41, by khalbrae

Posted on 2009-05-05, 16:19

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Darn, I've only found one demo out there and it's a pre-release demo with only sound blaster and fm synth (and it was difficult to install properly).

Reply 2 of 41, by MiniMax

Posted on 2009-05-05, 16:19

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Eh what? Please be brief. You install X-COM UFO Defense using DOSBox? You configure the game for General MIDI? And then what? What is missing? What is wrong? How do you know it is wrong?

Reply 3 of 41, by khalbrae

Posted on 2009-05-05, 19:48

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the music does not play when configured to play on General Midi. In other DOS games (master of Magic, Warcraft 1 and 2, sierra games, etc) it plays via the windows midi system (in this case, my software synth)

Last edited by khalbrae on 2009-05-05, 20:07. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 41, by Qbix

Posted on 2009-05-05, 19:56

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played with the mpu option ?

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Reply 5 of 41, by khalbrae

Posted on 2009-05-05, 20:07

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mpu option?

Reply 6 of 41, by Qbix

Posted on 2009-05-05, 20:10

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1[midi]
2#     mpu401: Type of MPU-401 to emulate.
3#             Possible values: intelligent, uart, none.

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Reply 7 of 41, by khalbrae

Posted on 2009-05-05, 20:45

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hm... taking away the default options seems to make other games continue to work and xcom continue to fail...

uart or intelligent. change nothing
default,alsa,oss,win32,coreaudio all change nothing

I have no idea what I would put in device

Reply 8 of 41, by Qbix

Posted on 2009-05-05, 21:02

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the first xcom seems to produce music fine at my place. when configured for general midi as music board.

1core=auto
2cycles=auto limit 8000
3cycleup=500
4cycledown=20
5
6and 
7memsize=32

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Reply 9 of 41, by khalbrae

Posted on 2009-05-05, 23:31

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is that "and" actually part of your .conf?

Reply 10 of 41, by MiniMax

Posted on 2009-05-05, 23:52

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No.

Reply 11 of 41, by Freddo

Posted on 2009-05-06, 00:19

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General Midi works fine for me in UFO: Enemy Unknown.

Reply 12 of 41, by khalbrae

Posted on 2009-05-06, 14:19

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Odd... you're using Windows XP correct?

Wow... all I had to do was add the memsize=32

Reply 13 of 41, by khalbrae

Posted on 2009-05-06, 17:29

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I have to say this game is a HELL of a lot less creepy with general midi. The music sounds a lot less alien and instead of having strange creepy vibration effects, we have long drawn out but normal sounding strings. Disappointing but worth seeing. The Geoscape music does sound pretty good though 😅

Reply 14 of 41, by sectoid

Posted on 2009-07-14, 07:04

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I think X-COM music was originally written for Roland cards and General MIDI support came with a later patch.

Reply 15 of 41, by robertmo

Posted on 2009-07-14, 11:14

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Qbix: mobygames says xcom requires 4MB memory

Why memsize=32 is needed??

Reply 16 of 41, by eL_PuSHeR

Posted on 2009-07-14, 12:54

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I think it's because protected mode games may benefit from a larger amount of memory.

Intel i7 5960X
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8 GB GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming (Gigabyte)

Reply 17 of 41, by wd

Posted on 2009-07-14, 13:30

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Even pmode games rarely need 4+ mb and only two or three games require
more than the default, so this is specific to this game if at all.

Reply 18 of 41, by h-a-l-9000

Posted on 2009-07-14, 13:32

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The games might not have to swap out memory though.

1+1=10

Reply 19 of 41, by wd

Posted on 2009-07-14, 18:51

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If your OS can't cache 12mb you should consider a different OS.

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