Thought I'd bump this and see who's around. Also, apparently 12000 cycles is best, as anything higher seems to make very specific things "speed up" briefly.

Do you mean the voice when you navigate the menu? If that's what you are talking about most likely you run the game with the stock auto detected settings. However the game has CD Audio tracks for the music, and if you mean about those voices I don't think you can do anything about those.

You can run the game with the default DOSBox configuration file, and all you need to do is to set the cycles to max. Now run CONFIG.EXE, select English and choose Configure Sound F/X. Now here's the weird part. If you Accept the stuff it recommended you will going hear the high-pitched voices in the menu. The installer detected a Sound Blaster 16 card with Base Port 220, IRQ 7 and DMA 1.

Don't accept the changes, instead click on Reject. A menu will appear with more options. The options I tested were Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro. Both work fine and fixes the issues you have. Choose one of those, and pick 0x220 for the Digital BASE Port, IRQ 7 for the Digital IRQ and Channel 1 for the Digital DMA Channel.

Usually I keep the CD-ROM Music for having amazing CD Audio Soundtrack in the game. Then exit out of the Configuration utility and run the game with TEMPEST.EXE. It's not a big deal of those menu sounds are a bit different. The game works just fine and you will spend most of your time in the game anyway I guess... Probably it works the same on a real Sound Blaster 16 card too. If someone has the game, necessary equipment and free time can please test it for us? Thank you!

Please let us know if this fixed your issue.

Works great! Thanks a lot.

Those "menu voices" are part of the whole voice package; my in-game voices were affected too. Apparently even some sound effects were affected. Strange...

edit: Hm, some voices seem exceptionally scratchy, gonna play around with settings. Really wish I could know whether this stuff is a part of the game/port or not.

Sorry to bump this old thread, but I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this problem?

As the other posters replied, the voice sound effects are ALMOST the correct pitch when selecting SBPro (as well as SB) for the game's digital output, but the voices are quite scratchy sounding... and still not really the correct pitch.

Selecting GUS for the output results in better quality audio (no scratchy sound), but the pitch of the voice sound effects is STILL not 'quite right'.

Any idea of what could cause this, and why the voice sound effects sound like a chipmunk when selecting an SB16 for the digital output?

Perhaps test with dosbox-x? Codeholio made some modifications to both emulations.

Thanks for the heads-up 😀 I tired that version, and although it helped a bit with the scratchy sounds when selecting an SB or SBPro (some scratchiness is still there, though), the voice sound effects sounded even higher in pitch when selecting an SB16 for digital output.

@All, BTW, does anyone have any idea as to what "streaky" does in the game? I've NEVER found any cheats for the DOS version of T2K throughout these past two decades, but was recently browsing with my hex editor.

In the executable is the text line "FLOSSIE WANTS TO CHEAT", and after that, the following hex:

1F 14 13 12 1E 25 15

I thought to myself... hmmm... I wonder if those are keyboard scan codes? Heh, YES, and they spell "streaky" 🤣! I fired up the game, and then during gameplay typed "streaky in.

The web flashes colorfully (like when you obtain an extra life), and the lady voice sound says "Yes!", but nothing appears to have changed (?). It MAY be just me, but gameplay seemed a bit easier after doing this, but I'm not sure (?).

Anyhow, has ANYONE ever heard of this before (and have any idea as to what it does), or have I found a totally hidden easter egg/cheat in this game that NO ONE has ever came across since the game's release in 1995 🤣?

Tempest 2000's SB and SBPro drivers use DSP command 0x40 to specify the frequency, but the SB16 driver uses DSP command 0x41. DOSBox does not currently use the same "nasty kind of hack" for DSP command 0x41 to support frequency changes in running autoinit transfers as it does in command 0x40. The frequency is usually specified *before* starting an autoinit transfer, so it's seldom an issue. Adding the code to change frequency on-the-fly in command 0x41 seems to fix the problem with the high-pitched SB16 sound:

1     case 0x40:    /* Set Timeconstant */
2         sb.freq=(1000000 / (256 - sb.dsp.in.data[0]));
3         /* Nasty kind of hack to allow runtime changing of frequency */
4         if (sb.dma.mode != DSP_DMA_NONE && sb.dma.autoinit) {
5             DSP_PrepareDMA_Old(sb.dma.mode,sb.dma.autoinit,sb.dma.sign);
6         }
7         break;
8     case 0x41:    /* Set Output Samplerate */
9     case 0x42:    /* Set Input Samplerate */
10         DSP_SB16_ONLY;
11         sb.freq=(sb.dsp.in.data[0] << 8)  | sb.dsp.in.data[1];
12+        /* Nasty kind of hack to allow runtime changing of frequency */
13+        if (sb.dma.mode != DSP_DMA_NONE && sb.dma.autoinit) {
14+            DSP_PrepareDMA_Old(sb.dma.mode,sb.dma.autoinit,sb.dma.sign);
15+        }
16         break;

@Qbix: should 0x42 be ignored rather than treated the same as 0x41?

The game uses 11111 Hz for SB and SBPro, 11025 Hz for SB16, which may explain why the older cards sound slightly faster.

@ripsaw: Good point, it might be better to ignore it with possibly a LOG()() message. It might be worth having that hack. Maybe add a LOG()() message as well. Not sure how often it is called in that game though.

Many thanks for the detailed explanation and info! 😀

rfnagel wrote:

@All, BTW, does anyone have any idea as to what "streaky" does in the game?
---snip---

Clicky here -> Undocumented Tempest 2000 DOS version cheat code? 😀