GUS Daily Digest Sun, 15 May 94 9:37 PST Volume 13: Issue 14 Today's Topics: Battle Isle 2 works great with GUS Constrolling SBOS DOOM and 1024K GUS - optimized! GUS & MAN ENOUGH CD-ROM... MICROSM Update!! Replacement patches RTZ CDROM answers (I think) ScreamTracker 3.01 Ultrawolf Standard Info: - Meta-info about the GUS can be found at the end of the Digest. - Before you ask a question, please READ THE FAQ. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 15 May 94 11:21:28 METDST From: Broderdue Subject: Battle Isle 2 works great with GUS Fancy the "old" 16-bit AIL drivers doing the job. Great game; get it if you like strategic/arcade game like Dune 2. Thanks for replies on earlier post. Ivar ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 94 23:55:22 EDT From: PaulSS1259@aol.com Subject: Constrolling SBOS I am looking for some info about controlling SBOS. I just got a package for my daughter from Disney software called Beauty and the Beast. Running SBOS without any parameters works OK, except that the music (the FM track) is too loud compared compared to the speech track. How do I control the level of the FM track? I tried using the -vf[ ] command but was ignored! All thoughts appreciated... Paul ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 94 22:57:42 EDT From: Meshreki@eecis.udel.edu Subject: DOOM and 1024K GUS - optimized! FTP archive.epas.utoronto.ca:/pub/pc/ultrasound/submit/gus1m.zip ======================================================================== Title : GUS1M.WAD Author : Tom Klok Email Address : a344@mindlink.bc.ca, a00344@giant.rsoft.bc.ca Description : An optimized MIDI instrument mapping for Gravis Ultrasound cards with 1024K on board. NOTE! If you don't have a GUS with 1024K, this wad will gain you nothing (but shouldn't hurt anything either). This PWAD contains no new MUS music files or sounds whatsoever. Nor does it require any new .PAT files, just those supplied with the more recent install disks. ======================================================================== Information ~~~~~~~~~~~ As you probably know, Doom's wad file contains a resource named DMXGUS which contains a list of all MIDI instruments (patch file names) and a table specifying which instruments to load into card memory. Since all 190+ instruments can't be loaded at once, the DMXGUS file loads a subset of the full GM set and then maps the remaining instrument numbers to the loaded instruments. I was curious about the internal format of MUS files, and pretty happy when the MIDI2MUS utility was released. Thanks, guys! Mucking around with the original D_* MUS files Doom is supplied with, I decided to compare the patches they used with the DMXGUS file to see what kind of mapping was going on. It turns out there's a lot of it, but much of it is poorly set up. id's supplied DMXGUS file is almost exactly the same as the ULTRAMID.INI file supplied with Ultramid 2.00. That's a good shot at a generic GM mapping, but Doom never uses many of the loaded instruments... and many of the instruments it DOES use are mapped to something else. Therefore, I've rewritten the DMXGUS file to match Doom's MUS files as closely as possible. I've booted out about 40 unused instruments and added 29 new ones. The difference is quite dramatic. Some of the songs have percussion parts that were being thrown out before; some of the instruments sound quite different. It's a shame that id didn't take the time to do this themselves, but I guess they've been too busy tweaking other stuff. Ok, how do I use it? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Extract the GUS1M.WAD file to wherever you normally put new wad files (ie c:\doom\wad), then use it as you'd use any other new WAD add-on: doom -file WAD\GUS1M.WAD That's it! Hopefully you'll hear the difference as soon as Doom's welcome screen comes up. Why only 1024K GUS's? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, because that's what I own. :) It's taken about 10 hours of work to get the 1024K mapping to the point where I'm happy with it. If someone else would like to help out with mappings for 256, 512 and 768K boards, then go for it! Feel free to contact me for a few utils I've written to make *some* of this easier. Much of it is still trial and error. Will it work with id's shareware release of Doom? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well... yes, it will. I'm not sure that should be a problem, as it's not *adding* anything that wasn't there before... no new levels, sounds, music, etc. It's just touching up something that I feel wasn't properly implemented in the first place. And more importantly, I can't think of any way of preventing it. The typical means to foil shareware use for new levels is to either insert them into episodes 2 or 3, or to use textures/objects not found in the shareware release. Neither would work here. Look at it this way: it makes the music Doom comes with sound better on a 1024K GUS. If you like the change, register Doom and get ALL the music! Please give id your support. They're writing the best damn games on the market, publishing them as shareware, and supporting the GUS. What more could we want? Please let them know you appreciate it. Copyright / Permissions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Authors may use this optimized DMXGUS WAD in their own WAD files, and may use it as a base to further modify the GUS's GM mapping, provided they give me (Tom Klok) credit within the DMXGUS resource and on their PWAD documentation. Anyone may distribute this WAD, provided you include this text file with attributions. You may distribute this pwad in via any media (BBS, floppy disk, CDROM, etc). -- tk 08May94Su ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 1994 16:15:44 -0600 From: Dennis Chan Subject: GUS & MAN ENOUGH CD-ROM... Hello, a friend of mine is having trouble using his GUS to work with MAN ENOUGH by Tsunami. He is using a Mitsumi FX001-D with 1.15 drivers. The version of SBOS is 3.81. The memory manager is QEMM 7.04. He has a AMD 386DX-40 MHz with 8 MB RAM, DOS 6.20 with no double space or disk compression. Anyone have any ideas? The music works but the digital speech can't be heard and causes the game to crash when it is turned on... Please respond via e-mail... Thanks. -- ============================================================================= Dennis Chan | "Linux + X11 is what MS Windows Internet Email adress: | was supposed to be... Besides, dec430@cs.usask.ca | it's free and easy to use!" Use Linux!!! | ============================================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 1994 16:33:19 -0400 From: KWAN RICHARD SIK YIU Subject: MICROSM Update!! I finally gave up on solving the hangup problems, and I return the game.Somehow the game won't like GUS, and ignoring my SB16. If I set the music and SFX to SB16, it works but the trade off are poor sound quality and I need to boost up my speakers to hear anything. I don't know why the game automatically lowers the volume of my SB16. Now I exchanged MICROSM with MegaRace. Somehow, I hear click...click everytime the SOUND effects come. If anyone knows how to clear that annoying clicks, please post the solutions! Thanks in advance@! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 94 22:46:24 -0500 From: jfulmer@databank.com (John Fulmer) Subject: Replacement patches Hi Ho! I'm looking for a few good replacement patches. On the whole, the Gus's patches are pretty good, but some are just horrid! Anyway, I'm not looking for any huge patches (500k for piano is a bit much), but if anyone would like to try to make a few of these, or know where I can find some, let me know: Acoustic Grand Piano(63k) around 75k-100k would be acceptable Harpsichord(7.7k) Anyone have anything that sounds better, but not too large? Accoustic Guitar(nylon, 40k) Accoustic Guitar(steel, 52k) Overdriven Guitar(25k) Distortion Guitar(39k) voice 'DOO'(17.3k) I HAVE to replace this one..ich! Synth Drum (syntom, 61k) This is the biggie. The origional is too muddy and too long. I would like to find a nice clean version with a much shorter decay. Listen to 'DIODES.MID', and you'll see what I mean.... Bird Tweet(27.5k) I DON'T want Crows, I want birds! And just one tweet would be nice. Thanks a lot, and if anyone else has any favorite replacement patches that are around the same size as the origionals, lets hear it! Personally, I like the ProPats v2 acoustic drums. Very clean, and not much bigger than Gravis's patches.... chow, *--------------------------------------------------------------------* |John Fulmer(jfulmer@databank.com)| "I find it in-ter-es-ting, * |Micom Computer Systems | A noun's a person, place, * |Lawrence, Ks. | or thing..." * *--------------------------------------------------------------------* ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 94 18:07:08 -0400 From: "Marco Coletti" Subject: RTZ CDROM answers (I think) Well I think I've finally figured out what you need to do to get Return to Zork to run properly. Here goes,... 1. Get a copy of the Version 1.1 update. Check carefully because there is a different update for the floppy and CD ROM versions. The 1.1 version uses EMS/XMS automatically so you get an extra 64 KB of conventional memory. With the 1.0 version I found I had to have about 624 KB of free RAM just to run the game. 2. If you don't have a VOICEOOH.PAT file in ULTRASND\MIDI you'll keep getting "Divide Error" messages (at least that's what kept happening to me). I merely copied DOO.PAT to VOICEOOH.PAT and the Divide Error messages went away. Hope this helps some of you! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 1994 21:05:37 -0400 (EDT) From: mikebat@netcom.com (Mike Batchelor) Subject: ScreamTracker 3.01 Several people have asked me where ScreamTracker 3.01 is, and have not been able to find it on epas or orst. It's on epas now, I just uploaded it. -- Mike Batchelor | UseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinux mikebat@netcom.com | xuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesU ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plug 'N' Play: A specification invented by Microsoft and Intel which enables a computer and its operating system to create hardware conflicts without user intervention. No more jumpers to misplace! The computer will misplace them for you. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 94 23:06:49 -0400 From: "Momentary language, sexual situations" > Be warned, IRQ 5 or IRQ 7 is usually the Printer LPT1 parallel port. If ou > want to use IRQ five, you must disable the printer port completely, since > most I/O cards only allow you to use one or the other for the printer. > Also, make sure you don't have a problem motherboard that uses an OPTI or > UMC chipset. This can also cause weird problems.... Sigh...Yes, there is a problem with SOME OPTi and UMC chipsets but it ONLY appears when using 16-bit DMA and then the symptom is that your system tends to hang hard. It related to a bad DMA controler chip and you can avoid the problem entirely by using 8-bit DMA. Also, the problem is pretty rare these days... Also, I use both IRQ 7 and 5 for the SB and the GUS and it's no problem (although I haven't tried DOOM). Check your LPT controller; mine certainly allows me to disable the LPT port...Now, whether or not it ACTUALLY disables it is another story. DDA ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 May 94 17:40:04 EDT From: JeffOw@aol.com Subject: Ultrawolf While awaiting my registered version of Doom, I've reloaded Spear of Destiny which I bought awhile back, while playing in SBOS emulation. I've since gotten Ultrawolf, but it doesn't seem to patch the Spear of Destiny stuff. Any suggestions? JeffOw ------------------------------ End of GUS Daily Digest V13 #14 *******************************