Music Problems.

[Guest Tyr]

Hiya all. I've been trying to beat TFTD on and off for years now, never get terribly far into it due to lobstermen woes, but that's another issue. It has recently been brought to my attention that the game has music, and I'm having trouble wrestling my sound card into playing it.

 

I'm running the dos version of tftd, with the official patch (and no 3rd party/modern addons) on a 486sx at 33mhz. I've got sound, in the form of an isa soundblaster awe64 gold, with its official drivers, and sound fx come through fine, as does the audio from the intro videos (emulated cd-rom), but I've yet to work out what settings will get music working on it.

 

I've run the diagnostic tool which comes with the card, and it was able to play nicely, I then ran through tftd's setup utility a number of times, each time setting it to no sound fx, and each music driver it supports in turn, and testing it in game in both geoscape and tactical, with no joy. Most modes simply produced no output but a couple locked up the whole system (as is to be expected I guess )

 

I suppose I should probably look into buying one of the sound cards actually officially supported like an awe32 or basic sb16, but I would much prefer to get the awe64 gold working (mostly since I dont wanna have to find drivers for whatever other card I get, it was tricky enough getting the awe64's drivers to work, and back then I was still able to get creative's support guys to help).

 

If anyone has any advice, it'd make me a happy man. I'm proud to have a 486 dedicated just to tftd and while I can go on with just sound fx and no music, it would be nice to get it perfect.

[[NKF]]

Before you get a SB compatible or whatever and before someone says you should try Dosbox or get the CE version, I would recommend that you first try pressing the + and - keys on your numeric keypad. They control midi output for the dos version.

 

Who knows, it might work.

 

- NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Get the CE version.

Sorry couldn't help myself.

 

Anyway, try NKF's suggestion, if that doesn't work, have you tried VMD sound?

[Guest Tyr]

Get the CE version.

Sorry couldn't help myself.

 

Anyway, try NKF's suggestion, if that doesn't work, have you tried VMD sound?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Firstly, I dont have the CE version, secondly, I dont have windows, so that idea is a bit of a non-starter

 

I did try adjusting the volume however, with no joy. As for VMD sound, a quick google reveals it to be a soundcard emulator for winNT/2k/XP. If you can persuade any of those to run at a reasonable speed on a 486 sx33 you're a better man than I.

[[Mad]]

Anyway, try NKF's suggestion, if that doesn't work, have you tried VMD sound?

No use for it. He uses plain DOS.

 

Tyr, the AWE32 drivers should work fine for the AWE64. If, for some odd reason they don't, the SB Pro Drivers should definetly work. If you experience problems, I think to remember, that the DOS drivers for the AWE64 were able to load a compability mode for SB16 cards.

I assume you've set the correct DMA, IO address and IRQ? Have a look at your autoexec.bat AFAIR (it's been a while ) it is there that the SB drivers are loaded, so there you will be able to change the used IRQ/DMA/IO address.

 

To help you troubleshooting, have a look at the following sites:

http://dmzweb4.europe.creative.com/SRVS/CG...=ww_english_add

http://dmzweb4.europe.creative.com/SRVS/CG...=ww_english_add

http://dmzweb4.europe.creative.com/SRVS/CG...=ww_english_add

http://dmzweb4.europe.creative.com/SRVS/CG...=ww_english_add

 

and since new drivers never are a bad idea, check out http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/d...x=24&Image4.y=7

 

good luck!

 

 

Edit: well, it took me some time to aquire all the links, so this is why I referenced Jonaleth's post - tyr hadn't posted at the time I started my research...

 

Edit2: Have you tried using "general MIDI" for Music?

Edited March 25, 2006 by Mad

[Guest Tyr]

Tyr, the AWE32 drivers should work fine for the AWE64. If, for some odd reason they don't, the SB Pro Drivers should definetly work. If you experience problems, I think to remember, that the DOS drivers for the AWE64 were able to load a compability mode for SB16 cards.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hmm... I'll have a go looking for that compatibility mode, that sounds promising, thanx.

 

I assume you've set the correct DMA, IO address and IRQ? Have a look at your autoexec.bat AFAIR (it's been a while ) it is there that the SB drivers are loaded, so there you will be able to change the used IRQ/DMA/IO address.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yep, the card's diagnostic tool tells me its base i/o is at 220H, wavetable at 620H, mpu401 at 330H, irq 5 and dma of either 1 or 5. For wave output it does nicely, its just the midi its having trouble with, although that same diagnostic tool was able to play both normal and AWE enhanced music nicely, so it cant be a hardware problem, and I doubt it's a problem with the drivers either, just with backwards compatability with tftd.

 

Edit2: Have you tried using "general MIDI" for Music?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That is a curious thing. When I tried using general midi, at 330H, with sound fx set to come through SB16 (which covers both sb16 and awe32), the game locked up the whole machine when starting (gave me the mouse cursor in the top left of a black screen, then totally locked up, had to power cycle it), but, when using general midi with no sound fx, it ran fine (but failed to play any music).

 

I'm goina go have a look at those links, and see if I can find out how to turn that compatability mode on, and shall report back.

 

Thank you.

 

p.s. Hmm... I've just now tried it with SB Pro / general midi, and with sb (8bit mono) / general midi and had yet more odd expierences. This time, when attempting to play the intro videos, the machine showed a black screen instead, pressing esc twice cancled the attempt at playback and it carried on, but I had no sound fx and no music. Ah well. I did however just have an exact duplication of the events described in Jonaleth Irenicus signature, which made me somewhat amused.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Ah, sorry for having the automatic CE and VMD sound suggestions coming up, didn't realise you are running on plain DOS. Some wierd problems you are having there, and it's been so long since I played the game on DOS I can't remember how to set things up.

:/

 

Btw I've found out that if you have a passanger ship, there is a slim chance that you will have the scenario in my signature happen. It's got to do with alien spawns (if there is going to be an alien spawned there, it will never be a terrorist type, and it has a big chance of having a thermal shock launcher as well).

[Guest Tyr]

Ah, sorry for having the automatic CE and VMD sound suggestions coming up, didn't realise you are running on plain DOS. Some wierd problems you are having there, and it's been so long since I played the game on DOS I can't remember how to set things up.

:/

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hehe its ok, I was expecting someone to say it, not a lot of ppl still use old systems, but when I first got hold of a copy years ago, I tried using moslow to get it running at a reasonable rate on my then super-fast p2 300, and it was so eratic, with random speedups and slowdowns that it was almost worse than playing it on super-speed, so I picked up a 486 and have not looked back since.

 

Btw I've found out that if you have a passanger ship, there is a slim chance that you will have the scenario in my signature happen. It's got to do with alien spawns (if there is going to be an alien spawned there, it will never be a terrorist type, and it has a big chance of having a thermal shock launcher as well).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, I did see a bio drone up there just recently. My latest save is about 4 hours before they launch a ship attack, and I've been testing these sound problems a lot so I keep reloading it, and, just to make sure, I keep checking both geoscape and tactical, so I've seen the first turn of that ship attack many times hehe. Its always in the same part of the world, almost always a cruise ship (grr! much prefer the cargo ships), about 60% of the time there's a tasoth standing up on the deck facing the sub's door, 40% nobody there, and once that bio drone.

 

Talking of odd deployments tho, my last ship attack (in the second or third game month) was weird, had a bunch of tasoths, a deep one (I think), two triscenes (against my sonic pistols!) a couple of aquatoids, and a bio drone. Oh, and downstairs there was a xarquid too. Kinda painful for beginner skill and only a few months in. I went in with 14 guys, but was lucky to bring 4 back to base.

 

To try to wrestle this thread back on topic however, I'm currently installing a new 15mb partition on my main machine, so that I can install dos 6.22, so I can interlnk a program across to the 486 which claims to be able to fix the problem. It would of course be easier to use a floppy, except my main machine's floppy appears to be dead (it was a lovely one with both a 3.5" and a 5.25" all in one package)

[Guest Tyr]

Fixed!

 

Thank you everyone, and especially Mad.

 

Incase anyone else is ever in the same situation, I downloaded "AWEUTL.EXE" v1.20 from here, it runs as a tsr (or rather, aweutil.exe does) and now is playing suitably moody music at me as I type this. I set tftd to use soundblaster 16 (which includes awe32 support) and set music to awe32, and it worked, just like that, with aweutil resident in memory.

 

Now, if only I could work out a reliable way of killing lobstermen without having to get up close and personal with them...

[[Mad]]

Fixed!

Glad to hear! Congrats!

And you're welcome

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Grats and have fun!!

 

Btw, that scenario you explained is a mixed crew terror mission, they are a pain in the donkey. Tho you should be happy, I think there's a mixed crew terror mission where bio-drones actually get replaced by Tentaculats (yea really).