Latest version of ScummVM ported to AGA

[Overmann]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

It would only support compressed music playback in certain games (non-MIDI), for example Full Throttle. MIDI music in ScummVM is dynamically generated so you cannot simply record it and turn it into a compressed music file.

Doesn't CD/FMTowns-versions of these games av CD-audio for music, which can be compressed and used that way in ScummVM?

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Overmann

Doesn't CD/FMTowns-versions of these games av CD-audio for music, which can be compressed and used that way in ScummVM?

CD Audio yes.....MIDI no

4.2. Does ScummVM support using MP3/Ogg/FLAC files instead of CD audio?

Yes. You can use LAME or some other CD audio conversion utility to convert your CD audio to MP3. Since version 0.3.0 we also support Ogg Vorbis files, and FLAC is supported since version 0.7.0. See the README for more info.


4.3. Does ScummVM support using MP3/Ogg/FLAC files instead of the original MIDI music?

No. If all the game does is to play or loop a tune it would be possible, but many of the games do fancy stuff like smooth transitions from one tune to another, or turn individual instruments on and off, etc. There's simply no way ScummVM could take a piece of digital music and emulate that kind of behavior.

This question usually comes up in connection with Sam & Max Hit the Road (which has a few unused bonus audio tracks on the CD) and Monkey Island 2 (which is sometimes distributed on the same CD as the version of Monkey Island 1 that uses CD audio). Both of these games do far too much fancy stuff to even consider an idea like this.

http://scummvm.org/faq/#4_2

[Overmann]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

CD Audio yes.....MIDI no



http://scummvm.org/faq/#4_2

I see! iMuse and all that.. Shame!

[ancalimon]

Isn't there an Amiga soundcard with proper midi and soundbank? If there isn't I wonder why they never created such a card.

[Amicol]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

Isn't there an Amiga soundcard with proper midi and soundbank? If there isn't I wonder why they never created such a card.

You don't need one, there are plenty of midi interfaces for the Amiga

[ancalimon]

I have a midi interface (but no mt32). What I'm talking about is a sound card which can directly play midi using its own soundfonts.

[Amicol]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

I have a midi interface (but no mt32). What I'm talking about is a sound card which can directly play midi using its own soundfonts.

That would be nice, but until someone starts supporting midi out, there ain't a lot of point. There are some Sierra games, and that's it....

[ancalimon]

Originally Posted by Amicol

That would be nice, but until someone starts supporting midi out, there ain't a lot of point. There are some Sierra games, and that's it....

No need for midi in and midi out. I don't want to plug anything midi related to the sound card. I just want it to have the ability to play midi files with a quality soundfont.

I remember trying Ultima 7 port (Exult) on my Amiga maybe around year 2000. It had midi support but it slowed down everything too much. If there was a way for the soundcard to play midi without using much of the cpu time, that would have been great.

[Amicol]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

No need for midi in and midi out. I don't want to plug anything midi related to the sound card. I just want it to have the ability to play midi plays with a quality soundfont.

I remember trying Ultima 7 port (Exult) on my Amiga maybe around year 2000. It had midi support but it slowed down everything too much. If there was a way for the soundcard to play midi without using much of the cpu time, that would have been great.

That would work for the later midi games, for SC and General midi, but MT32 relies on Sysex transfers to alter the sound fonts. Doom, Heretic etc would be ideal for this type of sound card, but not Monkey Island and the many other MT32 games.
Saying that, I would buy such a card

[ancalimon]

This was one of the weakest points of Amiga in my opinion. We needed midi support so that Paula could play soundfx while the midi part could play music. Many games simply played only music or only soundfx because of this. This needs to be fixed :P

[Amicol]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

This was one of the weakest points of Amiga in my opinion. We needed midi support so that Paula could play soundfx while the midi part could play music. Many games simply played only music or only soundfx because of this. This needs to be fixed :P

+1

[Overmann]

This might be silly, and I apologize for my, probably, apparent lack of technical knowledge, but:

Would it be possible to use something like a raspberry PI as a midi-instrument? If you send MIDI out from a device connected to the Amiga (Serialport MIDI like the PyrAmid) to the Raspberry, the raspberry should be able to, via a program that has a samplebank, play the samples back to a speaker..? The Amiga would just have to send the MIDIout and the raspberry would take care of the rest?

On a PC or MAC midi can be sent to programs like "Kontakt" which has all the samples necessary stored in library. Similar solutions exist for linux. One would need to set up custom soundbanks, but that would probably not be particularly hard, and RaspberryPI is very cheap.

Edit:
[ Show youtube player ]
Using Timidity on RaspberryPI AtariST.

[NovaCoder]

No need to use a Raspberry, a MT32 will do it. Just need someone to add support to ScummVM 68k.

Originally Posted by Retrofan

I haven't heard of any game with buffer overflow (and less one that could be played on a miggy).

That MT32 has a good price, they are more expensive everytime. You will find some more for 100€ or more, so you won't have any problem if you need to resell it after a time, you would sell it better.

Nova you will also need a midi interface like this http://z-amigastore.com/index.php?op...ng=en&vmcchk=1 that is the same that I've got, the midi cable http://www.ebay.es/itm/5-Pin-Din-Mid...e317219&_uhb=1 and the thick audio cables that I think are these http://www.ebay.es/itm/1-5m-PULSE-2-...a4ce444&_uhb=1

please somebody tell me if I am wrong.

Edit: These are the audio selectors I use to buy if you -surely- need them (well, this is cheaper than mines): http://www.ebay.es/itm/AV-RCA-Select...f2d75c3&_uhb=1

Edit: Offtopic I've seen what do I need to connect it to a Pc [ Show youtube player ]

[Retrofan]

Do you already have an MT32, mate? You are the main person to have it

[NovaCoder]

No not yet, I've spent all of money on loose women

[matthey]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

This was one of the weakest points of Amiga in my opinion. We needed midi support so that Paula could play soundfx while the midi part could play music. Many games simply played only music or only soundfx because of this. This needs to be fixed :P

The Amiga CPU is efficient for doing Midi table look-ups, sound sample loading and sound mixing with a fast enough processor and hard drive. GMPlay works well as a software solution here. It would have been nice if there was a standard library system to handle the work (Midi datatype?). It would be even better if there was more cheap accelerators and fpga boards with enough performance to handle the data. While it's nice to offload processing to specialized hardware, a MIDI only playback card is kind of a waste, IMO, for how much it would be used and how much processing power it offloads.

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

No need to use a Raspberry, a MT32 will do it. Just need someone to add support to ScummVM 68k.

A Raspberry Pi is much cheaper and can do more than Midi. It can decompress compressed sound files also, for example. Granted, it needs programming but it can do more for less cost. It has the potential to make a great Amiga Pi-ripheral .

[ancalimon]

Do you think it could be possible to somehow speed up Monkey Island (on a 060-50) by applying some kind of downsampling to graphics making them lowres?

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

Do you think it could be possible to somehow speed up Monkey Island (on a 060-50) by applying some kind of downsampling to graphics making them lowres?

@Ancalimon

Curse of Monkey Island required at least a Pentium @ 90Mhz when it was released, not so easy to match with 1985 hardware (even when you add an 060 accelerator!).

Graffiti support would have helped (Indivision Mrk2) but that doesn't look like it will ever happen now

I did a little experiment once with a 'resolution down-grader' using a 640x240 PAL screen. It didn't look too bad actually and was a bit faster than a real 640x480 screen.

Still slow on real hardware unfortunately


This how it currently runs on my 060 -> [ Show youtube player ]

[Amicol]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Graffiti support would have helped (Indivision Mrk2) but that doesn't look like it will ever happen now

Why?

[Overmann]

I've been able to set up my PC to play MIDI sent from my amiga now, but I am unable to get ScummVM to send MIDI. Is there something particular I need to do in order to send MIDI from scummvm? Programs that use camd works well for me.