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Thread: Can this feature be revived?

  
  1. #11
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    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Could you share the wav files?
    atmos1.zip atmos2.zip bullfrog.zip

    Using Vienna SoundFont Studio, I extracted the instruments directly into WAV format. If you listen closely, you may be able to see that these are the same sounds as in the game. To show how complicated this is, this how a SoundFont appears in Vienna (I had to convert it to SF2 before I could do anything):





    The "piano" allows me to hear the sounds as they are in the game, but the screen is full of stuff I don't understand.

  2. #12

    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    Great. I've added the waves to the issue. Also nice to hear them, they do sound familiar.

    You're saying there's more info in the sf2 files than in the extracted waves? If so, could you also share the .sf2 files?
    Last edited by YourMaster; July 18th, 2016 at 17:52.

  3. #13
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    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Great. I've added the waves to the issue. Also nice to hear them, they do sound familiar.

    You're saying there's more info in the sf2 files than in the extracted waves? If so, could you also share the .sf2 files?
    The extracted waves aren't actually the sounds heard in-game; they form the base for them in some way. Whether they're lumped together or something, I don't know. For example, if I load a SoundFont into Vienna, select KEEP6 (the dripping sounds common to all 3 SoundFonts), and press one if its keys, I hear a dripping sound just like in the game. If I press an adjacent key, I hear a slightly different dripping sound, also heard in-game. But when I play KEEP6.wav, it's something completely different. I haven't found a way to extract each of the different sounds to WAV. Looking at the Dungeon Keeper SoundFont instructions on the website, it would appear that the extracted waves are what was used to construct the SoundFonts. Not sure if it's necessary to supply the .sf2 files; if you attempt to load the .sbk files in anything modern, you should be asked to convert it to .sf2, and it'll do it for you. In fact, even the old version of Vienna that came with my AWE64 Gold won't load .sbk files without converting them! To make matters more confusing, I've recently come across another SoundFont format; .sfz. .sbk and.sf2 are Creative proprietary (I think), but .sfz is not. I don't know if any special hardware is needed, but if it is what I think it is, then it's something definitely worth looking into for this.

    The background sounds aren't played randomly; they're in a sequence, and always the same one. The MIDI file is used for the background sounds, and the instruments used to synthesise the MIDI file are taken from one of the SoundFonts. I don't know how long this sequence lasts, but eventually you'll hear all the sounds in the SoundFont. This brings me to one of the problems with the workaround I use for the X-FI; I only get part of the sequence. I don't know how the game goes beyond what I get from the MIDI file I extracted; whether it has something to do with the unknown file or if there are other MIDI files in music.dat I don't know about or something else entirely. If I load a SoundFont and play the MIDI file in Windows, it sounds just like it does in-game. In fact, that is how I have these sounds on that machine. Would it help if I were to attempt a WAV recording of what this MIDI file sounds like with each SoundFont? (not sure how I'm going to do it though)

    Speaking of my workaround, I may as well link to the video:

    Last edited by AdamP; July 18th, 2016 at 19:52.

  4. #14
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    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    Quote Originally Posted by AdamP View Post
    I haven't found a way to extract each of the different sounds to WAV.
    I've found a way to, not extract, but record them. Hopefully there aren't any clicks or noise. So far I've only done sounds from the bullfrog soundfont, and they're in m4a format. Should I convert them to WAV?

  5. #15

    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    I don't know, you're the expert on this. If what the soundfonts do is create many different variations of every sound that could mean that recording every variation would result in many audio files, to big to be distributed with the game.
    When Mefistotelis eventually gets back to work on the game, and he decides to pick up this feature request, it would be helpful if he could do so without having to study up on the subject too much or buy proprietary software/hardware. But if you're saying that if he has the .sbk files he should be able to find/make something that would be able to play these background sounds, that would be sufficient right?

  6. #16
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    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I don't know, you're the expert on this. If what the soundfonts do is create many different variations of every sound that could mean that recording every variation would result in many audio files, to big to be distributed with the game.
    It's possible that the WAV files I extracted are simply all the sounds playing together. There aren't that many; only about 8 or 9 per WAV file. Each SoundFont is less than 512kb (otherwise they wouldn't fit in the AWE32's RAM), but the recorded m4a sounds total at around 6mb (I don't know how big they'll be in WAV format, and don't forget I recorded them directly; I didn't extract them (is that even possible? )). I may be an "expert" on this feature in general, but I'm no expert on the inner workings of a SoundFont . All I know is that the sounds are playable in something like Vienna or a SoundFont Manager, and that you load a SoundFont, play a MIDI file and it works. Maybe I should try to rebuild one of the SoundFonts (using the instructions on the website of course) in an effort to understand them?

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster
    When Mefistotelis eventually gets back to work on the game, and he decides to pick up this feature request, it would be helpful if he could do so without having to study up on the subject too much or buy proprietary software/hardware. But if you're saying that if he has the .sbk files he should be able to find/make something that would be able to play these background sounds, that would be sufficient right?
    If he has access to a SoundFont capable device such as a Sound Blaster AWE, Live!, Audigy, or X-FI, then yes. I don't know if it's possible to load a SoundFont without one. Vienna SoundFont Studio is free (and I think there are others), and if a SoundFont is loaded and the MIDI file extracted from music.dat and played, it'll sound just like it does in the game. I had to jump through hoops to get them "working" on my XP machine with an X-FI, but on an AWE, they just work. Like that.

    I don't know if just anyone can use sfz format files (I haven't tested it yet), but if so, that could be the way to go (I believe sf2 files can be converted into sfz (sbk files can easily be converted to sf2)). If not, the only other way I can think of doing this is to convert the sounds to WAV and have them play in the background or something like that. But then the ability to change them is lost .
    Last edited by AdamP; July 19th, 2016 at 23:05.

  7. #17

    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    I don't know if Mefisto knows anything about soundfonts or what kind of hardware he has. Let's assume he does not own one, so if the files can come in an 'open' format that would be best.
    Already applying the fonts to the sounds to make a full set of all possible wave files sounds less than ideal, but it could be the easiest way.

    In that case though it should be analyzed when each file should be played to get the most authentic experience.

  8. #18
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    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I don't know if Mefisto knows anything about soundfonts or what kind of hardware he has. Let's assume he does not own one, so if the files can come in an 'open' format that would be best.
    Already applying the fonts to the sounds to make a full set of all possible wave files sounds less than ideal, but it could be the easiest way.

    In that case though it should be analyzed when each file should be played to get the most authentic experience.
    If sfz is an "open" SoundFont format, then in theory all we need to do it convert the sbk files to sfz and get rid of the AWE32 detection code and have the MIDI play anyway using one of the sfz files. But I don't yet know know for sure if that is indeed how it works, or if it's as simple as that (something tells me it isn't... ).

    I could do a recording of how the MIDI file sounds with each SoundFont. The MIDI file sounds exactly like it does in-game; the sounds are played as and when they do when playing the extracted MIDI file. The only problem is, as previously mentioned, it only goes part of the way into the sequence, and I don't know how the game goes beyond that.

  9. #19
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    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    Quote Originally Posted by AdamP View Post
    If sfz is an "open" SoundFont format, then in theory all we need to do it convert the sbk files to sfz and get rid of the AWE32 detection code and have the MIDI play anyway using one of the sfz files.
    When researching this, I came across another possibility - DLS.

    Apparently it's similar to SoundFonts and is used by the MIDI synthesiser built into Windows. And SoundFonts can be converted to DLS.

    Interesting...

  10. #20
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    Default Re: Can this feature be revived?

    Quote Originally Posted by AdamP View Post
    If he has access to a SoundFont capable device such as a Sound Blaster AWE, Live!, Audigy, or X-FI, then yes. I don't know if it's possible to load a SoundFont without one. Vienna SoundFont Studio is free (and I think there are others), and if a SoundFont is loaded and the MIDI file extracted from music.dat and played, it'll sound just like it does in the game.
    I've just come across this:

    http://www.synthfont.com/index.html

    It can use SoundFonts (sf2, sfz, dls, and others (but not sbk apparently)) and doesn't appear to need any special sound card. I've just used it to test the sf2-converted Dungeon Keeper SoundFonts on its midi file on my Windows 10 machine, and they worked. Looks like a Sound Blaster might not be needed after all (I do use an external Sound Blaster on that machine, but I can't see anything suggesting SoundFont support; as far as I'm aware, it's using the built-in Windows MIDI synthesiser).


    This also got me thinking; if this can use SoundFonts without a Sound Blaster, maybe Dungeon Keeper can be adapted to use them without one?


    Nevertheless, I shall continue to record the sounds individually in case they're needed. Unfortunately, I'm busy during the week .
    Last edited by AdamP; July 22nd, 2016 at 02:46.

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