679c98f0bf
We faithfully emulate the GUS instrument mappings bug, which can sound unpleasant. gusgonna.wad is now available as a workaround.
173 lines
6.6 KiB
Markdown
173 lines
6.6 KiB
Markdown
Doom has a memorable and atmospheric soundtrack. Like many games of
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the era, it is MIDI-based. Chocolate Doom includes a number of
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different options for music playback, detailed below.
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# Native MIDI playback
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Most modern operating systems have some kind of built-in support for
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MIDI playback; some have very good quality MIDI playback (Mac OS X for
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example). To use this, choose “Native MIDI” in the sound configuration
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dialog in the setup tool.
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# Timidity
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Timidity is a software-based MIDI synthesizer, and a version of it is
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included in the SDL2_mixer library used by Chocolate Doom. To use
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Timidity for MIDI playback, first download a sound font. An example of
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a good quality sound font is the eawpats font, which can be downloaded
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from the idgames archive as sounds/eawpats.zip:
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https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/sounds/eawpats
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Having installed a sound font, select “Native MIDI” in the sound
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configuration dialog in the setup tool, and use the “Timidity
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configuration file” widget below to enter the path to the Timidity
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configuration file (normally named timidity.cfg).
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# Gravis Ultrasound (GUS)
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The Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) was a PC sound card popular in the ’90s,
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notable for having wavetable synthesis that provided MIDI playback
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that was superior to most other cards of the era. Chocolate Doom
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includes a “pseudo-GUS emulation” feature that simulates the GUS
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(using Timidity, under the hood).
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To use this feature you need a copy of the GUS patch files that were
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distributed with the original GUS patches. If you have Doom 3: BFG
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Edition, these patches are included with its version of classic Doom,
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and are automatically detected. Otherwise, they can be downloaded
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from the idgames archive as music/dgguspat.zip:
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https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/music/dgguspat
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Having downloaded the patches, select “GUS (emulated)” in the sound
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configuration dialog in the setup tool, and use the “GUS patch path”
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widget to enter the path to the directory containing the patch files.
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For the music not to sound weird, you will almost certainly want to
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load gusgonna.wad (sounds/gusgonna.zip in the idgames archive) when
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you run the game, to work around a bug in vanilla Doom's instrument
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mappings parser:
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https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/sounds/gusgonna
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By default a GUS card with 1024KB is simulated; to simulate a 256KB,
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512KB or 768KB card instead, change the gus_ram_kb option in
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chocolate-doom.cfg.
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# OPL (Soundblaster / Adlib)
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Most people playing Doom in the ’90s had Soundblaster-compatible sound
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cards, which used the Yamaha OPL series of chips for FM-based MIDI
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synthesis. Chocolate Doom includes the ability to emulate these chips
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for a retro experience. OPL emulation is the default MIDI playback,
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but can be selected in the setup tool as “OPL (Adlib/SB)”.
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Most modern computers do not include an OPL chip any more, as CPUs are
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fast enough to do decent software MIDI synthesis. However, no software
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emulator sounds exactly like a real (hardware) OPL chip, and a few
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cards do have real hardware OPL. If you have such a card, here’s how
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to configure Chocolate Doom to use it.
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## Sound cards with OPL chips
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If you have an ISA sound card, it almost certainly includes an OPL
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chip. Modern computers don’t have slots for ISA cards though, so you
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must be running a pretty old machine.
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If you have a PCI sound card, you probably don’t have an OPL chip.
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However, there are some exceptions to this. The following cards are
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known to include “legacy” OPL support:
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* C-Media CMI8738 (*)
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* Forte Media FM801
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* Cards based on the Yamaha YMF724 (*)
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Other cards that apparently have OPL support but have not been tested:
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* S3 SonicVibes
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* AZTech PCI 168 (AZT 3328 chipset)
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* ESS Solo-1 sound cards (ES1938, ES1946, ES1969 chipset)
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* Conexant Riptide Audio/Modem combo cards
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* Cards based on the Crystal Semiconductors CS4281
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* Cards based on the Avance Logic ALS300
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* Cards based on the Avance Logic ALS4000
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If you desperately want hardware OPL music, you may be able to find
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one of these cards for sale cheap on eBay.
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For the cards listed above with (\*) next to them, OPL support is
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disabled by default and must be explictly enabled in software. See
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sections below for operating system-specific instructions on how you
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may be able to do this.
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If your machine is not a PC, you don’t have an OPL chip, and you will
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have to use the software OPL.
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## Operating System support
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If you’re certain that you have a sound card with hardware OPL, you
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may need to take extra steps to configure your operating system to
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allow access to it. To do hardware OPL, Chocolate Doom must access
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the chip directly, which is usually not possible in modern operating
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systems unless you are running as the superuser (root/Administrator).
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### Microsoft Windows
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On modern Windows systems it is not possible to directly access the
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OPL chip, even when running as Administrator. Fortunately, it is
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possible to use the “ioperm.sys” driver developed for Cygwin (look for
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iopermsys-0.2.1.tar.bz2):
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http://openwince.sourceforge.net/ioperm/
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It is not necessary to have Cygwin installed to use this. Copy the
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ioperm.sys file into the same directory as the Chocolate Doom
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executable and it should be automatically loaded.
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You can confirm that hardware OPL is working by checking for this
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message in stdout.txt:
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OPL_Init: Using driver 'Win32'.
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If you have a C-Media CMI8738, you may need to enable the `FM_EN`
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flag in Windows Device Manager to access hardware OPL output. See
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[this](http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=36445) thread on
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vogons.org for some more information.
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### Linux
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If you are using a system based on the Linux kernel, you can access
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the OPL chip directly, but you must be running as root. You can
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confirm that hardware OPL is working, by checking for this message on
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startup:
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OPL_Init: Using driver 'Linux'.
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If you are using one of the PCI cards in the list above with a (*)
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next to it, you may need to manually enable FM legacy support. Add
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the following to your /etc/modprobe.conf file to do this:
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options snd-ymfpci fm_port=0x388
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options snd-cmipci fm_port=0x388
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### OpenBSD/NetBSD
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You must be running as root to access the hardware OPL directly. You
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can confirm that hardware OPL is working by checking for this message
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on startup:
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OPL_Init: Using driver 'OpenBSD'.
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There is no native OPL backend for FreeBSD yet. Sorry!
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# Other options
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If you have some other favorite MIDI playback option that isn’t
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listed above, you can set a hook to invoke an external command for
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MIDI playback using the ‘snd_musiccmd’ configuration file option. For
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example, set:
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snd_musiccmd "aplaymidi -p 128:0"
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in your chocolate-doom.cfg file.
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