1st experiment music

Details about file formats, structure and contents in the original Master of Magic
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Hammerhands
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1st experiment music

Post by Hammerhands »

Ok heres the original file extraction as a .mid
http://www.davox.net/0.MID
heres the extraction after an mp3 conversion
http://www.davox.net/0.mp3
and heres the mp3 edit/remix I did
sorry only about 5000 edit steps so its crude
http://www.davox.net/0a.mp3

let me know if you think conversion to mp3 audio is worth the effort

Here's my final mp3 edit for 0 I think its a nice piece let me know
http://www.davox.net/0aFinal.mp3
Last edited by Hammerhands on Sun Apr 09, 2006 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Implode
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Post by Implode »

Well... back when I was playing this game on a 486 ten years ago, and most sound cards were soundblasters with adlib music which sounded awful, I had a genuine MPU-401 midi card (which is still sitting in a box somewhere...) and fed my midi output to my keyboard. The results always sounded awesome, much better than when you play .mid files through modern sound cards (especially playing X-Wing - it sounded darn close to actually being in the Star Wars movie :shock:). By whatever program you're using to convert .mid -> .mp3, you're only using the sound patch set that comes with Windows/your sound card so whatever editing you to do it from then on, you'll still be somewhat limited to what you can do with it.

So I had a quick experiment copying the .mid files onto a floppy disk, and putting them into my keyboard to play, and they sound fantastic. So I wired up the audio cables from the keyboard back to my PC to sample them as MP3s... and it sounds awful. I think the keyboard is doing some odd things with the left/right channels. So one of these days I plan to edit all the MID files to move them all to the left channel, i.e. make them mono only, and try again.

Part of the reason I haven't done this yet is all the .mid files need fixing up first, half of them play at the wrong speed and start & stop in odd places. Where did you get your .mid file from?

Implode.
Hammerhands
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files

Post by Hammerhands »

i have over 100 files from the game stored as mid files
and i converted them all to mp3
what i really want is the XMI files without the conversion to .mid

and as i said it was a fast low edit experiment

www.davox.net/Tears.mp3 you can hear t ... Korean :)
Hammerhands
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Post by Hammerhands »

Implode wrote:Well... back when I was playing this game on a 486 ten years ago, and most sound cards were soundblasters with adlib music which sounded awful, I had a genuine MPU-401 midi card (which is still sitting in a box somewhere...) Implode.
I remember when we went from Atari XL/XE to ST 16 bit
the midi was nice after Steven Diederich and I finished the project
he compiled the midi software i built the hardware interface

yes playing midi thru a true midi device makes a big difference
with my SB AWE card years ago 7or so I could get good midi
sound and reinstrument files and build up to 64 tracks

now we get 2 if lucky and yes the sound is poor

the whole reason for the experiment is to see if you can get my mp3 to launch instead of LBX file source

I know how want to see if you ask :)

also couldnt help noticing that when research is completed
there is no music as in original game I assume this was due to adding
the block on new turn [if spell not selected] something original game forgot to do
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Implode
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Post by Implode »

Hammerhands wrote:the whole reason for the experiment is to see if you can get my mp3 to launch instead of LBX file source
I know I can, I don't need to try it :) I have an audio list component that supports any audio formats that Windows will play, so it makes no difference whether its a .mid or a .mp3.
Hammerhands wrote:what i really want is the XMI files without the conversion to .mid
Get my LBXExtract program off the downloads page, stick it in your MoM folder and do
LBXExtract music.lbx /raw
this extracts the files in their raw format, i.e. .xmi, all you need to do is rename them from .mom to .xmi. But what can you actually do with .xmi files? My music editor won't open them.
Hammerhands wrote:also couldnt help noticing that when research is completed
there is no music as in original game I assume this was due to adding
the block on new turn [if spell not selected] something original game forgot to do
No that's intentional. One of the things which bugs me in the original is, especially later in the game, when you hit end turn you get 20-30 annoying pop up messages, "you finished researching this", "you finished casting that", "city XYZ finished building a Temple", etc. etc. So one of the things I wanted to do was expand on the scroll that shows city growth & city death in the original and use this for ALL new turn messages, including finishing researching a spell. I figure it'll speed up the game a lot that way, so will help with multiplayer.

Implode.
Hammerhands
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ok ill try that

Post by Hammerhands »

when i first read the text file i thought it said that lbx extract would automaticlly run xmi2midi and out put would be midi files
ill see if i can get an xmi extract . alot of games used odd extenders for standard files formats to insure another windows component didnt launch
perhaps the xmi file is really something similiar to a wav ill find out let ya know
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Implode
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Re: ok ill try that

Post by Implode »

Hammerhands wrote:when i first read the text file i thought it said that lbx extract would automaticlly run xmi2midi and out put would be midi files
By default it does, same as it will try to convert the VOCs to WAVs and the perculiar MoM graphics format into BMPs. If you put /raw on the command line, it switches this off and will just extract the files in the original file format, so if you do this on music.lbx it'll keep the files in the original .xmi format.

Implode.
Hammerhands
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Re: ok ill try that

Post by Hammerhands »

Implode wrote:
Hammerhands wrote:when i first read the text file i thought it said that lbx extract would automaticlly run xmi2midi and out put would be midi files
By default it does, same as it will try to convert the VOCs to WAVs and the perculiar MoM graphics format into BMPs. If you put /raw on the command line, it switches this off and will just extract the files in the original file format, so if you do this on music.lbx it'll keep the files in the original .xmi format.

Implode.
ok i type lbxextract /raw and get this error
cannot open c:\raw

typed lbxextract music.lbx /raw
got a directory full of .mom files

so how do i get .xmi again?
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Implode
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Post by Implode »

When you put /raw it makes no effort to identify what types of files they are and just gives them .mom extension, so it doesn't know they're .xmi files. Just rename them all :)

Implode.
Hammerhands
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oh i forgot

Post by Hammerhands »

Implode wrote:When you put /raw it makes no effort to identify what types of files they are and just gives them .mom extension, so it doesn't know they're .xmi files. Just rename them all :)

Implode.
i forgot to post that i reread and saw that ill try to let ya know how
it goes .. looks like its music plus a header


its a modified midi file original game must use a modified midi player routine almost pure midi info in the data but has a few odd changes
anyways its not necessary to look for anything more here the files converted to midi are fine and nothing I could do would make the results better with just the data in the .mom extracts
so the only way left is the conversion to mp3 and edits or rewrite the midi tracks
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Implode
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Re: 1st experiment music

Post by Implode »

Hammerhands wrote:Here's my final mp3 edit for 0 I think its a nice piece let me know
http://www.davox.net/0aFinal.mp3
I quite like it actually, it sounds like it was done with a different patch set than usual, or did you just put it through enough filters to make it sound different?

Where did you get the 0.mid file to start from, just wondering if you used by LBXExtract program & XMI2MID or if you have another way, since this produces imperfect results.

Thanks,

Implode.
Hammerhands
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Re: 1st experiment music

Post by Hammerhands »

Implode wrote:
Where did you get the 0.mid file to start from, just wondering if you used by LBXExtract program & XMI2MID or if you have another way, since this produces imperfect results.

Thanks,

Implode.
Actually I got all the files as .mid from the other MOMCLONE site before i found yours
and yes I edited the original midi
then used different patch files to reinstrument the sound
used filters and effects on each of the different tracks
then mixed down to a stereo mp3 format

the purpose was to show that harmonics and 5ths etc can be added
to the original music making a file compatible with present WIN OS
XP /NT and its audio hardware handling and even web browsers
hell you could use my 0afinal.mp3 as a ringtone on a cell phone

the file after my changes clearly retains the original flavor and tone of the original just opens up some headroom and make it sound better than plink plink plink on a cheap keyboard I wasnt intending to REWRITE the music just make it more enjoyable to hear
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Post by Lupinedreams »

It would be nice to have rewrites...or even more music tracks, if people have the time to do that. The fat man did a nice job on the original MoM's music, but it is pretty limited, there just aren't that many songs, and they're all relatively short. Would it be too much of a stretch for mp3 sound? To be honest, decent midis would still be of vastly superior sound quality to the technology used in the original.
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