the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi

I'm the hedgehog masque replica guy

嘘だらけ塗ったチョースト


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Spent a little while messing around with tools like SBVGM (VGM playback for OPL chips on your soundblaster-and-such hardware) and found that it works about as well as I could expect, though the renderer through which I've produced some FM MIDI VGM files is apparently set to render through two YMF262s. Gonna have to turn that setting down one if I'm going to render stuff from MIDI to that, though I don't expect to do so often, since I prefer the direct approach (trackers).

Speaking of which, I could never seem to get adlib tracker working properly with my soundcard. I'd turn it on and try to play a file and get a FWOOOSHVRRRGSSSMZZZTAAAAGAHBRGH of glitchy sound every time that I struggled to get to stop sounding. Turns out that also has a fun little buried compatibility timing setting (I've already forgotten what it's called but it's right under the option for manually setting the address of the chip under the default config) that, once enabled, fixed the issue for my sound card. No idea why it was an issue, but I would believe it's tied to the Aptiva being weird.

That said, I would prefer given the option to use OpenMPT or, even better, Furnace Tracker in order to do OPL3 music simply because the interfaces are modern. Both don't provide files that would easily run in a Windows 98 environment, though, but do support VGM logging -- so build the file on a modern computer in modern software with nice features like "mouse support" and "menu bars" and then render to VGM for playback on the system that I could record from.

That said, I am impressed at how good OPL3 emulation has gotten over the years (certainly puts to shame all the attempts to clone its performance like CQM, though I've ranted about that on here before), enough to make me forget about RetroWave, who do still sell a cool product, though one that in the era of rarely-seen line inputs is cumbersome to install.

Incidentally, the best software for playing back MIDI files in a way that resembles the Windows drivers for OPL3 sound cards apparently is this software on VGMRips -- site was down while I was writing this so check back later to make sure it works right. There are drivers that can be used with a midi mapper (such as the one from CoolSoft) but I cannot get them to stay installed due to modern windows driver signing requirements, and so I can't really recommend them in their current state.

Other big thing I did today was see about getting Walt Disney World Quest Magical Racing Tour's PC port working on the Z440 gaming rig. That might be the most frustrating PC port of all time, because it runs at like 20 FPS (PS1 version had 60 FPS), has bad lighting implementation (PS1 appears to have had additive lighting, and also handled 16-bit color better, go figure), and has no obvious no-cd hack (disc is used to stream audio, and all you can do in the config is point to, say, your daemon tools drive). It should be better than it is, surely, but between wanting to maintain compatibility with underspec'd systems and just general porting issues, the only feature it has going for it is no loading times.

But the most frustrating thing is that it's a game I can't simply dismiss because it's, quite possibly, the best mascot racing game of the era. I haven't the patience to try to bend it over my knee with a disassembler, though I won't lie, I find it at least a little tempting.


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