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Christoph Reichenbach wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > I have an MT-32. Getting and editing the patches is not hard. A full
> > emulation is probably not possible because, like you said, what Roland will
> > give us is too limited. We would need to distribute all of the Sierra
> > patches, but I beleave there is a patch librarian for DOS that already has
> > all of the Sierra patches.
>
> Sorry, I used an incorrect term there; I was referring to the PCM data
> rather than the patches (which are part of the patch.001 resource present
> in practically all SCI games).
The PCM is Roland's property, but it is widely spread now. I doubt that Roland
would give us any trouble if we didn't flaunt it too much.
> Anyway, I couldn't find the PCM data in either of the MT-32's removeable
> EPROMs (there were two in my model, Rickard's MT-32 only has one of them
> removeable), so that's the real problem (and this is what I meant).
Extracting the PCM? Do you mean you want to emulate it from the ground up?! The
MT-32 is an LA synthisiser! That means 2 things:
1. Most LA only uses a small amount of PCM in the attack. It probably won't
sound like what your used to hearing.
2. LA is complex, I would judge imposible to emulate without more information
on Roland's hardware.
> > Working Timidity into FreeSCI is another story. I can get the patches, but
> > Timidity is a stand alone MIDI player and FreeSCI will be generating a
> > real-time MIDI streem.
>
> IIRC, the timidity internals have been abstracted somewhat; I think I've
> seen a libtimidity somewhere.
Really?! Great! If anybody knows where that is, let the list know ASAP.
> > It seems like a multi-threading job.
>
> The easiest way to handle this (on *NIX) would be fork()/execve() with
> some pipes or socket pairs in between.
Yeah, pthreads get messy sometimes. I aggree.
> However, we'll have to accomodate
> for actual PCM samples in SCI01 and later; this isn't a problem on Linux
> with ALSA, but that's about the only target platform that will support
> it.
I think I lost you, please explain the above.
> Unless there /is/ a libtimidity, we'd need to modify the actual timidity
> for that
Although it would suit our purposes to intergrate timidity directly into
FreeSCI, I beleave whoever takes on this project should think of other projects
as well. IOW if there is no libtimidity, there should be. Don't try to accually
intergrate timidity and FreeSCI, make libtimidity, then work that into FreeSCI
(or ask someone else on the list to do the accually intergration with FreeSCI).
> (adding everything listed on the MT-32's MIDI implementation
> chart, if it isn't there all ready, and the stuff from page 25 of the
> MT-32 owner's manual).
The MT-32 doesn't have an implementation chart, it has book :-) plus the manual.
> This would be possible (both technically and
> legally, since timidity is lgpl'd).
Are you sure you want to set that high of a goal? I beleave we should include
all of the patches in FreeSCI and use the game name to find out which ones to
load. If you find that unacceptable, tell me.
> > We need a good
> > hacker. Does anybody want to do that?
>
> First, we need the PCMs. According to the Owner's manual, there are
> supposed to be 128 of them.
There aren't. There are only 32 I beleave. The patches are composed of realtime
combinations and manipulations of the 32.
> Other than that, you should leave the process/thread separation to
> Rickard's code, which is intended to make things much more modular than
> the current sound infrastructure allows for.
> Therefore, the only thing remaining to be done is a software
> implementation of the MT-32, possibly using (parts of) timidity.
You do want to emulate the whole thing, don't you? :-O
> This leaves the question of "who will do it if/when we get the PCMs (or
> similar ones) and the permission to distribute them".
> I guess asking for volunteers should wait until after that precondition is
> met.
I beleave there is something in the MT-32 implementation that tells how to
extract the internal PCMs in the Implimentation book somewhere. I have some work
to do right now, but I'll look over it tomarrow. Until then, if anyone else want
to look, I've included the MT-32 manual and Implimentation book from Lil' Chips.
(Be sure you are working in a really high res. or scaleing viewer program).
--
-Jay
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