>Interesting, I've never heard of this- do you happen to know how the
>switch between 'classic' and 'extended' mode is performed? Do you know of
>any good information about this on the web? (A quick google search came up
>with a few links that didn't help much)

   I don't really know specifically. However, after some more work with 
everything....it looks as if it was actually related to driver & synth 
setup. One culprit was an option on my end. I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz 
soundcard. I have control over midi notes played back by hardware and 
software. I disabled the hardware playback completely, and the chords or 
long notes in songs (in SQ3 and Camelot) would hold. The percussion oddness 
in SQ3 is most likely due to instrument mapping from mt32 to general midi.
   I am still not sure about the tempo issue though. I have tried several 
different combinations. One thing I did was use the -v option to see what 
options I had available. Switching between my soundcard's synth and the 
software synth doesn't seem to have a difference. Switching to win32e (from 
win32p - default I believe) for the sound *server* slows the tempo probably 
by around just under 1/2 the speed. However...it DOES play consistantly. 
(i.e. Eighth notes aren't rushed in the intro to camelot whereas they are 
win win32p) SDL synth sounds basically just like win32p. What is the 
difference between win32p and win32e?
   As a side note regarding base, extended, and general midi - (a little 
Sierra trivia) - Midi COULD be controlled in the much later versions of SCI 
(As in the Windows based ones) by a line contained in resource.win:

synthtype=basesynth
# would be the line to use for base instruments only
synthtype=highsynth
# I believe would be General Midi 1-16.

Sierra would actually have you change it to basesynth if you were having 
troubles with midi notes hanging during playback. While they thought this 
was a fine and dandy solution, all it did was kill the top 6 channels of 
your midi songs. Therefore, you would actually LOSE instruments in the 
songs. I know this is a looonnnng way off (most likely), but hopefully 
freesci can overcome sierra's problem without dropping instruments. :)

- Chris

P.S. I have ddraw listed for a graphics driver. Unless I overlooked it in 
the readme file, I am unsure how to switch over to ddraw from SDL for the 
graphics driver. For all I know, switching to this will reduce the tax on 
graphics processing and therefore allow the win32e sound server to play up 
to speed. (Which would basically only leave mt32 instrument mapping as the 
only problem)




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