music and exporting

ok i have 2 problems. the first problem is that xwe wont play mus files for some reason. why not? the doom wad files all seem to all use mus files for their music (according to xwe at least. in zdoomgl claims that it uses midi). its rather annoying how i also import a midi file (replacing an original), and it says the same error "Could not play song - probably not MIDI format" , even though it IS infact in midi format. and when i dont replace it, it works, but when i click on it again and try to play it, it says "I/O error 32". also, i was wondering if there was a way you could extract the lumps to a file, with the file type of whatever kind of lump it is, *example -- if i wanted to extract a texture or flat file, it should be in .png, .bmp, .jpg, or some sort of image format. as with an midi file, it should simply extract to .mid file format.* im just requesting this, if its possible without strain. and the other error is pretty small, but i just dont understand why it happens. help would be very much appreciated.

Make sure you have the latest release of XWE, from the XWE page itself; it shouldn't do what you're saying.

If you import a MIDI, it will identify it as such, no matter the name, and if you extract it, it will add the extension LMP, renaming it to MID will give you a playable MIDI file.

What it does do to me is that if I want to play a MUS lump, it tells me that Media Player could not play back the converted file. I've tried 3 converters, even the one suggested by XWE (which I don't like because the output seems slower than normal) and if I make XWE search for the file it fails to find it, so I did it manually. It doesn't seem to be doing the conversion right, or at all. Also, I've changed my default MIDI player to a GUI version of TiMidity, so I suppose it shouldn't even be trying to access Media Player (which is v6.4 on my system.)

There are some apps, namely MusPlay and WinAmp, that will play MUS files directly; it would be great if XWE had the option to open either when prompted to play a MUS lump. MusPlay doesn't work on Windows XP, but it's good for machines with Windows 98 or ME.

now that i have the latest one, it doesnt do what it used to, but i now have the same problem you do. btw did you see the comments on their site? why would they leave things like that on there and then say "thanks for your comments" lol. but it does suck as far as reliability.

Heh, those comments were really made by those people, be it seriously or not, but they seem to be there in sake of humor.

At least now you can insert music lumps. The remaining issue is merely for listening MUS lumps, which can be tested ingame for now anyway.

actually i forgot to mention that i did find out how to extract (they use the term "save as") as a lump (.lmp) file. either way, when i change the file format to .mid, it still doesnt work.

Send me your WAD file, I'll be happy to take a look. However, if XWE says it's not a MID, it's probably not a MID. If you save it and it doesn't play, it's not a MID, because saving doesn't change the file in any way. How is this XWE's fault?

XWE could always play MID files, it just calls the Windows Media Player for this, no problem. For MUS files , which is a proprietary format, ONLY used by doom, you're asking why XWE doesn't play it? Why would it? It was easier to call MUS2MIDI, which converts the lump to MIDI, which can be played. The latest version of XWE does this very reliably.

When you export images, XWE saves them as 8-bit BMP files with BMP extension. When you export any other lump it's a different story. Since doom lumps only have filenames and no extensions, XWE doesn't try to make one up. You can however use any extension you want by simply typing it in and selecting All Files under file type.

i sent it through email to you. youll know its me when you see it.

What account did you sent it to? It's been a few days and I didn't receive anything.

I've bumped this thread because I am now also not being able to play either MIDI or MUS files. I used to be able to. This now happens to me either with versions 1.16 or the latest beta. Using XP Pro SP2 and Windows Media Player 10.

I do get the extracting\all done! dos window however.

Also if mus2midi v1.0 is not in the default location and I select Browse , XWE locks up and I have to use Task Manager to exit XWE. Again, both with 1.16 stable and latest beta.

I don't have WMP 10 installed, I'd suspect that it just broke XWE's MIDI playback. The code I have there is literally 3 lines:

mpMusic.FileName := sTempFile;
mpMusic.Open;
mpMusic.Play;

So there's really not much I can do there... The solution to this will be a workaround I think. One pretty big feature that still needs to go into XWE is the ability to assign any tool to lumps (e.g. a music player for musics, or PhotoShop to patches, etc). Then you'd be able to pick some other player that can handle MIDIs and use that.

As for the browse button, again, that doesn't do anything funky. It uses Delphi's built OpenDialog function, that's it. The only thing I can think of that might break it is the initial path. When you click browse, it sets the initial path of the browse dialog to whatever is entered into the Path box on that form. (It usually make sense to start from there, not from My Documents or whatever the system default would be.) Could you try entering a valid path there first (e.g. C:\) and then clicking Browse? Also, does File|Open break? It uses the same OpenDialog.

First, regarding the music not playing, on testing this morning the music worked. I can only guess that yesterday some other program must have had the focus ?

Now for the XWE hanging problem. These are the steps to reproduce ...

This is assuming you have just done a fresh install of XWE and have already selected the Iwad path.

1. Load Doom or Doom2 wad and Select Music.

2. File Location box pops up with default description, path and File Name.. BTW this box for me launches in the bottom right hand side of the screen in 800x600.

3. Since my mus2midi.exe is not in the default path I select Browse.

4. An Open box now is launched with Look in: iwads, since, I assume, is the location of my iwads I previously gave to XWE.

5. Now I select the down arrow in the Look in: box. After doing this XWE hangs.

Your C:\ suggestion should work since I have mus2midi located in a directory on D:\ drive and XWE had no problem locating it manually.

I think in the future that the default path for mus2midi should be C:\ as you suggested.