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kibbl126

BGM not working in doom?

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Hello, Sorry to bother you in all but for some reason the BGM wont work for doom its strange you can hear doors open, things die, and even the sounds from your gun. But for some reason you dont hear any of the music i remember in the game? any idea what the problem could be? please help me out


Thanks again,
kibbl

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What operating system?

You probably don't have MIDI (digitized music such as what Doom uses) driver installed or your sound card doesn't support it somehow.

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kibbl126 said:

Hello, Sorry to bother you in all but for some reason the BGM wont work for doom its strange you can hear doors open, things die, and even the sounds from your gun. But for some reason you dont hear any of the music i remember in the game? any idea what the problem could be? please help me out

Thanks again,
kibbl


If you're using a source port like ZDoom and any derivatives like GZDoom combined with ZDLauncher, there's a known bug "killing" the BG music each time you start a new game (actually, the midi volume is set to zero). The workaround is to switch to another launcher, use no launcher at all, or change source port.

Also, check if you have set "OPL FM synthsis emulation" on instead of midi music: then it's controlled from the "other music" volume instead.

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well i have tried with both my laptop and an old comuter
my laptop is windows xp while the older computer is windows 98 I think. I thought maybe there was corrupted data or something so i tried redownloading it but that didnt work.

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kibbl126 said:

i know im probably going to sound like an idiot but what is a source port?


Well...if you aren't using the original DOS DOOM or the official Doom 95 windows executable, then chances are you're using a source port.

Source ports are modern enhancements to the Doom engine which remove many of the old limits and caps, are able to run under different operating systems and some support advanced features like OpenGL rendering, very high resolutions etc. etc. without the burden associated with trying to run a DOS program under windows or even worse, Linux.

Now...if for some perverse reason you're trying to use the DOS version under Windows (especially windows XP) then THE VERY LEAST you can expect are sound problems, although it's usually the MIDI music that plays without problem, not the SFX.

If you (as I suspect) tried to install and play the original DOS DOOM version under windows XP and configured the sound and the MIDI music as "Soundblaster", then chances are that you get broken SFX and no music at all. You can work around the music by selecting "general midi", but you can't expect a DOS program which directly accesses the hardware to work smoothly under windows XP.

If you REALLY want to, you can try using a DOS emulator like DOSBOX (recommended) or a soundblaster compatibility layer like VDMSound (work ok with some stuff, but not particularly well with DOOM).

However, using an emulator means you have to trade off quite a lot of performance: in practice, a 3.0 GHz machine (or a 3000+ AMD machine) will give you a 486DX/66-comparable performance in the best case, with 320*200, 256 color VGA graphics.

Google for ZDoom, ZDoomGL or GZDoom to name a few source ports. The original DOOM .exe really gives you no advantages under windows, unless you need to see old demos or exploit old bugs.

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In some ways XP's DOS compatibility layer is actually better than Win9x's ever was. Win9x tried to run the stuff too directly; if you had real-mode drivers loaded, then DOS programs could mess with them. My Win98 box will hard-lock as soon as any DOS program tries to use sound, whereas XP just sort of silently blocks this and you end up with no sound, but no crashing either.

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Quasar said:

In some ways XP's DOS compatibility layer is actually better than Win9x's ever was. Win9x tried to run the stuff too directly; if you had real-mode drivers loaded, then DOS programs could mess with them. My Win98 box will hard-lock as soon as any DOS program tries to use sound, whereas XP just sort of silently blocks this and you end up with no sound, but no crashing either.


Well that's more a matter of luck, if anything.

Sometimes it will "silently block" whatever offending hardware tricks, other times it will completely annoy you with warning boxes about access violations, illegal oparations etc. etc. and other times it will just crash the whole machine unceremoniously.

In fact, windows NT's (and windows 2000 and XP, by extension) "DOS box" is more of a command line interpreter than a real dos environment.

And....back in the DOS days, all decently written programs had their own internal drivers (or, if you prefer, banged on the hardware directly).

E.g. I always played DOOM with a clean boot, no TSR's or anything yet I got perfect Soundblaster sound, because
a) I had an original Creative Labs soundblaster, so I needed no emulation drivers
b) DOOM supported it directly
c) DOOM could access it directly.

Under windows, even if a) and b) still apply, under NT (and 2000...and XP) condition c) no longer holds... so it's either VDMSound or DOSBox...but wasting a 3.0 GHz machine just to get vanilla doom running like it did on a typical 1994 machine...nope, that doesn't pay :-)

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Maes said:
Well that's more a matter of luck, if anything.

It's a matter of hardware; Quasar's machine probably has some sound card that is a POS for DOS compatible OSs, unless the problem is somehow his motherboard. A Windows 98 system set up to run DOOM should have a proper sound card, like an ISA Sound Blaster, or somesuch.

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myk said:

A Windows 98 system set up to run DOOM should have a proper sound card, like an ISA Sound Blaster, or somesuch.


/me hugz his SB128

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Never had any trouble running vanilla (or any other DOS program) with my integrated Realtek junk.

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myk said:

It's a matter of hardware

And software/exact OS version. I recently allowed "Windows Update" to run, and as a result, it won't run Doom2.exe at all (previously it had been fine in XP apart from the sound fx). Which of the 52 "critical updates" it installed was responsible, I don't know. (Not to worry though; DOSBox works well enough, apart from taking a while to "mount" my Doom2 directory, with its >50000 files.)

I've never had much of a problem with the music though. It played a bit wonky when running some DOS exes (MBF for instance) on my Win98 notebook, but that's all.

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Belial said:

Never had any trouble running vanilla (or any other DOS program) with my integrated Realtek junk.


Depends on your expectations when running vanilla doom :-)

Some people consider running it without sound or just with the MIDI music (which is fairly easy to set up even in windows xp) as "a success" but that's a failure in my book, half of the game is its SFX.

Other consider it running with the sound effects crackling and violation error dialogs appearing all the time while the game blocks and stumbles "a success", but, again, I don't considering running it like it would on a 386 with an "almost" sounblaster compatible card a "success".

Update:
I did some test on what "compatibility" you may get when running vanilla DOOM under windows XP (also applies to other DOS games as well):

-Windows XP Home or Pro without SP1 or with SP1:
May start at the DOS prompt, music will work if you select "general midi", but direct soundblaster support is impossible. If you have an integrated soundcard or anything providing "soundblaster compatility", you will at most get broken sound effects and frequent access violation warnings, assuming you manage to guess the (virtual) DMA, IO and IRQ settings.

By using VDMSound, it may start up without access violations but often with severe performance problems (some other DOS games work fine with it, though).

-Windows XP Home or Pro with SP2:
Doesn't start doom.exe or doom2.exe at all, not even with VDMSound and with sound setting set to "no sfx, no music".

-Any windows version with DOSBOX:
It works fine, you can even get emulated FM sounblaster sound, although setting the device to "Roland MT32" or "General MIDI" will in general result in better music, even with an AC'97, and slightly faster emulation speed. The tradeoff is the performace gap: you will need a 3.0 Ghz machine for the equivalent of a 486 PC (although with lots of memory).

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