Custom Music for Doom 64EX

[Impboy4]

I'm having a bit of trouble getting the midis to work properly ingame. I did the correct procedure to add custom music (putting the midis between the DS markers), but they just won't play correctly. I don't know if I did something wrong with the midi making itself or the importing. I'll post the link to the music wad here and hopefully someone can find a solution.

Download Link

Btw, these midis I found on these forums are from a user named natt who managed to rip the music tracks from the Playstation port.

[Z0k]

well this a post from Sector666 when i asked about to make music for doom64ex but since im dont know (Well at "expert" level) how to do these things maybe you will find interesting a bit those post:

here is a way to make new music for Doom 64, but it would involve setting up a midi editor to use the soundfont generated by wadgen (aka DOOMSND.SF2). I know nothing about how to do that or what would be a good midi editor to use. If you are interested enough in making new Doom 64 music though it can be done, but you'd have to be motivated enough to learn how to make midis and set that all up. If you're still interested despite me saying that, Doomworld would be a great place to ask what a good midi editor is, and how to set one up to use the Doom 64 soundfont.

so far he told me that someone tried to use the normal midis on doom64ex and they just sound like a bunch of imps sounds and fireball flying around.

[Impboy4]

That post isn't what I needed.

[Dave The Daring]

Impboy4 said:

That post isn't what I needed.

That's because the post you need probably can't be written. There is no way, as far as I know, to take existing MIDI files and play them back correctly in Doom64EX. This is because the game uses different sounds/instruments than the usual MIDI standard, so what you end up with is seemingly random noise.

You can create new music, but it too has to use the Doom64EX soundfont, which is probably best suited for ambient style music. It may be possible to replace the soundfont file, but I'm not a PC MIDI expert so I can't say that with any certainty.

So it looks like you'll just have to put up with the good ol' Doom 64 music.

[jdagenet]

It would be possible to replace the Doom 64 soundfont with a soundfont that contains the PSXDOOM samples which would play the MIDI files correctly.
Probably a more efficient method would to just simply replace the existing samples in the DOOMSND soundfont so that way you wouldn't have to remap the instruments.

Getting a hold of the PSXDOOM samples is fairly easy as well since nearly all of the samples Aubrey used are from sample CD's from the late 80's-early 90's. Really, the only samples that you can't legally use are the pad samples, which are used quite frequently throughout PSXDOOM, and the sample used in Deimos Anomaly since Aubrey sampled those himself.

Perhaps I could supply a modified Doom 64 EX soundfont that has the PSXDOOM samples over existing instrument mappings so that way I wouldn't have create a completely new soundfont from scratch.

[Dave The Daring]

I'm assuming the player would have to rename/move the existing DOOMSND.SF2 to accommodate the modified version, and then swap them back over to play the original Doom 64 music correctly again?

Maybe I'm just a lazy old cynic, but it seems a bit of a hassle considering we're just replacing one type of dark ambient music with a slightly different type of dark ambient music.

[jdagenet]

That is my guess, yes.
Simply keep two copies of the soundfont, maybe one named "DOOMSND_D64" and the other named "DOOMSND_PSX" so that way when you want to use one you just remove the text after the underscore.

It'd definitely be a hastle replacing all of the samples because you'd have to import them, delete the original samples, and then rename the imported samples to match the pre-existing samples.
It's the only way possible to play the PSXDOOM MIDI's correctly.

[Gez]

How many instruments do they actually use? If there's enough free slot it could be possible to combine the soundfonts together and remap the PSX instruments in the MIDIs.

[jdagenet]

That's not a bad idea, Gez. The DOOMSND soundfont takes up 53 standard MIDI programs, leaving 74 free on the same bank.
I went through and counted all of the original samples I have from PSXDOOM and I have everything but three samples (seven including the different variations of the pad samples):

• The synth/pad sounds heard all throughout the levels
  
• The sampled voice solo in Deimos Anomaly
  
• The voice sample in Plant
  

So in total, I have 18 samples that could be mapped to their own MIDI programs inside the DOOMSND soundfont along with the existing Doom 64 programs. This alternative could eliminate the option of having two seperate soundfonts.

As for the missing samples, there would be no legal way to obtain and use the samples if they were ripped from the CD ROM.

[Impboy4]

Here's the problem; I already have the music set up to play the right MIDI bank (Bank 0) and instrument number. The problem is that the source port can't read it well and ends up not sounding proper. Kaiser said in a PM to my friend KevinHEZ that custom music made properly will not play due to a source port bug for some strange reason.

[jdagenet]

Very strange indeed.
I wonder how the source port is able to differentiate the original MIDI's from custom MIDI's as you could simply re-write one of the existing MIDI's, oh let's say MUSAMB02, and plug it right back into the WAD.
Unfortunately, I can't attempt this as I'm on a Mac and there's no way, as far as I know, to compose or edit MIDI files and still render it compatible.