Doom with MIDI sound effects

[Linguica]

Earlier today it was discovered that the DMX sound library used in the Doom games supported a heretofore-unknown sound format. It's of course been long known that DMX format 0 was for PC speaker sounds, and DMX format 3 was for your normal digitized sound effects, but DMX formats 1 and 2 were pretty much a mystery. Turns out they are for something that DMX called GSS, which was, in short, a way for a game to use specially crafted MIDI files directly as sound effects.

I suggested to jmickle66666666 that it might be possible to convert the PC speaker sound effects into this special MIDI format. Turns out the format was nearly identical, so jmickle66666666 made a little script to convert all the PC speaker sounds into the MIDI-esque format.

Then using doom2.exe and only doom2.exe, you first have to edit the default.cfg to set snd_sfxdevice to "6". Then you can use this WAD: http://www.doomworld.com/linguica/gss/dmx_midi.zip

Now we just need to wait for Chocolate Doom to fully support this vital vanilla-engine feature.

[Deleted_Account]

It's like Beethoven was behind Doom this entire time!

[baja blast rd.]

That cacodemon needs to be tuned.

[Jaxxoon R]

I for one enjoy the inclusion of pianovision into our lives.

[Reisal]

Is it possible to have it choose various instruments instead of all Acoustic Piano?

[baja blast rd.]

The Mancubus should make tuba noises.

[ReFracture]

Vanilla Doom just continues to surprise us!

[Linguica]

Glaice said:

Is it possible to have it choose various instruments instead of all Acoustic Piano?

Yes. jmickle66666666 tried making one that just played notes with a random pitch and instrument, and it worked (and sounded silly): http://puu.sh/lhakD/2fd9251f85.wad

[jdagenet]

How about tuned frequency maps? I imagine you all are still tinkering with this but I think it'd be quite magically to tune all of the sounds to, say, the major scale!

[Avoozl]

Someone should create a map which is essentially made up of giant instruments for its architecture, this would fit it perfectly.

[Noiser]

Maybe can work better with OPL sounds? I mean, I don't know how this stuff works, but there some DOS games that only uses fm synthesis for sound effects. Wolf 3D have this option too.

This one is my favorite:

[IMX]

I guess this means the mobile Doom RPG sound effects could be adapted to the PC version now! Lol.

[Lila Feuer]

That player death sound shit me up.

[Memfis]

Does this work for anyone else? I followed the instructions but I get no sounds in DOSBox.

[jmickle66666666]

memfis: Set snd_sfxdevice to 6 for GM, or set to 2 for OPL.

[Memfis]

Yeah, I set it to 6 like the first post said but got no sound. Now I tried 2 and got this...

[jmickle66666666]

Hm, that's strange. The OPL won't work unless you rename the sounds DAxxx (I don't have a wad on hand currently for you to test with, at work currently), but 6 should work with the one provided. Is the midi soundtrack playing correctly?

[40oz]

eww its so creepy!

[Maes]

On the one hand it was kind of expectable, given that Wolf3D used "midi sounds" as well (actually, carefully crafted OPL sequences, but whatever). On the other hand, I can see why they decided to just let it die quietly.

[Dragonfly]

After giving the video a quick watch, I'm glad they didn't make use of this, heh. That said, how closely could various sound effects be made using standard midi sounds?

[Tristan]

I actually made a stupid mod a while back that replaced the weapon sounds with stuff from MIDI drums/SFX

http://www.mediafire.com/download/i07kye983etc329/stupidshitweapons%282%29.wad

[Gez]

Honestly I expected the mysterious sound formats to be for Adlib (OPL) sounds. There's precedent for that: the AudioT files used in previous id games such as Wolfenstein 3D or Commander Keen had a three tiered approach for sounds: PC speaker, Adlib, and PCM. (But then it turns out the PCM sound format from AudioT was never actually used, and instead for Wolfenstein they put the PCM in VSWAP and in a different PCM format.)

That it turned out to be for MIDI sound effects was a surprise.

[joe-ilya]

But why?

[RestlessRodent]

It is time for a Doom The Musical WAD! Could also make a Doom Band with DeHackEd and some way to trigger the sounds. Then before you know it, people will be remaking D_E1M1 in the game similar to how they do it with Mario Paint.

The MIDI stuff can allow for multiple sounds to be played at once rather than only a single sound with the PC speaker. Also, the MIDI sounds could be balanced to either left/right and the further away a sound is the lower it plays.

Luckily for me I insisted on using raw MIDI access (instead of giving an entire MIDI to some library) so C ReMooD could easily implement this feature. However, I am in the middle of a rewrite.

[HavoX]

Warning! Once you hear them, they cannot be unheard!

Speaking of MIDI, I never did get to hear them back in the old days when I had to run it in DOS, so I missed out

...'course, I was just a kid and didn't know much

[Randy87]

The Doom 0.8 project found this while trying to suss out prb's sound system a while back.
Announcement: Doom 0.8

[Dragonfly]

Eris Falling said:

I actually made a stupid mod a while back that replaced the weapon sounds with stuff from MIDI drums/SFX

http://www.mediafire.com/download/i07kye983etc329/stupidshitweapons%282%29.wad

Hah, awesome stuff. The plasma gun was hilarious to listen to, and the chainsaw sounded like this:

[fraggle]

Cool stuff. I'd love to see more sound effects. Bet you can get some nice monster screams using the voice instruments.

[BaronOfStuff]

Hilariously fuckin' weird to hear MIDI-fied piano versions of the PC speaker sounds. This has some odd potential...

[fraggle]

khokh2001 found this:

http://unix.superglobalmegacorp.com/source/dmx/

It appears to be the DMX source code.