Does tracker music for Heretic an Hexen exist?

[vanfanel]

Hi,

Since ZDoom is having problems with framerate on ARM boards when using anything but the tracker music player (FOO_DUMB) because it seems that the music decoding is made synchronously on the same thread as the main game loop (look here: http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=51328) tracker music is a must on the Raspberry Pi and similar boards.

So, I found these great WADs with tracker music for doom, that work GREAT on the Raspberry Pi with ZDoom:
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/music/chipdoom
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/music/chipdm2
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/music/nesmus

However, I can't find equivalents for Heretic and Hexen. Are there any?
Also, is there a way to convert MID files to tracker formats?
I know about OpenMPT, but the resulting .it is always silent.

[plums]

Don't know what you're doing with OpenMPT (or whether I did something special to set it up a while ago that I can't remember, like point it to a soundfont) but I just converted MUS_E1M1 pretty well into tracker format. The timing is a bit off, since there's no tempo in MUS files, so it just uses a high tempo to try to get all the note events in there; the end is also a bit rough with instruments cutting out. But it worked reasonably ok.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/g5c50qz2a3z5sas/MUS_E1M1.it

If you want I can put all the Heretic/Hexen music through this process sometime later today, since it's quite easy. No guarantees how it'll turn out though.

edit: I probably added a soundfont in OpenMPT at some time with File -> Add Sound Bank. You could get a soundfont and then try the conversion again.

[vanfanel]

@plums: Sounds very well to me! I am not doing anything special, just exporting it as IT files.
I am using OpenMPT under WINE on a GNU/Linux system, so maybe that's why it's not working as expected. I have discovered that, as OpenMPT starts, every MID file is silent. Maybe it uses some default sound font on Windows?
In that case, could benefit from a different sound font?

I have tried adding merlin gold soundfont in SF2 format using File->Add Sound Bank, but my MID files are still silent.

[plums]

vanfanel said:

I am using OpenMPT under WINE on a GNU/Linux system, so maybe that's why it's not working as expected.

Aha, you probably need this file, which is the default Windows MIDI sound bank:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/4bz2wor69858vj2/gm.dls

Save it somewhere like your OpenMPT directory, then start up OpenMPT and right-click MIDI Library that is in the top-left panel, then choose "Import MIDI Library". After that, any MIDIs you open should hopefully not be silent. You could also select a soundfont instead to import, but I just tried a few and many don't sound very good - I think OpenMPT can't handle complex soundfonts.

If it still doesn't work, I'll do the conversions for you.

[vanfanel]

@plums: with that gm.dls file imported as you said, it works, but tempo is wrong: on the IT you produced, the rythms sounded more "in place", but I am getting different periods between beats... It's a bit difficult to explain.
Why could that be? Any other settings I can play with?

[plums]

It sounds different even with MUS_E1M1? Could you upload the .it output if so and I can look at it?

I tried with D_E1M1 from Doom and the timing definitely felt a lot worse than that Heretic track, probably it's got a lot to do with just whether the timing of the source MIDI fits into the timing OpenMPT uses when importing. It's something that could be fixed by hand, a lot more work than just opening and exporting a file though.

[vanfanel]

Sure, here it is:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hcgrlzohjjtsaq6/he1m1bad.it?dl=0

Tempo in yours is very good! And the instruments are way better in yours too.

[plums]

Weird, the timpani didn't even come in at all in yours. I'll dig into this sometime later to see if I can figure out why. What did you use to convert the MUS to MIDI?

[vanfanel]

I just found the MIDs around and thought they were good! Hadn't remembered that original musics where MUS...
Can you point me to good MIDs? To the one you used for example.

[plums]

Ah, that might be the difference. I opened up heretic.wad in SLADE and converted the MUS to a MIDI and then exported it. I think SLADE runs in Linux if you compile it yourself (or there's a build for your distro), or even through Wine?
http://slade.mancubus.net/

[vanfanel]

Ah, I extracted all the MUS to MIDs using SLADE, thanks!
But some of the Heretic ones sound with bad tempos too...And the Doom ones are a disaster.
These MIDs can not be used for conversion to IT as they are. Do you know of a good MID set for Heretic/Hexen with right tempo?

[plums]

Unfortunately not. The only way to get such a thing would be to get a hold of the original midi files, which seems highly unlikely, or to reconstruct them in a midi editor based on the exported file. Even then it might not help the midi->it conversion, since OpenMPT doesn't seem to read the tempo from midi files that have them and just uses a "best fit" approach with picking a tempo that matches the midi notes.

You could also try a different converter. There's one at http://www.un4seen.com/mid2xm.html that might work, I haven't tried it myself but it might give better results. It looks like it's a lot less automated though, you need to provide it with samples to replace midi instruments, which is a pain. I'm not aware of any other good converters but maybe there are some...

What is one of the bad Heretic ones? I can see if it's too hard to correct.

[vanfanel]

@plums: I have already tried mid2xm. It has the advantage of letting you use gravis ultrasound INI files directly so you don't have to specify instruments: it uses the GUS patches directly instead if you do so.
However, the results are worse than the ones with OpenMPT: missing channels, wrong notes...

The problem here are the MIDs we have. With no good MIDs, we can't have good tracked musics, no matter what program we use. And I don't know how to fix them, so my little adventure with DOOM music formats ends here I guess :(

As for Heretic, well, except maybe a couple of tracks, most of them have problems, take rythms in E1M5 for example. It makes no sense to fix them manually, there must be a way to get good MIDIs for these games...

[plums]

vanfanel said:

It makes no sense to fix them manually, there must be a way to get good MIDIs for these games...

Well, unfortunately the timing won't be perfect even with a good midi. You can try converting a proper midi, you'll see the timing will still have problems, though maybe less than with a mus->midi conversion. Writing a better converter might be possible, but then we're starting to solve the wrong problem, since this is all meant as a workaround anyhow.


edit: Maybe I'm wrong, mid2xm seems to work pretty well with a normal midi file that has timing info. Maybe it isn't impossible to add this info to a Heretic midi...

[vanfanel]

@plums: Can you try adding timmin info to Doom's d_e1m1.mid for example so I can test it with MID2XM, please?
The MUS to MID converted file (using SLADE) sounds out of tempo on both OpenMPT and MID2XM, so could be a good example to try the fix.

[plums]

I'll give it a shot. But re-adding the timing isn't a simple task. MUS files just run at 140 tics a second (70 tics per beat at 120 bpm) and so all notes and other events are fixed to that rate. I'm going to work on something to try to semi-automate the process, but it might take a day or two if it works at all.

[vanfanel]

Don't worry, I am not in a hurry. I'll keep an eye here so try what you come up with!

[vanfanel]

Any news on this, Plums?