Hisymak

Hello, sorry, I'm no longer active in remixing songs. But what you can simply do, use Hisymak's GENMIDI in Doom and play various MIDIs in it, then you may get interesting results. Hisymak's GENMIDI and my remixes are free to use in Doom mods.

Althrough dogs can visually look nice and friendly, I don't like them really much because they're too much loud and can be dangerous in some situations. Cats are better in these aspects.

In the early time of 3D first-person shooters, there were many limitations to the game's engines, which was not a full unlimited 3D space. Some games were so much limited, that the maps could consist only of orthogonal walls bound to a static 2D grid. The most important example us Wolf3D, which was basically a "glorified" 2D maze with addition of doors, weapons, enemies, and pickup items. There were some more similar games, like Blake Stone, which had just a little more variety and gameplay mechanics. ROTT was more advanced, it had vertical movement and some more vertical variation, but still the greatest limitation was there. Another example is a lesser-known game CyClones, which was yet more advanced in the aspect of room-over-room possibility. The biggest problem of those games is, that they can be... eh, pretty much boring. Witch such limitations, there's really not much you can do with the level design (compared to Doom, where you can do pretty much "anything you like"). All the levels look same-y and get uninteresting after completing a few levels. For example I never played all Wolf3D episodes, and never finished ROTT for such reason. It also feels like there's "Quantity-over-quality" problem. As the level design is simple-y, it's pretty easy to make a lot of levels. On the other hand, Duke3D or Quake feel quite short and like they have few stock levels, as they're much more detailed and take plenty of work to make. The special case is CyClones. It has engine with maybe even better possibilities than ROTT, but it has two main problems: the gameplay sucks and the level design is pretty much bad with majority of levels not taking full advantage of all the engine features and falling back to Wold3D-esque design. The first level feels like the best level of all the game in terms of engine utilization. So what's your opinion? Can you enjoy those games, or suffer from the same problem like me?

Firstly, I'd love to greatly thank to all the composers who contributed into this excellent MIDI pack. I really enjoyed it and liked many songs from it, and made me replay whole Heretic again after some longer time. It was a whole new experience with the new songs, which fitted many levels from the latter Heretic episodes. Secondly, as all-life OPL synth lover, I definitely played through this MIDI pack with OPL synth as the selected MIDI device (I almost never use anything else anyway). Like I did in the past with Plutonia, Plutonia 2, Revolution! and BTSX E2, I recorded the OPL Synth version of whole Heretic soundtrack! The key idea of the video is to have the complete Heretic soundtrack with all the original Kevin Schilder's tracks and Raven MIDI Pack tracks put together, making it appear like it has always been the original soundtrack composed by Kevin Schilder for all levels. It should be a surprise to an unaware random watcher who's seeking for a Heretic soundtrack, therefore I'm intentionally not telling the actual truth in video's description. I hope you will like the OPL synth version and enjoy listening to your own tracks. The most iconic sound in whole Heretic soundtrack is the Synth Strings 1 instrument which is used in almost all tracks. In the OPL soundfont, this instrument has always been one octave up, making it yet more distinctive and typical for Heretic. Thank you also for your comments.

I have: - Two Hi-Fi towers (one older Kenwood, one newer Sanyo) capable of playing CDs and cassetes - A laptop with CD/DVD drive - A few computers with CD/DVD drive - A vinyl record player We have lot of audio CDs at home, and recently I even bought a second-hand CD of a title I was looking for. Nevertheless, I play CDs or vinyls rarely, it feels rather like something special than something casual. For example I usually play my favourite CDs during Christmas time, or I decide to play a specific CD when I have a very special inclination to do, or when we have a visit and we want to listen to specific songs.

Dogs are overally seen as pets and friendly animals, and for lot of people it's their life's partner or important family member. Dogs are also utilized as useful and helpful animals in many areas, like helpers for disabled people, and can even save a human's life. However, my personal attitude and relation to dogs is pretty bad. Since my early childhood, I perceive dogs as aggressive, dangerous and annoying animals, which I try to avoid, or at least ignore. I would never want to have a dog as a pet at all, and often they make me angry and cause unpleasant situations to me. One of the main problem is, that I absolutely HATE dog's barking. This is so aggressive, intrusive and disturbing loud sound, which is very uncomfortable to my ears. Whenever I'm somewhere, like walk around street, sit in the garden etc and feel relaxed and comfortable, a barking dog always spoils my mood and breaks feeling of the place. I just wish the dog shut up and have an urge to kick him in his ass. The other main problem is the dog's "unconditioned aggression" towards strangers. By nature, dog's inherent behavior is protecting their "pack" (their owner and family), and any stranger who appears nearby is automatically considered as a potential threat, enemy, and intruder, without even considering if that stranger has really any bad intentions or not. So dogs express aggression and try to intimidate any stranger just on principle. And that is the definite reason why I cannot stand dogs. Sometimes I experience such situations, when I for example walk a street, and a person with a dog walks in the opposite direction. Then suddenly, without me doing anything wrong, the dogs runs towards me, comes into my close proximity and furiously barks on me. I feel extremely uncomfortable in that situation, because the dog intrudes my personal space and makes a real threat to me (who knows if the dog gets crazy and bites me), so I feel threatened much more than the dog's owner is even afraid of me. And the dogs does it only because I'm a stanger who walks nearby, like I was guilty for doing that! Of course, such case is rather rare, like let's say one of 100 dogs does that, but still. I feel like dogs need to be trained by their owners not to do this, and only not well-trained dogs do that, as this is their natural beahavior they're taught to suppress. The other big problem I experience very often are barking garden dogs. Whenever I go on a public space (a road, sidewalk) nearby a house with a fenced garden and dog inside, the dogs aggressively barks on me. I'm feeling like the dog wants to express something like this: "I hate you because you're a stranger who came near my territory. Better get out of the place as fast as possible, or I'll bite you!". So I feel like the dog inherently hates me for no real reason, without me doing anything wrong to him and without having any bad intentions, like trying to intrude their house and steal something, or harm the dog or its family. According to the dog, my offence is basically my sole existence and presence near their house, and the correct thing I should do is just to stay at my home and don't go anywhere. Whereas, according to human laws, it's perfectly fine and legal to walk at public space, and no human would even shout on me or dislike me because of me walking on a public space near their house. So I feel like the dog is denying my basic human right. And this is the definite incompatibility between dog's and human's world, which is the thing that most bothers me about dogs. Additionally, I sometimes feel dog's behavior is illogical. For example I walk near a garden with a dog, and I'm facing a direction away from that garden, but the dog starts barking on me anyway. I feel like "You clearly see I'm walking away from your house, so I'm definitely not going to intrude your house, so you can just stop barking you i*iot!" And the dog is like "Nope, I'll keep barking on you until I see you, to make sure you won't turn around and come back!". Things like this can frustrate me on dogs pretty much. And lastly, the thing which frustrates me absolutely most and makes me really angry, is, when I for example walk near a fence, and a dog comes very silently near me, and all of a sudden starts loudly and furiously barking on me. It causes a shock to me and it is extremely bothersome. I feel like the dog is trolling me and has an actual pleasure in causing a shock to me. So, that's about my feelings about dogs. Unfortunately, I feel like this is pretty much wrong and don't like such attitude and feelings. I'd like to get along better with dogs generally, and find a way to achieve that. Is there any advice you can give me? What's your opinion about those situations and feelings? Thank you for help.

I'm an oldschool person who lived his whole childhood with DOS games and an Adlib/Sound Blaster-compatible sound card. I use this for all my time playing Doom or Heretic. That's my answer.

So happy to see another person loving this game! When it comes to point-and-click adventures, my second most favourite one I have great memories of, is The Neverhood. Very original and artistic game featuring a fantasy world made all out of clay, with a strong feeling of loneliness (you're alone in the world and meet just one or two other human-like characters), full of various puzzles and funny situations and animations, and very quirky soundtrack. I remember getting stuck in the section with a cannon and emptied pool, with an antenna room with a radio on its bottom. I had no idea how to activate the radio and get further, so later on, I found a walkthrough guide and finished rest of game with its help. Too pity I did not figure out myself the whole game. That game left lot of memories and feelings in me, several times I had a night dream about The Neverhood world.

Legend of Kyrandia. This is very beautiful adventure game which takes place in a colourful fantasy world with forests, caves, magical characters, and a big castle in the end. I can say it influenced my life a lot, as I played it since I was about 3 years old. It has very nice soundtrack by Frank Klepacki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymTioBu2_Hk

Thanks! Yes, I agree about that. I think that the point is, while some other synths are more about square, sawtooth, triangle etc. waveforms, OPL synthesis is made by modulating sine or sine-based waveforms. The sound of natural musical instruments is based on sine waves and harmonics, that's probably why OPL can make more natural and organic sounds, whereas square-wave based synths sound stronger, but more chip-py and computer-y. OPL added the square waveform in OPL3 which fixed the lack of this kind of sound from earlier OPL2, but unfortunately, OPL3 was not much used in practice (in games), so it did not get much chance to shine. Heh, that's right, OPL does not get that much attention nowadays and most Doomers are not even familiar about this MIDI playback option in Doom ports, or would not choose that one anyway. But I understand. Many games from early to mid-90's had music which was primarily composed for some more advanced or sampled MIDI synth, like Roland MT-32, Roland SC-55 or so, and the playback on Adlib/Sound Blaster cards was considered as an afterthought, kind of "secondary", less-fancy option. Therefore, the composers and game creators did not take really much effort on OPL Synth playback, and just made it as simple MIDI playback on the stock OPL soundfont (i.e. the Fat Man, DMX library soundfonts etc) which were not that great quality, and many instruments sounded dull or crappy. And the music sounded just... bad. That's why not many people came to like it, I was rather an exception. On the other hand, there exist many examples of games with great and shining OPL soundtracks, where the composers and musicians took really solid effort creating the OPL music. The Dune soundtrack by Stéphane Picq, Dune 2 soundtrack by Frank Klepacki, these are best examples of how OPL music can be made well, and what the chip can offer if you know how to use it. Well, at least, we are the two, and I believe there are more people around who love OPL! We're the minority, but we're not alone. Nope, I am not in contact with Mark Klem, I'm wondering whether he's even visiting the Doomworld forums? But I love his music, not only the Doom tracks he composed for MM series or Requiem, but I've played the game Wacky Wheels, and its music, composed by Mark Klem, are great OPL pieces as well! The OPL version is way better than the standard MIDI version. I wonder what Mark Klem would say on that, but I suppose he would like it. Do you have contact on him? But still, we can be in contact with @Jimmy, one of my most favourite present-time musical composers (and mappers). He is making so great music tracks for various Doom megawads! I listen to his Doom MIDIs in OPL, and recorded many of his tracks in OPL. I believe he already heard them and likes them - does he?

Heh, interesting thought. I was never thinking those songs would fit in any wad at all, as these remixes were mainly made as a tribute to those songs I liked. But why not, the imagination has no limits, and it could turn into something interesting and original. Yes, feel free, you can contact me via PM if you want anything specific, like a MIDI file or other stuff.

Ok, so finally, here goes one of my biggest OPL Synth creations ever: A whole music video! It's from a czech musical fairy tale from 1973, which is full of beautiful songs, and it's one of the most popular classic films that goes here mostly during Christmas time every year. I pretty much like the story, visuals, places, and most importantly the songs, we were growing up with. So in the end, after some good experience with remixing Iveta Bartošová's songs into OPL, the idea of remixing these songs grew up in my head. I just wanted to have fun, challenge myself, and enjoy those lovely songs in OPL! I remixed 7 songs from that film, and one specific song has an interesting story behind it. As you might have noticed, my specific area of interest in terms of OPL Synth is kind of "mimicking" human voice in songs, with use of appropriate OPL "instrument" with a fitting timbre. I always felt that playing female voice in OPL comes easier than male voice, due to the nature of OPL sounding more likely high-pitched. So I tended more into remixing songs with females singing in it, and made a few songs from that fairy tale. I showed those songs to my job colleague, who also very liked this fairy tale like me, and he was impressed. But he told me that he was missing one specific song which was sung by an evil king, which was his most favourite. He asked me to remix this particular song for him. So I got a challenge! As always, I needed to come up with an appropriate instrument for the human voice, and I needed to mimic a deep old king's voice. After a while, I managed to come up with something that could work. Then I tailored the rest of song and was pretty happy with the result. When I showed that to my colleague the other day, he was really amazed and told me, it was genius perfect remix! So here it is. I'm really curious what you would think. Enjoy! The first video is original song, the second is my remix with video part. All seven songs are in the video.

This is not a 3D game, but I still hope this counts into this thread. Anyone knows this classic DOS platforming piece with colourful graphics, catchy music and dynamic gameplay? Here's up to date link to the mod (take the v2): https://moddingwiki.shikadi.net/wiki/Vinyl_Goddess_From_Mars/Mods

I think that was because that song became extremely popular on internet, for some reason, maybe either because it's very interesting and special song, maybe because of that leek spin anime meme. I'm happy to hear their pronunciation was understandable to you, as I don't understand a word in finnish. I see, everyone has different preferences. I was never into hard rock and metal and don't actively visit any rock/metal band concerts. I'd rather come to some classical/baroque music concert, or at most some good pop singer. I like pop music from 80's and 90's due to presence of those oldschool synth chips and keyboards I love, the modern pop music is less interesting to me. Regarding Doom, I like most Doom music, but I prefer more variation over pure rock/metal theme. One of my most favourite soundtracks is from BTSX2, which features mostly tribal/ethnical/moody music tracks, I recorded OPL version here: I recorded several more complete Doom megawad soundtracks in OPL - those I specifically liked, for example Plutonia or Plutonia 2. Also I need to say that I much more prefer Heretic's soundtrack than Doom's. The medeival/fantasy is my favourite theme as well. When it comes to fantasy, this one specific Doom's music track is probably my absolutely most favourite. It plays in Memento Mori, and it has some strong dark fantasy feel into it that hit me very much. Obviously I like the OPL Synth version, which probably changes the feel a bit from the original. When I listen to that track, I imagine I'm in a marvelous castle in a magical fantasy world. Here it is: Ah, thanks for saying that! I spent my whole childhood with the OPL chip music while playing numerous DOS games. I loved the sound, because I believed "that is how computer game music is supposed to sound like". I was not concerned about the "lesser" sound quality, but what was important to me, it was something "different", distinct from real world music and musical instruments, what had its own personality. I loved the abstract instruments, the sounds that could never be heard in nature. One of my most favourite soundtracks is from Dune 2. As an adult, my little dream was to be a composer and musician and create good music specifically for OPL chip. Unfortunately I don't have creative abilities, so that's not going to happen, but at least I started playing around and experimenting with OPL instruments, which ended up by creation of my own GENMIDI. My goal was to mitigate the biggest flaws of OPL (those crappily sounding instruments, which was one of main reasons why OPL was so unpopular) and create well-sounding, strong and interesting instruments, so that the OPL music can attract the listeners. Which I managed to do, I believe. I just love how versatile the OPL chip is. There are other much more popular synth chips, like NES, SID from Commodore 64, Sega Genesis and so, which have stronger sound, whereas the OPL sound feels rather tinny. But on the other hand, OPL can create really big variety of different sounds, some can sound very close to real instruments, whereas there can be purely abstract and crazy sounds. I was doing some experiments and tried with a classical piece from Tchaikovsky. I can say, some instruments, like french horn, clarinet or flute, sound pretty convincing. Oh, oh, oh. Well, I was previously shy to say, that, uhm, I don't know Ivan Mladek. Actually, when I looked for him and his songs right now, I realized I knew those songs and I definitely heard them in my life, but I was never explicitly interested and listening them intentionally. You know, when I was a kid, I was much more interested in computer game music, and listened to other music rather passively. I knew a few singers, including Iveta Bartošová, and got more interest basically as an adult. So, that's it, maybe you know better that guy than me. It's funny how different persons are fascinated by different things. I was really interested to hear that cover, could not imagine how that song would sound (I already knew the song "Linda"). Your cover seems not to be like what I expected (something like what I did myself, a remix of full song with all the instruments and voice), but rather a hand-made piece of the main part of song. I admit I kinda "cheated" with the use of existing MIDIs, so I'm fascinated you took your effort creating something like this, pretty good. I also like the image in the video. I'm quite less familiar with the Sega sound system, as I got to know about SEGA consoles later in my life. I understand it's from the same family as OPL chip, namely SEGA Genesis/Megadrive uses OPN chip. The sound is quite similar to OPL, but feels stronger, and is also much better with sampled drums. My wish, a pie in the sky I wrote in my last comment in my the other thread about one song sounding like Sonic music, is to have SEGA Genesis cover for that song. Just wondering whether you or someone else would be able to recreate it with the highest possible fidelity (of the instruments). Yeah, Prague is one of the most beautiful historical cities, there are loads of foreign tourists. I'm happy you liked it there. I've never been to Finland, I was only once in Stockholm for a business trip. But some of my colleagues were in Finland and they were fascinated by the infinite forests, and saunas everywhere. Those pensioners? My only thought is, that maybe all money they get paid from people using the toilets (it's probably not so much money per a day), would go to their salary anyway, so there's no more income for operating the toilets. Feels quite strange to me, but on the other hand, I think it's mainly because those pensioners get some basic job and extra money. I pretty much agree with what you say. I don't feel very comfortable to say, that she actually became an alcoholic too, as a consequence of her personal problems and media chase. I must say I feel sorry for her, rather than thinking bad things about her. I was bullied on elementary school by my classmates, because, I had very different interests from others and could not get with others. It was very hard times to me, so I could feel something like what she was experiencing in her later life. That's probably one of the reasons I got to like her (expect I really LOVE her songs and voice). She will always be the singing princess to me.

Ah, that's a nice coincidence, happy to hear that! I'm working for a finnish IT company called TietoEvry, so I'm also in contact with finnish people within my job. I'm more familiar with basically two finnish musicians: Loituma and Nightwish, and I'm aware Finland is famous for being the country with the highest concentration of metal bands, indeed I (randomly or intentionally) heard some songs from those. I know Loituma for their famous song "Levan Polkka", not only because it became a meme song which was one of the most remixed songs on the internet, but mainly because a group of my classmates from a high school where I studied performed that song! Here I have the recording on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5106II45V74 I'm really curious what you say about these Czechs attempt to sing in finnish. Unfortunately the sound quality of this recording is very poor (recorded that on a compact camera from a greater distance), but in real it could sound quite better. And Nightwish is actually my favourite band, especially my brother is listening to their songs. I strongly prefer the symphonic metal genre, the hard metal is not much of my taste. Except very nice instrumental music, it also features an opera/soprano singer, which is what I especially like there. Funnily enough, my story about Nightwish again starts with Doom and its OPL Synthesizer. I was playing some Doom Wads with OPL synth on, and got to play a map which featured a MIDI of a Nightwish song. So the FIRST thing I ever heard from Nightwish in my life was basically the OPL remix! I especially like that song, and tried to find more from that band. Here I made a quick recording of the OPL version: 18.zip Various Doom WADs used various MIDIs of some real songs, so for example I heard Britney Spears's Toxic song in OPL, and countless of other rock/metal songs which are very common genre for Doom. However, the Nightwish song specially hit home due to that emotional singing towards the end of song. The MIDI uses, afaik, the Calliope Lead instrument for both male and female voice. For the male voice it's kinda miss, but for the female voice It was more a fit. This song was probably the most inspirative to me and lead me to try with my own OPL remixes of my favourite songs. I easily chose Iveta Bartošová because she has (for me subjectively) the nicest voice and I wanted so hear her songs through my beloved OPL synthesizer I spent basically my whole life listening to. So, uh, that's the story about one man's fulfilled musical dream. Yes, I see you're quite close. I would say also Balkan music is pretty much melancholic. I hope you liked also the other songs I posted and their OPL remixes. I kinda presumed you would get more interested. Basically she was one of the best Czech pop stars of late 80's and 90's, not only because her voice and songs, but also dancing performances and trying to get pretty close to the western pop scene, you could see that in the other song which sounded close to a Sonic music. There's another good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_iFr5HtX_4 Her best times were the end of 80's/beginning of 90's, and secondly the late 90's when she made the album I remixed the most. Unfortunately, she was not lucky in personal life and could not easily stand out the attacks of tabloid media and life with her men. She was basically very talented and beautiful princess, but very fragile personality. I believe she was a very good person who liked people, and I can say the whole Czech nation loves her and remembers her songs. This is going way too off-topic, so using spoiler for more stuff.