MIDI games

[+DarkLord]

2 minutes ago, leech said:

I'm trying to find the right language, but F*** those Shadow Lords.  When I finally saw a video not too long ago about all the rest of the stuff I needed to do to beat the game (actually watched a speed run of it).  Holy crap, there is some crazy things you have to do in that game!  I think I had gotten as far as beating two of them, but wasn't aware that you have to re-fight them later.  Very hard game.  Too bad Ultima V was never released on the 8bit Atari though.  Apple II an C64 did.  But then C64 got Ultima VI... but everything I've read about that version says that it should not have been a thing....

LOL, yeah, the Shadow Lords appearance could definitely ruin your day.

 

It's a crying shame it never made it to the 8bit Atari's. 

 

Ugh, Ultima VI on the ST.... I really, really want to like it. I do. I mean it is

VI, it's hard drive install-able!, you can transfer your previous characters,

the story is epic, blah, blah, blah. Then you get to the graphics. My word.

It appears that they just copied over the CGA versions and never adjusted

them for the ST's color range. Some parts are okay, others are so muddled

it's crazy. 

 

[+DarkLord]

3 minutes ago, leech said:

My favorite was Alternate Reality: The Dungeon.  Where you'd be attacked by the FBI, who's weapon was "the Long Arm of the Law."  Best memory of that game... at some point, I think on level 3?  There is a dwarven smith who will let you make your own weapon and you can name it.  We named ours 'Balls'  So when you were in a fight it'd say wonderful things like 'Your Balls have been flung from your grasp!"

 

ROFLOL! I think Alternate Reality for the 8bit is one of the best RPG's on any platform.

 

Too bad the ST conversion wasn't as good. 

 

[leech]

Just now, DarkLord said:

LOL, yeah, the Shadow Lords appearance could definitely ruin your day.

 

It's a crying shame it never made it to the 8bit Atari's. 

 

Ugh, Ultima VI on the ST.... I really, really want to like it. I do. I mean it is

VI, it's hard drive install-able!, you can transfer your previous characters,

the story is epic, blah, blah, blah. Then you get to the graphics. My word.

It appears that they just copied over the CGA versions and never adjusted

them for the ST's color range. Some parts are okay, others are so muddled

it's crazy. 

 

Yeah, I think I decided it was an almost EGA version.  What I did to make it awesome though, when I first upgraded my Mega STe to 4MB of RAM, I'd make a 2MB RAM disk and copy the entire game into it, and run it from RAM   Then when you save and quit the game, you just copy it back to disk.  Load times were almost zero, with only a slight stutter. 

[leech]

Just now, DarkLord said:

 

ROFLOL! I think Alternate Reality for the 8bit is one of the best RPG's on any platform.

 

Too bad the ST conversion wasn't as good. 

 

Yeah, it's a crying shame they didn't release the Dungeon for any of the 16bit systems.  Or in general didn't get to finish the epic game!  Even the attempt to bring it back failed, then the attempt to make it into an MMO also failed, though I'm kind of glad about that... MMOs are not exactly my thing.

[+DarkLord]

Just now, leech said:

Yeah, I think I decided it was an almost EGA version.  What I did to make it awesome though, when I first upgraded my Mega STe to 4MB of RAM, I'd make a 2MB RAM disk and copy the entire game into it, and run it from RAM   Then when you save and quit the game, you just copy it back to disk.  Load times were almost zero, with only a slight stutter. 

Nice! Lots of us did something like that with Ultima V. It used the tiles approach to graphics, like many

games and when you came to a border it would load from disk - slow and annoying, interrupting the

gameplay.

 

Someone came up with a bright idea and realized that you could stick one of those small buffer programs

that read ahead in the AUTO folder, set to something easy like 32k or thereabouts and it would make a

huge difference. Many times, there was no loading at all.

 

[leech]

1 minute ago, DarkLord said:

Nice! Lots of us did something like that with Ultima V. It used the tiles approach to graphics, like many

games and when you came to a border it would load from disk - slow and annoying, interrupting the

gameplay.

 

Someone came up with a bright idea and realized that you could stick one of those small buffer programs

that read ahead in the AUTO folder, set to something easy like 32k or thereabouts and it would make a

huge difference. Many times, there was no loading at all.

 

Ultima 6 was just the right size for that extra 2MB of RAM.  I never had Ultima V on the ST, played it on my friend's PC.  So never experienced the fantastic music on it.  I literally bought an Apple IIGS with a mockingboard FPGA remake so I could hear the Ultima tunes how they're meant to be heard... only to have it crash on all of them except Ultima III.  Eventually I'll work on that again...

 

And now back to being on topic, much like the Apple IIGS and it's Mockingboard add-on, it seems the Ultima 3-5 games on the ST really utilized the MIDI.  I can't remember if 6 did or not.  Seems to me you might be able to do a bit of hacking and messing around with files from the DOS version to do it?  I still would love to see if it's possible to tweak the program to instead read the VGA graphic files on the Falcon for 6... Apparently it wouldn't be as easy as renaming the files, like it was for Strip Poker by Artworx (I can't remember if I did that with the ST version, but I certainly did on the 8bit version.  The 'copy' we got originally had them swapped already...)

[+DarkLord]

 /sigh...what you're talking about doing with Ultima VI and the Falcon has been

one of my dreams for a long time.

 

I have a CD-ROM collection of the Ultima series for PC and I actually went so far

as to grab the 256 color VGA graphics files and send them to PPera to see if he

could do something with them.

 

I can't remember the exact reason why now, but he couldn't. 

 

[zzip]

7 hours ago, DarkLord said:

Hmm, did you play III back then or was it later? Just curious.

That sometimes makes a difference in peoples perspective.

 

Yeah, IV was a big improvement over III, in many aspects.

 

I absolutely love V and enjoyed it from start to finish, especially the new story.

OMG - when Lord Blackthorn actually KILLS one of the players that has been

with you from earlier games (you were able to transfer previous characters),

because of a choice you make in the game, it was one of the most emotionally

gut-wrenching moments in any game I've ever played. Every time the dread

ShadowLords appear too, it's epic.

 

I played III around 85, when I got my first floppy drive.   My friends and I got into D&D the previous year, and I was on the lookout for a videogame version of D&D.  I saw U3 in Electronic Games magazine and I wanted it badly,  but had to wait months to get a floppy drive.   This was around the time I got a paper route and could finally save up for things my parents wouldn't buy me-  like the floppy,  and U3 itself which was a rather pricey game for its time.

 

What disappointed me was the world was smaller than I imagined it would be,  the NPC interaction system was so basic.   IV improved both of these issues. 

 

When V came along, I was getting ready for college,  more into girls than games.   I remember booting it up and seeing that you could rearrange the furniture in your room, but I don't remember venturing very far.

[zzip]

8 hours ago, leech said:

Ultima 6 was just the right size for that extra 2MB of RAM.  I never had Ultima V on the ST, played it on my friend's PC.  So never experienced the fantastic music on it.  I literally bought an Apple IIGS with a mockingboard FPGA remake so I could hear the Ultima tunes how they're meant to be heard... only to have it crash on all of them except Ultima III.  Eventually I'll work on that again...

 

And now back to being on topic, much like the Apple IIGS and it's Mockingboard add-on, it seems the Ultima 3-5 games on the ST really utilized the MIDI.

I'd like to go back and replay 3-5,  but I haven't figured out the best platform to do it on.  Basically I want versions faithful to the original vision, with good music.

 

I don't like how they "colorized" the characters on 3+4 on ST and Amiga.   I like the way the graphics were originally designed.

The PC version of these I have on CD run way too fast on modern hardware, unless you find a patched version,  and not sure if these have the music.

The Atari 8 version can't reproduce all 6 colors used on the Apple version, and small disk sizes means extra disk flipping.   U4 has no music

C64 - slow disk speeds and still lots of disk-flipping

Apple II, you need special hardware for the music I think.

NES version burns my eyes.

 

[leech]

1 minute ago, zzip said:

I'd like to go back and replay 3-5,  but I haven't figured out the best platform to do it on.  Basically I want versions faithful to the original vision, with good music.

 

I don't like how they "colorized" the characters on 3+4 on ST and Amiga.   I like the way the graphics were originally designed.

The PC version of these I have on CD run way too fast on modern hardware, unless you find a patched version,  and not sure if these have the music.

The Atari 8 version can't reproduce all 6 colors used on the Apple version, and small disk sizes means extra disk flipping.   U4 has no music

C64 - slow disk speeds and still lots of disk-flipping

Apple II, you need special hardware for the music I think.

NES version burns my eyes.

 

Pretty sure U4 had music on the 8bit.  U3 we got so sick of it, but couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

NES versions don't count.  Best looking / overall version of U4 was the Sega Master System.

Apple II I decided was probably the most 'authentic' as that's what Richard Garriott wrote them all on.  Also there is a remastered IIGS version of Ultima 1 that looks great.

[zzip]

15 minutes ago, leech said:

Pretty sure U4 had music on the 8bit.  U3 we got so sick of it, but couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

It didn't.   Wikipedia said music was cut to allow the game to run on 400/800 systems that could only go to 48K

 

17 minutes ago, leech said:

Apple II I decided was probably the most 'authentic' as that's what Richard Garriott wrote them all on.  Also there is a remastered IIGS version of Ultima 1 that looks great.

I agree these are the most authentic,  but I never owned the actual hardware, and the Apple IIe/IIgs emulators are among the worst I've ever used, and since I'd be playing on an emulator, I'd probably be using cracked disks that may have the issues discussed earlier in this thread

[leech]

5 minutes ago, zzip said:

It didn't.   Wikipedia said music was cut to allow the game to run on 400/800 systems that could only go to 48K

 

I agree these are the most authentic,  but I never owned the actual hardware, and the Apple IIe/IIgs emulators are among the worst I've ever used, and since I'd be playing on an emulator, I'd probably be using cracked disks that may have the issues discussed earlier in this thread

I swear it had music, I mean I hacked the crap out of it and played it to death.  And remember it having the ability to turn the music on/off, which is what annoyed me about Ultima III.  But then I just booted it off my SIO2SD on my modded 130XE, and it gave me no music, and no color even...

So now I'm wondering if there are different versions out there.

[zzip]

Just now, leech said:

I swear it had music, I mean I hacked the crap out of it and played it to death.  And remember it having the ability to turn the music on/off, which is what annoyed me about Ultima III.  But then I just booted it off my SIO2SD on my modded 130XE, and it gave me no music, and no color even...

So now I'm wondering if there are different versions out there.

Well the color part is easy--  it uses artifacting for colors, so if you are playing on a higher resolution monitor or an emulator without artifacting enabled, you won't see color.

 

Music,  it's possible that someone made a version and hacked in the music,  but I've never seen such a thing.

[leech]

5 minutes ago, zzip said:

Well the color part is easy--  it uses artifacting for colors, so if you are playing on a higher resolution monitor or an emulator without artifacting enabled, you won't see color.

 

Music,  it's possible that someone made a version and hacked in the music,  but I've never seen such a thing.

Ha, just using the 130XE, outputting through the VBXE and into an OSSC with SCART.  I did find my old Britannia disk, though not sure it was the one I hacked on.  Will need to look through the other half of the one floppy disk box that I have for the rest.

I do feel some shame though, there were several original disks that apparently I copied over with other games back in the day...  Probably was running out of disks and figured "I already have BC's Quest for Tires on some compilation disk, and Silent Service needs a full disk..."  stupid kids ha.

[+DarkLord]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I played III around 85, when I got my first floppy drive.   My friends and I got into D&D the previous year, and I was on the lookout for a videogame version of D&D.  I saw U3 in Electronic Games magazine and I wanted it badly,  but had to wait months to get a floppy drive.   This was around the time I got a paper route and could finally save up for things my parents wouldn't buy me-  like the floppy,  and U3 itself which was a rather pricey game for its time.

 

What disappointed me was the world was smaller than I imagined it would be,  the NPC interaction system was so basic.   IV improved both of these issues. 

 

When V came along, I was getting ready for college,  more into girls than games.   I remember booting it up and seeing that you could rearrange the furniture in your room, but I don't remember venturing very far.

 

Went down that same road with both my first 800XL and my ST - I bought one piece at a time,

as I could afford them. 

 

I can remember typing in those crazy programs from the magazines, then having to check for

errors (rarely got them in the first time right), then running it for a bit, only to lose it all when

I powered down. First floppy drive was a godsend! 

 

Same kind of moment the first time I got a hard drive for my ST - darned near put me in a

semi-orgasmic state. Well, you know what I mean. 

 

[+DarkLord]

1 hour ago, leech said:

Pretty sure U4 had music on the 8bit.  U3 we got so sick of it, but couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

NES versions don't count.  Best looking / overall version of U4 was the Sega Master System.

Apple II I decided was probably the most 'authentic' as that's what Richard Garriott wrote them all on.  Also there is a remastered IIGS version of Ultima 1 that looks great.

 

Hmm, can't speak for the 8bit version of Ultima III but on the ST version you hit "V" and it would

switch between sound effects (oh, those footsteps!) and the music, but not both. I thought it was

the same on the 8bit but I'm not sure. 

 

Oh, the Amiga version let you do both sound effects and music at the same time, IIRC.

 

[leech]

4 minutes ago, DarkLord said:

 

Hmm, can't speak for the 8bit version of Ultima III but on the ST version you hit "V" and it would

switch between sound effects (oh, those footsteps!) and the music, but not both. I thought it was

the same on the 8bit but I'm not sure. 

 

Oh, the Amiga version let you do both sound effects and music at the same time, IIRC.

 

Apparently if you have MIDI, you can do both sound effects and music at the same time on the ST.

[zzip]

36 minutes ago, DarkLord said:

 

Went down that same road with both my first 800XL and my ST - I bought one piece at a time,

as I could afford them. 

 

I can remember typing in those crazy programs from the magazines, then having to check for

errors (rarely got them in the first time right), then running it for a bit, only to lose it all when

I powered down. First floppy drive was a godsend! 

 

Same kind of moment the first time I got a hard drive for my ST - darned near put me in a

semi-orgasmic state. Well, you know what I mean. 

 

We got lucky and found the Atari 410 tape recorders deeply discounted shortly after I got my XL,  so I had the ability to save Basic programs,  including ones I wrote.

 

And yeah my first ST harddrive was amazing,  even if it was a second-hand, full height, heavy 5.25 drive with only 128mb storage that sounded like a vacuum when starting up,  still seemed like a lot of space for the ST!

[zzip]

37 minutes ago, leech said:

Apparently if you have MIDI, you can do both sound effects and music at the same time on the ST.

Boom!  just like that, we are back on-topic!   ?

[zzip]

I went and tried to play Ultima V last night, but I decided I wanted to do it with MIDI sound.   First I tried the ST version, on the hatari emulator.   I set up virtual synths with Timidity and Fluidsynth,  and both responded properly when I tested other midi clients, but hatari just would not communicate with them.

 

So then I tried PC,  I have the Ultima collection on CD, and I see that there is a patch for U5 that will add midi sound.   I tried it under DOSBox, but one of the patch files says it's corrupt and I couldn't find a fix.

 

I was hoping it was easier than this, I guess I'm just not meant to have the music :(

[leech]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

I went and tried to play Ultima V last night, but I decided I wanted to do it with MIDI sound.   First I tried the ST version, on the hatari emulator.   I set up virtual synths with Timidity and Fluidsynth,  and both responded properly when I tested other midi clients, but hatari just would not communicate with them.

 

So then I tried PC,  I have the Ultima collection on CD, and I see that there is a patch for U5 that will add midi sound.   I tried it under DOSBox, but one of the patch files says it's corrupt and I couldn't find a fix.

 

I was hoping it was easier than this, I guess I'm just not meant to have the music

That is about the luck I have had getting the Mockingboard working on the Apple IIGS.

If yoy have a real ST, it is easy.  I should set mine up and try it with the Roland MT-32.

[+DarkLord]

Me too - now that I've got the Mega STe up and running. I've got an MT32

just sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

 

The ringing sounds of Ultima will prevail!l

 

PS As soon as I get some more time. 

 

[Justin Payne]

22 hours ago, DarkLord said:

Me too - now that I've got the Mega STe up and running. I've got an MT32

just sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

 

The ringing sounds of Ultima will prevail!l

 

PS As soon as I get some more time. 

 

Just sittin'!?!? ?
You better get on righting that wrong. ?

Edited February 29, 2020 by Justin Payne

[leech]

5 minutes ago, Justin Payne said:

Just sittin'!?!? ?
You better get on righting that wrong. ?

Mine is sitting on top of my Roland SC-88Pro, which is sitting on top of my PC Tower, and sounds wonderful with Boxtron + Dark Forces on Steam!

[Justin Payne]

oooh. Dark Forces, Loved that game. I have that on CD and would love to play it again.