52 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
52 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
Exult Digital Music (OGG) pack for Ultima7 Black Gate and Serpent Isle.
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Music Pack version 1.0
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IMPORTANT!! These files are only supported AFTER v1.0 of Exult.
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Here are the Digital Music tracks (encoded using OGG) for Exult. This music was recorded
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directly from the Roland MT-32 synthesizer. The complete tracks are present for Black Gate
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and Serpent Isle, these tracks being shared between the two games.
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With this pack you can enjoy the original Ultima7 music as it would have sounded on the
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Roland MT-32 and as the composers originally intended. This is my tribute to the composers
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of this music which I think was some of the best music composed for any computer game.
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INSTALLATION
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Create a music directory in exult/data (i.e. exult/data/music/) and extract the two ZIP
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files U7MusicOGG_1of2.zip and U7MusicOGG_2of2.zip into this directory.
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Start the game and select "DigitalMusic" from the "SETUP/Midi Convert" option and restart
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the game.
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Enjoy
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Simon Quinn
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TECHNICAL DETAILS
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-----------------
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OGG is similar to MP3, but was chosen due it being a totally open and free implementation
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and having better support in SDL_mixer. The music was recorded in OGG using 22KHz and the
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lowest possible bit rate but are of high quality and in most cases you won't be able to
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tell the difference in sound quality compared to listening directly with the original MT-32.
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The 22Khz sampling rate limit doesn't really matter as the MT-32 voices rarely go above 11Khz.
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The recording was completed using MIDI tracks extracted from the two games' FLX files. The
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SYSEX information was extracted from the MT-32 after running from the original Ultima7 -
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which programmed the synth. Then a laborious process of loading the SYSEX file, playing
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the relevant tunes and recording the music produced each of the music tracks. No processing
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or volume dynamics compression was used, i.e. the loudest volume for the whole music reaches
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a peak of around 0db so although many of the tracks appear quiet this is what the original
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composers intended and matches how the game would have sounded with the original Ultima7.
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Once recording was finished the tracks were sorted into the correct order and mappings created
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for Serpent Isle so that it could share the same tracks as used in Black Gate - track numbers are
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different between the two and SI has a number of additional tracks.
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There are a number of SFX only "music" tracks (numbers 4 to 8 and 52) that you will not have
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heard before in Exult because the sounds could not be mapped to General MIDI voices. These have
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background SFX such as wind, birds chirping, frogs and various SFX inside dungeons. Subtle
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sounds, but they add to the realism of the Ultima7 world. |