ITE Amiga Music

Bladerunner · Post by **Bladerunner** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 7:58 pm

Well, it is Sunday, I was bughunting the current ScummVM Version for MorphOS and had to wait for a fixed version (something with the saga engine was broken, don't ask me about details, I just try to find the bugs, but I am completly lost about the technical details why something is broken

)

Well, nevertheless I thought it is just about time to play ITE once again (for the 259th time or so

) and suddendly remembered, hey Version 0.10.0 supports external audio tracks! (I have allready tried james` polished audio tracks for Simon, simply great!)

So I spent the whole afternoon to encode the mods I have from the Amiga Version and tried to find out which track belongs to which song (lucky me is that I know ITE by heart

)

So, finally an old whish came true, I am able to play ITE whith the same experience I got when I played the game back on my Amiga!

Well, you might wonder why I am making such a fuzz about that, well there *is* a reason behind that.
Thing is, I would like to share those reencoded tracks, however the legal situation is a problem here.
I remember the first time when I had the Idea of playing Scumm ITE with Amiga mods, that I asked Wyrmkeep whether it is possible to distribute those mods, they replied they have no rights for the Amiga Version. And I have no Idea whom to ask now. New World Computing, the publisher back that time for the german Amiga Version is long gone, so I guess I should ask those guys who did the Amiga port? (I remember that I had even success contacting one of those guys because I hoped that this would allow to have a straight amiga port of ite, however he did then disappear again)

How is the Situation with James Woodcock, he is also doing a rerecording but from the original midi files, right?
I am a bit lost on that topic.

The question is, is anyone else interested to have this "Amiga Experince" for ITE, (Imho it does at least sound better than adlib, but probably not as good as the reencoded midi stuff James is doing) so it`s worth the effort to find the right person to ask for a permisson to release this Amiga tracks?

Beside that, I have some small feature request for scumm (in the hope it can be easily done

)

1. Not every track seems to be "looped"
Thing is, some amiga mods where significantly shorter then the original midis. In particular this is true for the Intro (track2, after the cave music) and the part where the elks apear (track11 iirc) For now, I`ve looped them manualy, but it would be nice if scumm also could loop every track.

2. Alternativ Ending
The Amiga Version of ITE has an additional audio track for the ending music, which is indeed also played for the ending, while for the PC Version it seems as if this track is similar to the intro (track2) at least this one is played. So I wonder whether it is possible to include something which searches for track27 (this is how i named it for now) or bonustrack or something and if its there it is played, if no such a track exists it falls back to track2.

And finally 3.I wonder whether it is possible to implement something which would let me choose different tracks for a game (I have in mind that there will be once also an enhanced soundtrack for ITE by James, and I would love to easily switch between both "Soundtracks".

Well... I guess thats it, thanks for reading that far

md5 · Post by **md5** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 12:13 am

I'm not sure, but is the Amiga music any better than the digital music that Wyrmkeep made with their second ITE update? Cause that digital music sounds very good to me, at least.

Bladerunner · Post by **Bladerunner** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 11:14 am

md5 wrote:I'm not sure, but is the Amiga music any better than the digital music that Wyrmkeep made with their second ITE update? Cause that digital music sounds very good to me, at least.

Well, I have only the german Amiga and Dos Version, I think thats enough for one single game (allthough I desperatly hope Wyrmkeep continue the game one day

, so I have no Idea how wyrmkeep's rerelease sounds (I allways thought they are using midis as well?).

So, do the Amiga mods sound any better then e.g- adlib? For sure. Better then recorded midi? Probably not, but in the end thats not the point, at least for me

As I mentioned earlier it is a about an experience I had back when ITE was released. At least here in Germany the Amiga Version was released *before* the PC Version,(which was strange enough, that's why I thought a long time ITE was an original Amiga release which was later ported to DOS, but actually it was the other way round)
so chances are that others had as well played the Amiga Version before.
And it makes a difference (at least for me), especially since there are few tracks on the Amiga Version which are completly different then on the PC, including the different ending title.
Since Scumm supported ITE the first time I was begging for a possibility to have the Amiga mods for ITE, and now it *is* possible (although they have to be converted to mp3, no big deal), now it is the same game I played in 1994/95

(With one exception, those Amiga is better then PC Jokes are obviously not included, but hey... *g*)

But to be honest, in the end they are "just" protracker modules, they are probably not that chrystal clear as modern digital audio tracks (but then there are still people which prefer the crackling noise of a record over every cd

), and for now I have 2 or 3 tracks which give me some loop problems. So not everythings perfect, but it's the best I can do

I could upload one or two tracks to hear the difference, however I am not sure whether at least that is possible?!

md5 · Post by **md5** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 2:37 pm

Bladerunner wrote:I have no Idea how wyrmkeep's rerelease sounds (I allways thought they are using midis as well?).

Wyrmkeep has released a patch that replaces the game's MIDI music with a digital music score, regardless of game language. You can download Wyrmkeep's update 2 here:
http://www.wyrmkeep.com/ite/update.html

From Wyrmkeep:

A second update to Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb for Windows is now available. This update replaces the game's MIDI score with a new digital score, plus it fixes a problem that a few people have experienced with slow CD-ROM drives. This download is 46MB in size.

I believe that those digital tracks sound great. I don't know if the protracker modules you've mentioned sound better, so listen to the digital tracks and tell us your opinion

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 2:48 pm

md5 wrote:I'm not sure, but is the Amiga music any better than the digital music that Wyrmkeep made with their second ITE update? Cause that digital music sounds very good to me, at least.

I didn't hear the digital remixes, so I can't compare. But I seem to remember that they were remade by Matthew Nathan himself (the original composer) while the Amiga soundtrack was arranged (and in places entirely rewritten) by Sven Tegethoff and a few others. Still, the Amiga soundtrack is much better than the PC one (AdLib/MT-32).

Just a note about the Amiga ports (ECS/AGA/CD32). They were released in 1995, a year after the DOS version. Strangely enough, the game only exists in German, which is unfortunate. The ECS version in particular is very nice and clean for such a late conversion (almost reminds me of the Westwood touch). Contrary to the late and ugly Lucas ports (MI2, Indy 4), ITE shows an excellent use of the 32 colours.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:40 pm

Kaminari wrote:Still, the Amiga soundtrack is much better than the PC one (AdLib/MT-32).

I wasn't referring to the PC Adlib/MT-32 soundtrack but to Wyrmkeep's digital soundtrack, which is freely available from their website. Is the music in the Amiga version better than Wyrmkeep's? Cause that digital music sounds very good indeed, although, as I said, I don't have the Amiga version to make any good comparison

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:00 pm

I have to ask, the "April 2005 release" (as printed on bottom of the CD
features those digital music already?

Or do i still have to patch it?

md5 · Post by **md5** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 9:42 pm

The digital music is in a file called "music.rsc". If you got this file (which should be about 50.4MB), then you got digital music. This file is included in the second patch for ITE from Wyrmkeep

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:16 am

Yes!

Thank you

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:23 am

Ok, I finally listened to the digital pack (I hadn't realized the update was compatible with the original DOS version, at least from a ScummVM point of view). As far as I can tell, this is no remix at all, but a straight recording of the MT-32 soundtrack. Which, apart from a couple of pieces ("Cave Paintings" for example), doesn't sound too great IMO.

Although limited to four channels and a bit crude here and there, I personally prefer the Amiga soundtrack. The arrangements are moodier and more atmospheric. But most of all, the MOD tracks are different enough that it would justify supporting them in ScummVM.

I'll try to make some short comparisons if you're interested.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 9:58 am

Kaminari wrote:I'll try to make some short comparisons if you're interested.

I'd be very interested in such comparisons

As I said, I don't have the Amiga version, so I haven't done any work to support it or its music under ScummVM

JamesWoodcock · Post by **JamesWoodcock** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 7:37 am

Hi

I have been taking a break after the Simon the Sorcerer release to see how the community as a whole reacted to it. On the most part it was very positive, however of course you can't please everyone and there were some very nasty comments posted on other forums. With this in mind, I decided to have a break from it all and release the ITE soundtrack later than originally planned.

I will release the ITE soundtrack soon though, however I am not 100% happy with the collection yet so will probably patch it at a later date as well if I do release in the next few weeks.

James

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 11:35 pm

Sorry for the delay. Here are some quick recordings of the MT-32 vs. the Amiga. They mostly illustrate how the two versions are quite different in many places.

01. Cave Paintings [MID]
01. Cave Paintings [MOD]

08. Sanctuary of the Orb [MID]
08. Sanctuary of the Orb [MOD]

13. Stargazing [MID]
13. Stargazing [MOD]

18. Cat Festival [MID]
18. Cat Festival [MOD]

23. Sunspot Station [MID]
23. Sunspot Station [MOD]

26. End Credits [MOD] (MID version is a reprise of the intro)

Post by **sev** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 7:53 am

I would personally like very much to add support for Amiga music in ITE. The problem which prevents me from doing it now is that although MaxTrax player is GPL'ed by its author Joe Pearce, it still consists of 3.6k lines of m68k ASM code, which makes it a quite time-consuming task to convert it to C++.

Eugene

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:02 pm

Indeed, that makes quite a lot of work for just an alternative soundtrack. But I'm curious about MaxTrax. Are you saying the ECS floppy version uses this format? Because, as far as I can tell, the CD32 music files are plain ProTracker MODs.