Inconceivable, the royal pyramid besieged!

[dreammaster]

Battle to liberate the populace from the threat of the tyrant Lord Xeen, or his cruel master Alamar. Or dare to venture beyond the world of Xeen to the world of Havoc to test your mettle with a new challenge. We're pleased to announce the testing period for support of the following games:
* Might and Magic IV - Clouds of Xeen
* Might and Magic V - Darkside of Xeen
* Might and Magic - World of Xeen
* Might and Magic - World of Xeen 2 CD Talkie
* Might and Magic - Swords of Xeen

At this time, only the English versions of these games are ready for testing. So break out your copies, or buy them digitally on GOG, and grab the latest daily build of ScummVM. You'll also need an extra required xeen.ccs file, which should be put in the same folder you copy your game files to.

Before you start testing any of the games, please be aware that given the large part combat plays in the game, any errors you encounter may be more difficult to replicate than in traditional adventure games. As such, it'll be a good idea to make a practice of regularly saving your game, just in case something goes wrong. If you do experience any crashes, or notice any functionality which seems incorrect, please let us know. Any problems found should be reported on our Issue Tracker.

[eriktorbjorn]

Are there an instructions for which files are needed? I can unpack the GOG versions, but it's not entirely clear where to go from there...

Edit: I found some instructions in the README file. I had only looked at the ScummVM Wiki when I asked.

[dreammaster]

A copy of the README instructions below:

To properly plan the World of Xeen CD Talkie using original discs, use LAME or some other MP3 encoder to rip the cd audio tracks to files. Name the files track1.mp3 track2.mp3 etc. ScummVM must be compiled with MAD support to use this option. You will need to rip the file from the CD as a WAV file, then encode the MP3 files in constant bit rate. This
can be done with the following LAME command line:

lame -t -q 0 -b 96 track02.wav track02.mp3

For the GOG Might and Magic 4-5 installation, install the game to your computer, and do the following steps:
* The game1.gog file from the game folder is a CD ISO. Use software like Virtual CloneDrive to mount it as a drive.
* Copy all the .cc files from the subfolder in the mounted drive to a new empty game folder that you create for the game.
* Copy all the music/*.ogg files from the GOG installation to your game folder. You'll then need to rename all of them from xeen??.ogg to track??.ogg
* You should then be able to point ScummVM to this new game folder, and the CD talkie version should be detected.

[Raziel]

@dreammaster

Just some quick questions for understanding

1) Why do you need to rip it as WAV first before you convert it to MP3?
2) Why convert it with such a low bitrate? Just for the size?
3) Is using flac also possible?

[dreammaster]

Truth be told, I'm not too familiar with these sort of questions; I've never used Lame nor am I aware of what the different bit rates will sound like. I don't even have the 2CD version discs, only the GOG version. The instructions for decoding, I simply copied and pasted from another section's notes in the README.

If the bit-rate wiil be too low for a proper voice playback, feel free to suggest a higher rate, and I'll update the README accordingly.

[Kirben]

Any plans to add Roland LAPC support in the future?

[eriktorbjorn]

Name the files track1.mp3 track2.mp3 etc.

Will that work, when the tracks from the GOG release start at 2? (I thought I had to renumber the GOG tracks, but when I did that it played the wrong sounds.)

I did get both World of Xeen and Swords of Xeen to start, but I'm not familiar with the games at all and I probably won't have much time to ever play them. But it's still nice to see them run. I was surprised that there were so many files that sounded like they would be needed, but weren't.

I did notice that the Swords of Xeen intro music sounded different in ScummVM than in DOSBox for me, with notes not being turned off, but I couldn't even find any "note off" command in the music player so I don't know what could cause that...

[dreammaster]

You're right. I'd already previously updated the README to specify track 2, but I'd accidentally done it in my cdvoice pull request rather than master. I've since merged it in, and added in some explanation of track ordering across both CDs if you're ripping from original discs.

Though it does seem my conversion of start position and duration
from what the scripts provide to what the AudioCDManager expects is still slightly wonky, and still needs to be looked into further.

[Maxor127]

Is only the Dos version supported? I remember the Mac version having slightly different music and character portraits.

[dreammaster]

Is only the Dos version supported? I remember the Mac version having slightly different music and character portraits.

Correct, only the DOS version. I don't have the Mac version, but as you say, at least some of the game was redeveloped to take advantage of the higher resolution.. so it would likely require considerable effort to support.

[vorpal_username]

I've been trying to get the MIDI music/sound FX working correctly, but none of the related settings in the launcher seem to do anything. Is there somewhere else I need go to change these settings? In the DOSBox version soundblaster seems to work the best.

On an unrelated note this actually works well with touch screen and I'm super excited about it.

[dreammaster]

I've been trying to get the MIDI music/sound FX working correctly, but none of the related settings in the launcher seem to do anything. Is there somewhere else I need go to change these settings? In the DOSBox version soundblaster seems to work the best.

On an unrelated note this actually works well with touch screen and I'm super excited about it.

Nice.. I hadn't though about touch screens; I guess that's a benefit of using the ScummVM framework. As far as sound options go, you're unfortunately correct. And that's probably the one deficiency compared to the original, apart from only supporting English.. there isn't any MIDI driver implemented yet. So the launcher settings won't have any effect on the playback.

[vorpal_username]

Yup, I'm kind of surprised how well it worked. It seems the game was originally designed to be able to use the mouse for as much as possible though. There are a couple of places where it isn't very intuitive, such as clicking on the purple gem instead of hitting tab to bring up the menu, or occasionally having to tap in the character portrait area to dismiss or advance dialog boxes, but you seem to be able to do almost anything without a keyboard. The exception is entering text, but since this runs in a window I can just use my tablet's on screen keyboard.

So when you say MIDI driver isn't implemented yet, does that mean someone's working on it, or does that mean I should start learning the source code and do it myself?

[dreammaster]

So when you say MIDI driver isn't implemented yet, does that mean someone's working on it, or does that mean I should start learning the source code and do it myself?

I'm honestly a bit on the fence whether I'll do it or not. I still have some sound issues to debug in the current Adlib driver.. the volume adjustments aren't working correctly and a few sounds sounding incorrect. I'm also not really familiar with implementing MIDI driver code in ScummVM like I am Adlib. In theory, the current AdlibSoundDriver class in the xeen/ could be used as a basis for implementing a MIDI driver for someone familiar with ScummVM's MIDI classes/interfaces, without even needing to refer to any disassemblies of the original.

I'll possibly experiment with it once there's no further work to be done on the Adlib driver. But I don't want to definitely commit, or at least not in the immediate term. I'm kind of burnt out on Xeen after all the time spent on it, so it's getting harder and harder to find enthusiasm to keep working on it now that it's (mostly) in a basic "completed" state.

[vorpal_username]

So when you say MIDI driver isn't implemented yet, does that mean someone's working on it, or does that mean I should start learning the source code and do it myself?

I'm honestly a bit on the fence whether I'll do it or not. I still have some sound issues to debug in the current Adlib driver.. the volume adjustments aren't working correctly and a few sounds sounding incorrect. I'm also not really familiar with implementing MIDI driver code in ScummVM like I am Adlib. In theory, the current AdlibSoundDriver class in the xeen/ could be used as a basis for implementing a MIDI driver for someone familiar with ScummVM's MIDI classes/interfaces, without even needing to refer to any disassemblies of the original.

I'll possibly experiment with it once there's no further work to be done on the Adlib driver. But I don't want to definitely commit, or at least not in the immediate term. I'm kind of burnt out on Xeen after all the time spent on it, so it's getting harder and harder to find enthusiasm to keep working on it now that it's (mostly) in a basic "completed" state.

Worst case scenario I can just turn off the music and play it from another source (IIRC someone has it all up on youtube). I'm just happy to see xeen getting some love in the first place. Thanks for your work!