Opened 14 months ago

Last modified 9 months ago

#14639 new defect

AGS: MIDI files prefered over music.vox

Reported by: SimSaw Owned by:
Priority: normal Component: Engine: AGS
Version: Keywords: music playback
Cc: Game:

Description

I noticed that when a game features both MIDI files (built inside the game) and digital music inside music.vox, ScummVM will always playback the MIDI files. Only when there is no MIDI variant of a music track available but the track is present inside music.vox, it does playback the digital music track. It should be the other way round.

The best option would be of course if the user could choose between MIDI and music.vox.

Change History (4)

comment:1 by tag2015, 13 months ago

Which games are you playing? In 5 days a stranger i can alternate between midi and digital (setting adlib emulation).
I haven't looked into it right now, but there's a possibility that ScummVM loads the midi setting in acsetup.cfg and since that has the priority it overrides the setting in ScummVM's options.
Try disabling midi in winsetup (or edit the config manually) and try again

comment:2 by SimSaw, 13 months ago

I am trying to play Maniac Mansion Deluxe.

Your explanations suggest that there is a different engine behaviour between 2.x and 3.x games. In 2.x games, which MMD is, the acsetup.cfg contains the string "usevox=0" if the user opts not to use digital music (but MIDI instead). If the users instead choses "MIDI music: Disable music", then the music is disabled, even if they opted to use the digital music from music.vox and the file itself is present in the directory.

comment:3 by tag2015, 10 months ago

I had a look at this (Windows 10, latest scummvm master).

First of all ScummVM doesn't read the [sound] settings in acsetup at all, that means that usevox, midiid, midiwin and other parameters won't have any effect.
The behavior is entirely controlled by the Global settings and eventually the Game settings overrides.

I cross-checked with Day of the Tentacle:
If in Global options->Audio the preferred device is set to <default>, and in the MIDI tab the GM is enabled (that is, it's not set to "don't use general MIDI), then the game starts in MIDI mode. That means that MIDI gets the priority over AdLib.
If I disable MIDI in its tab, or I explicitly set the default audio as "adlib emulation", then the digital audio is played.

From my tests, it seems the AGS games behave in the same way. Of course you can override the values in "Game Options".

Please note, however, that I tested on Windows. I don't know if on other systems the behavior is different.

If there are no questions I'm inclined to close this as WORKSFORME

comment:4 by SimSaw, 9 months ago

I'm sorry, but I cannot reproduce.

If I set the Audio device to <default>, then in the MIDI tab the filed is gryy; I cannot select anything.

I can only go to the Global Options and then choose GM Device: "Don't use General MIDI music". However, then I still have MIDI music in the game.

I'm using this version of MMD with a custom made music.vox for the purpose of demonstration: https://best-sts.de/MMD_Music_vox.zip

If it works for you, could you please make a YouTube video on how you get digital music to work for you so I can try to reproduce from this?

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