Topics

1

Suggestions / Roland MIDI support

« on: October 16, 2022, 10:02:16 pm »

The original game includes ROLAND.CAT and RINTRO.CAT files that, along with LAPC1.PAT, provide support for the MT-32/LAPC-I/CM-32L family of MIDI synthesizers.

I made a "mod" that overrides GM.CAT with a fixed ROLAND.CAT (from https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=166565#p166565 - the newer official patch versions of X-COM have a broken one) and INTRO.CAT with RINTRO.CAT, but it still doesn't work quite right because the SysEx data in LAPC1.PAT doesn't get sent.

By sending LAPC1.PAT with an external tool (MIDI-OX), I was able to get full Roland support working in Windows 11 with my CM-64: https://twitter.com/HunterZ0/status/1581718795017949185

I would be willing to try implementing support for this myself and submitting via a pull request if the maintainers are interested. It would likely consist of adding support for a "ROLAND" music mode that uses ROLAND.CAT/RINTRO.CAT in place of GM.CAT/INTRO.CAT, just as the Adlib music mode uses ADLIB.CAT/AINTRO.CAT, plus sends LAPC1.PAT SysEx data on startup.

2

Open Feedback / OpenXcom + Munt

« on: June 18, 2014, 03:31:36 am »

So the DOS version of X-COM was originally intended to be played with a Roland CM-32 synth, as many people have noted when pointing out that there's supposed to be a siren sound at the beginning of the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuRzCHaeyXY

For those of us who do not have a CM-32 (I have an MT-32, which does not support the siren sound but does otherwise reproduce most of the music correctly) there's a pretty good open-source MT-32/CM-32 emulator available named Munt: https://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/

In case anyone else is crazy enough to want to get this working with OpenXcom, here's how I was able to do it on Windows:

• Download and install Munt. If you're on 64-bit Windows, also download and install the amd64 driver.
• Configure Munt for CM-32 mode. This involves acquiring CM-32 ROMs, which I cannot link because redistribution is a legal grey area.
• Configure Windows to use Munt as the default Windows MIDI device. There are a number of MIDI device chooser utilities out there that can do this.
• In your OpenXcom data/SOUND folder, rename GM.CAT to something else.
• Download the xcom14_roland.zip file from this post: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=166565#p166565
• Now unpack the ROLAND.CAT file from xcom14_roland.zip to an empty folder, rename it to GM.CAT, and put it in your OpenXcom data/SOUND folder.
• Run OpenXcom and configure it to use MIDI as the music mode.

Now when you run OpenXcom, you should hear the siren and the awesome CM-32 music! My only nitpick is that the sound is way louder than the music.