thealmightyguru.freeforums.org

Hi everyone,

I just stumbled across this site, and it looks like a great resource for game music! I have ripped music from a number of games over the years and found others around the place that aren't yet listed on the site, so here are a few. Let me know if you're interested in any of them:

Blood 2 and Shogo (.ogg, can get DirectMusic rips if you *really* want)
Boppin' (.mid)
Body Count (.imf)
Brudal Baddle (.mod)
Bubble Bobble (.raw)
Duke Nukem II (.mid; official versions by Bobby Prince)
Epic Pinball (.s3m)
God of Thunder (.imf)
Hocus Pocus (.mid)
Jazz Jackrabbit (.s3m)
Jill of the Jungle (.cmf)
Kiloblaster (.cmf)
Math Rescue (.cmf)
Monster Bash (.imf)
Need For Speed III and IV (.ogg)
Quake III (.ogg)
Pitfall (.mp3; intro music CD rip from Win32 version)
Shadow Warrior (.mid and .mp3 of CD rip)
Simcity 2000 (.mid; Windows version)
Unreal Tournament (.xm, .s3m, .it, etc.)
Word Rescue (.cmf)
Xargon (.cmf)
Zone 66 (.ogg; in progress, only the title and alternate title music at present)

All these files are playable in Winamp with AdPlug under Windows, or XMMS/Audacious with AdPlug under Linux. Note that a recent (CVS as of this writing) version of AdPlug is required to play the CMFs correctly (I contributed some bug fixes to the CMF player.) By far the best method of playing the CMFs is to use the official Creative Labs player run through DOSBox though, as AdPlug is still not 100% perfect. (Give me a shout if you want that too!)

Also, if anyone's interested I have an 'improved' IMF player that generates a nice stereo harmonic when playing IMF files. It leaves the files sounding authentic, but it makes them a lot nicer to listen to. You can compare the difference if you play an IMF file in your normal player and then compare the same song played through my synth. If you like it, I could create an "imf2wav" program that will spit out a .wav file directly from an .imf, without needing a player like Winamp. (Might make it easier to generate the .ogg files for this site!) Let me know what you think.

First of all, thank you very much for the offer to contribute these soundtracks. I'd like to add them all.

I've been trying to rip the God of Thunder soundtrack for awhile now, but I could never figure out what format it was in. That can't be the same IMF as id software, right? GoT was made by a totally different company.

Do you know when the next version of Adplug will be out with the CMF fixes? I do have Creative Labs's CMF player, but it's a hassle running it through DOSBox to record the audio right. I started on a soundtrack, but quickly got annoyed with the process by the third track. I'd hate to do a game with a large CMF soundtrack like Traffic Department 2192.

Sounds good, I'll package them up for you and post a link when they're ready.

Someone by the name of "Grom PE" figured out the format of the GoT data files, and working with him I was able to get hold of the raw music data. It's in a custom format, but it's raw OPL data - exactly the same as .imf, .raw and .dro, except the bytes are in a different order to all of them! I wrote a quick conversion utility to rearrange the byte order and produce an .imf file (I figured this was better than .raw or .dro, which makes it look like the music has been captured instead.) Apart from this rearranging of the bytes, the music is (and sounds) identical to the original.

The author of AdPlug has actually given me access to package and release the next version of AdPlug as he's been very busy lately, and unfortunately as soon as he did that I became very busy too, so I still haven't gotten around to it yet It's pretty high on my to-do list though!

What did you think of the .ogg file in my last post? If you do want to mass-convert .cmf files, that "imf2wav" program I suggested would be capable of converting .cmf files as well (currently it plays .raw, .dro, .imf and .cmf) and the CMF player is slightly more accurate than AdPlug (though there are still a couple of subtle differences with some percussion instruments I still have to figure out.) Of course all the output .cmf files would have that stereo harmonic...but I think that's a good thing! Plus you could convert a whole folder of files with one command.

You can send them in chunks. The CMF/Adlib/Tracked soundtracks can be the first chunk, and then the Vorbis soundtracks individually.

As I go about posting the soundtracks I'd also like to get some information from you about the ripping process, like which files the music was taken from, how they were converted, etc.

I'm glad to hear that AdPlug will continue to have work done on it. I've talked to the author as well and gave him some of my rips to see if he could incorporate the format into AdPlug as well. If you do get some time to work on it, maybe I can give them to you as well.

I'll get back to you about the stereo IMF upgrade when I get to a computer with speakers.

Okay, sorry about the delay with this, here are some files to keep you busy. First, Unreal Tournament (36MB) which were simply ripped from the game's music files (they're sort of a container for tracked music.)

Second, the Adlib/tracked music (20MB) which I couldn't find on your site, of which I shall attempt to explain briefly here:

• Baryon: No idea, I think I copied the MIDI out of the main game folder
• Bio Menace: MIDIs are from Bobby Prince's website.
• Black Knight: MIDIs by Bobby Prince
• Blood: MIDI file ripped from setup.exe (played when testing the music device.) [btw, let me know when you get the game's CD audio online!]
• Boppin: One of the programmers sent some decompression code to Szevvy for use in Wombat, with this I was able to write an extraction program to get the MIDIs out. (See info.txt)
• Brudal Baddle: Copied .mod files out of game directory
• Bubble Bobble: .raw files captured by someone, MIDI found somewhere (don't think it's official)
• Commander Keen: MIDIs from Bobby Prince's website, IMFs supplied by John Romero (includes extended and unused songs)
• Cosmo: MIDIs from Bobby Prince
• Descent: Ripped by me from game data files
• Descent II: Downloaded from somewhere
• Doom: Including because your archive doesn't have MIDI conversions (and as the songs were originally MIDI, it'd be nice to include them too, even if you re-convert them yourself!) Also couldn't see "Bunny" on your track listing (from the opening story sequence.)
• Doom II: Four tracks from Bobby Prince's website (might be different to ripped tracks, please check)
• Drum Blaster: Not really a game, but the program is advertised in Jill of the Jungle and Kiloblaster's "noise maker" screens. Includes one song from Jill.
• Duke3D: Early version of "Whomp" from Lee Jackson's website (showing how songs change during game development)
• Duke Nukem II: MIDIs from Bobby Prince, except Theme1.mid which I tweaked to make one "riff" sound more like the IMF
• Epic Pinball: I converted the PSM files into S3M, tempo came out wrong, I fixed it and I think it's fairly close now but I've been meaning to dig out ScreamTracker to get the tempo *just* right. If you want a "complete" rip include the .PSM files from the game (which almost nothing plays!) I did go back and try to guess what the first letters were in all the song titles, as Epic had tried to delete the titles (but all they'd done was set the first character to a NULL.)
• God of Thunder: GromPE figured out the format and ripped all the files, I figured out the music format and wrote a converter to save them as .wlf (IMF@700Hz)
• Halloween Harry: I wrote a converter years ago to convert the ripped .4md files into .mod (had to tweak the sample offsets and transpose the files.)
• Hi Octane: I ripped the MIDIs from game's data files. "improved" version is one I fiddled with the instruments on to make it sound more like the in-game Adlib version.
• Hocus Pocus: Ripped (by hand) from the shareware version when I was about eight years old, hence the funny filenames. Not sure about tree*.mid, as I never ripped that but found it on a website. IMFs are apparently from a beta version - I'm told the game has both IMF and MIDI music, but I've yet to look into this.
• Jazz Jackrabbit: I converted the PSMs from basic game + xmas edition.
• Jazz Jackrabbit II: Downloaded from a website (see readme.txt)
• Jill of the Jungle: I ripped these from game (just renamed .ddt files to .cmf)
• Kiloblaster: Ripped as per Jill (shareware only)
• Lemmings: Downloaded from somewhere I think
• Lemmings 2: Downloaded. Includes music from various platforms too.
• Lose your Marbles: Microsoft Plus! 98 game (copied from game folder)
• Magic Pockets: Messy group of files - die, endlev and intro.mid were ripped by me
• Math Rescue: Ripped by me (renamed certain files in the game folder.) Theme MIDI converted from .cmf by me, other one by Bobby Prince
• Monster Bash: Ripped by me once one of the programmers (Gerald Lindsly) published some code to decompress the game's data files for Szevvy
• Mystic Towers: Copied out of game directory
• Pickle Wars: Downloaded from Bobby Prince's website
• Pinball Fantasies: Copied out of game directory (mod2 - "adrenaline" - sounds like almost the same instruments as the Epic Pinball song getbusy2.s3m, which interestingly enough *was* called "adrenaline", except you can see they've backspaced over the song title as it's called "_drenaline" where the _ is a NULL (to signify the end of the title.) Makes you wonder if they started off with this song...)
• Prince of Persia: Some ripped MIDIs by me (with an attempt of fixing up the instruments) and a .raw capture
• Raptor: I think these were .mus (like Doom) I converted to MIDI
• Realms of Chaos: More files from Bobby Prince
• Scud Attack: Actually spelt "Scud Atak" I think, I copied file out of the game directory
• Shadow Warrior: I ripped these from SW.GRP (full version has CD music, shareware version had a handful of MIDIs, luckily of the best songs in the game, there's nothing too much to be gained from the CD music, it's mostly ambient)
• Solar Winds: Ripped or copied out of the game directory, I forget which.
• Stargunner: Downloaded from Lee Jackson's website
• Stunts: Couple of captures by me
• Terrace: More Bobby Prince
• The Gate: Total conversion for Duke3D. Some of my all-time favourite music. Extracted from the .GRP by me
• The Incredible Machine 3: Ripped I think
• The Lost Vikings: Downloaded from somewhere
• TD2192: Downloaded ones in main folder, ripped/copied ones in "alt" folder. Still need to figure out why some of the files differ in size between the main and alt folders
• Trugg: Shareware song, converted with Modplug Tracker (only program I could find which supported the DSMF format.) Still looking for the rest of the tracks!
• Vinyl Goddess From Mars: Converted into almost-CMF format using my converter. Uses an unofficial extension to the CMF format to properly render the instruments. This will be coming with the next release of AdPlug. FYI the song data and the instruments are stored separately, so I don't think your current soundtrack download will work. The filenames are made up, m115-i191-unk.cmf means when you use Frenkel's extractor, file 115 had the music, 191 had the instruments, and unk means I don't know where the song was used - haven't played the game enough!
• Wolf3D: MIDIs by Bobby Prince, except one (labelled) and Theme (IMF2MIDI conversion by me.) Also includes a couple of Spear of Destiny tracks.
• Word Rescue (and Word Rescue Plus): CMF copied/renamed from game directory by me. MIDIs with names by Bobby Prince. Three MIDIs (Theme, Song2+3) converted by me. Not sure where the WR Plus ones came from - download?
• Xargon: Copied out of game folder by me. Renamed to avoid conflicts.
• Xenophage: Bobby Prince
• Zool: Download
• Zorro: Bobby Prince

Hopefully that gives you a bit to go on! If you need any more info about the files let me know!

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to include info about the single files in the archive:

• Axis and Allies: Bobby Prince (sounds like it might be Basic MIDI too, there's a piano at the start that sounds like it should be percussion)
• BSTAR.CMF: forget the game now (Battlestar?) Copied CMF out of game folder.
• Demon Star - Theme.mid: Intro song to "Demon Star" - from Bobby Prince
• dopejaws.mid - Dopefish parody song by Lee Jackson
• Opening to a Mystery: unused song from Bobby Prince's website
• supfnord.mid - from Lee Jackson's website - I think this game was cancelled
• Tristan (TDT).mod - music from the The Dream Team cracktro that was distributed with "Tristan" - do you collect cracktro music along with game music??

Wow, this is awesome. Thank you very much! This will give me a lot of fuel for the Web site.

Personally I find it crazy they still sell Math Rescue for $15.

Well IMHO I think it's better than not selling it at all! At least you can still get it if you *really* want

Come on man... it's MATH RESCUE!

This isn't Legend of Zelda or Metroid or any of those worn out games...

MATH RESCUE FTW!!!


In all seriousness, I agree with Malvineous. The whole principal behind abandonware sites is that thousands of titles are no longer sold, but still desirable. Granted, not very many people would still buy games that are 20 years old, but there are enough people who are willing to shell out the cash to warrant an online downloading service.

It has probably been suggested..or it doesn't count but...

www.bluelaguna.net

I'm not sure if it helps though

I'll add them as a link in the VGMPF.

Malvineous: That is so cool that you are going to work on Adplug! Do you think you might be able to add support for Midi format 1 and 2? How about the ability to load BNK files into it for midi playback?

Hmm, interesting idea but I don't think I'd have the motivation for that, I don't think it would be a simple job. The only plans I have for AdPlug at the moment are fixing the CMF player (when I finally get my own CMF player 100% accurate so I know what needs to be changed) and implementing the new DOSBox .dro format, which reminds me, I might go take a look at that now...

I understand. There's just not that big a demand to warrant it. I read some posts on vogons and the sourceforge forum that suggested the midi format bug was a simple fix but if there's not a quick code tweak involved it's not really worth the effort. I figured when I noticed the lack of ch10 drum support in it's midi playback that there would be a lot of work involved to fully implement GM support.
There's a new format for DRO? That might explain my problem with dro2midi! I'm going to downgrade and give it a try. Thanks.

The new DRO format is only in CVS, so if you compiled your own copy from CVS you'd have that problem. If you're running v0.72 you'll be fine. I did release a new version of DRO2MIDI about a week ago, so you can try that too if you haven't already.

I think part of the AdPlug issue is that CMF, MIDI and a couple of other formats are all handled by the same code, and as MIDI is the only one with multiple tracks etc. I don't think the code was ever implemented (perhaps MIDI was only added as an afterthought as Type-0 MIDI was so similar to the other formats.)