tohopes | Dark Sun: Shattered Lands - FM music - R13 - Undermountain @tohopes | Uploaded 8 years ago | Updated 10 hours ago
The music of Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, as played by the game running in DOSBox with Sound Blaster Pro emulation.
Sound Blaster and AdLib cards used Yamaha OPL2 or OPL3 FM synthesis chips which produced each musical tone through phase modulation of 2 or 4 digital waveforms. These were less powerful versions of the chips in FM synthesizers like the Yamaha DX7 used by professional musicians in the 80s.
The OPL2 and OPL3 have been studied so well by enthusiasts that emulators like DOSBox can recreate their sound near-perfectly.
Dark Sun uses the Audio Interface Library (AKA Miles Sound System) to play music, recorded as MIDI, through various sound devices. An XMIDI file for each region in the game contains, in addition to musical notation, special control messages describing subsequences and loops. Dark Sun's tracks contain on the order of 5 (as many as 8) subsequences each, for different modes like peaceful exploration, combat, and special plot events. The sound system loops a given subsequence indefinitely until instructed by the game to switch to another (e.g. because combat had begun or had ended).
The XMIDI files are stored as resources within two files: RESOURCE.GFF for in-game music (which I've numbered "Rnn") and CINE.GFF for cinematic music (which I've numbered "Cn"). There are three versions of each track, for various sound devices: GSEQ for General MIDI and FM devices, LSEQ for Roland LA devices, and PSEQ for the PC speaker. The tracks are not named within the game files, so I've named most of them after the regions in which they are used.
To record the game's full soundtrack, I modified the control messages in the files to have the game play through all subsequences of each music track (rather than loop one subsequence indefinitely), ran the game in DOSBox, and had it play each track in turn.
This playlist (FM version):
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNXHw_ipV81hhOjy3NK5cLVxYhg19g6kz
See also the Roland LA (MT-32) version of the soundtrack:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNXHw_ipV81jl35mmyF7-zvx1m2OWMaG5
from Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (1993)
Music: Cooksey
FM Voice Design: The Fat Man
Music Engine: John Miles
Game Developer: Strategic Simulations, Inc.
The music of Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, as played by the game running in DOSBox with Sound Blaster Pro emulation.
Sound Blaster and AdLib cards used Yamaha OPL2 or OPL3 FM synthesis chips which produced each musical tone through phase modulation of 2 or 4 digital waveforms. These were less powerful versions of the chips in FM synthesizers like the Yamaha DX7 used by professional musicians in the 80s.
The OPL2 and OPL3 have been studied so well by enthusiasts that emulators like DOSBox can recreate their sound near-perfectly.
Dark Sun uses the Audio Interface Library (AKA Miles Sound System) to play music, recorded as MIDI, through various sound devices. An XMIDI file for each region in the game contains, in addition to musical notation, special control messages describing subsequences and loops. Dark Sun's tracks contain on the order of 5 (as many as 8) subsequences each, for different modes like peaceful exploration, combat, and special plot events. The sound system loops a given subsequence indefinitely until instructed by the game to switch to another (e.g. because combat had begun or had ended).
The XMIDI files are stored as resources within two files: RESOURCE.GFF for in-game music (which I've numbered "Rnn") and CINE.GFF for cinematic music (which I've numbered "Cn"). There are three versions of each track, for various sound devices: GSEQ for General MIDI and FM devices, LSEQ for Roland LA devices, and PSEQ for the PC speaker. The tracks are not named within the game files, so I've named most of them after the regions in which they are used.
To record the game's full soundtrack, I modified the control messages in the files to have the game play through all subsequences of each music track (rather than loop one subsequence indefinitely), ran the game in DOSBox, and had it play each track in turn.
This playlist (FM version):
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNXHw_ipV81hhOjy3NK5cLVxYhg19g6kz
See also the Roland LA (MT-32) version of the soundtrack:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNXHw_ipV81jl35mmyF7-zvx1m2OWMaG5
from Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (1993)
Music: Cooksey
FM Voice Design: The Fat Man
Music Engine: John Miles
Game Developer: Strategic Simulations, Inc.
