Talk:SOUND

The files with the names of soundcards, adlib, roland and gm (general midi) store the respective Geoscape and Battlescape music sequences for their respective cards.

For those with plain soundblaster compatibles, adlib.cat was used. Those with Roland Gus's or general midi output devices, they used their respective files for the music sequences. They're stored in different files because the midi devices handle their data in different ways.

These files are only used by the Dos version - and perhaps are the reason why the music in the dos version, on certain soundcards, sound a lot better than the CE versions (though your mileage may vary). Speaking of which, these three files were replaced in the Collectors edition with midi files, one for each music sequence - this allows for a bit more freedom in modding as you can replace the midi files you don't like with other midi files.

The CE version of UFO leaves out intro.cat for some really odd reason, so your intro sequence has no sound effects. Worse still, it will not play intro.cat even if you copy it in.

I think there were a few 0-byte com files in here as well, but they did nothing and weren't used by the game.

- NKF

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The .com files in my game are not empty, they probably do some low level sound card service, but on the other hand, in the main .bat file sound\sndstart and sound\sndend exe files are called. I looked into the them for strings they contain, and found names of other coms and exes in sound directory. I think sndstart/sndend is just a wrapper for a convenient use in .bat file.

The INTRO.CAT file was used only by old sound engine - DOS 1.4 uses (and CE should use) SAMPLE3.CAT. Erasing it makes CE crash with error:

Error Code 0
FILE: D:\SS\XCOM\UFO Defense\Stubs.c
LINE: 58

Cannot open file Sound/sample3.cat

I'm not sure which files 1.4 version uses for Roland support, because there are two files (one for intro music, one with rest of it) - this construction was used by 1.2 engine. There isn't one file with all the music in it.

- Quantifier

Garbled MIDI

A couple of the MIDI files seem to have screwed up instrument sounds when played on my computer -- I tried them on a friend's computer and had the same problems. The two major problems are the files for the intro music "GMINTRO1.MID" and particularly the BattleScape music "GMTACTIC.MID" -- I think there's supposed to be a low-pitch piano key (every now and then when I alt-tab out and back the sound works fine) but instead it just sort of sounds like a blown speaker. I was wondering if anyone else is having this sort of sound trouble and if there is a way of fixing it.

Modified sounds between 1.2 and 1.4

Anyone know exactly which sounds were modified between 1.2 and 1.4? Was it just the alien death screams? All of them, or only some?