Talk:SOUND

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Revision as of 14:02, 19 November 2005 by Quantifier (talk | contribs)
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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

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) SAMPLE.CAT.

- Quantifier