Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    
    This seemed like the most logical place to put this, so here goes...
    
    One of my other vices is computer games; I love 'em!  And I probably
    spend entirely too much time with them.  But that's another story.
    I have watched with interest the advent of computer games producers
    including more and increasingly interesting musical scores with
    the game software.  Gone are the days of simple "beeps and bleeps".
    Many of the top names prominently advertise that the scores are
    part of the reason you should buy the game.
    
    As with most things, there is a wide variety of ways to access this
    gold mine of sound locked up in the S/W.  Ad Lib, INNOVATION, and
    IBM-YAMAHA all have boards which you can buy which when added to
    the motherboard will either directly drive speakers, or hook into
    an outboard amplifier to drive speakers.  These tend to be a bit
    pricey, though, and unless you owned an AMIGA which has this capability
    built-in, it seemed you had to cough up $100-$300.
                                                    
    At least, that's the way it appeared.  I recently purchased "POPULOUS"
    a British fantasy game distributed by Electronic Arts.  In the set-up
    instructions they mention several sound options ranging from the
    lowly PC speaker, those mentioned above and a "ROLAND LA-32 SOUND
    Module".  I looked at my $XXXXX.XX worth of MIDI gear and wondered,
    "Well, what's all this stuff...chopped liver?".  So I cranked up
    the studio selected the ROLAND option and waited.
    
    Sure enough, after booting the MIDI transmit lights on my D-110
    started flashing and voila!, instant stereo!!!  If nothing else,
    it is kind of a kick to hear what the designers really had in mind
    when creating these games.  Also, earthquakes sound a lot more like
    earthquakes on the D-110 (Grankhas drums?) than on the PC's peeper.
    
    Did other folks out there know about this?  What other games can
    we "play" through out rigs?  Is this a vulgar, juvenile and in-
    appropriate use of valuable MIDI resources?  :^]
    
    Clusters, 
    Bill Allen
    

    
    
    Fairy Tale Adventure for the Amiga has a MIDI Soundtrack. It definitely
    adds a lot to the game. I don't know if this is a trend or not..
    In the case of FTA the author/composer also happens to be the author
    of a sequencer (music-x) as well.
    
    brien
    

There are quite a few Atari ST games with MIDI support built in. I normally
just leave my MT-32 connected when playing games, just to see if anything 
comes out (the MT-32 seems to be the commonest supported SGU for games).

I think there may be something on this in either the ATARI or GAMES notesfiles,
but my brain is too jumbled to remember where at the moment :-)

Cheers,

    Derek.

    re .3
    
    Derek:
    
    How does one get to GAMES?
    
    Bill Allen
    

Bill,

    The conference is PICA::GAMES (I'd do the flashy "hit KP7 to add" bit
if I knew how !)

Cheers,

    Derek.

    Thanks, Derek   :-)
    
    	Bill