MIDI for XP?

[NovaProgramming]

Okay, so, I know about VDMS and all that... but I have also learned that QMIDI sounds REALLY bad with it... so, is there an alternative that works? Midi music basically makes my game 1204912043 times better... or at least, I think it does. It enhances everything so much more. Yeah, so, if you know a good program, please tell me! Thanks!

[Plasma]

Are you loading QMIDI with the /3 switch? If not, try it. That will force QMIDI to use MPU-401 for MIDI (wavetable), instead of OPL2/3 (FM synth). VDMSound has really bad OPL emulation.

[NovaProgramming]

Alright, i'll try that.

EDIT: Sorry for being the newb, but how do you use the /3 switch?

EDIT: I figured out how to do the switch, but it says that it is an invalid command switch...?

EDIT: I had....like....an older version of Qmidi. I got 4.1, and now it works great! THANKS!

EDIT:

Alright then, now that it works, I want to trim the Qmidi.bas program with all the subroutines in it so that it has the ability to play music and stop music, and that's about it. I don't need all of this mixer crap... but I'm not exactly sure what needs to stay there and what can be cut out, so I'm trying different things. If someone knows.... then tell me, and it'll save me a lot of time

EDIT:

I managed to strip it down to five subroutines and some code at the top, and it still functions just how I like it to.

[na_th_an]

/3 is a switch for SBMIDI:

Code:

SBMIDI /3

EDITED: I just realized that you just got it

[NovaProgramming]

s'ok! Yeah, it works great

[webberboy]

I never could get qmidi to work correctly. could anyone point me to a download and tell me how to use it?

[NovaProgramming]

You can download QMIDI 4.1 http://qb4all.com/files/download.asp?fileid=61 <-- there.

If you are running Windows XP, you should probably get VDMsound http://vogons.zetafleet.com/ndldownload....d2.1.0.exe <--- There.

THEN, make a .bat file that runs the sound drivers included with Qmidi (they should all be unzipped to the Qbasic folder) and VDMsound, and Qbasic, like this:

Code:

Sbmidi /3
Sbsim
Vdmsrun.bat qb.exe/L

That'll put you right inside QB with the capabilities to use Qmidi.

Then, to play some music:

Open "Qmidi.bas" and scroll down until it says something like "begin your own code here" or something.... All you have to do is...

Code:

midihandle% = LoadMIDI("MIDI.mid") 'where MIDI is the midi filename
PlayMIDI midihandle%

To stop playing music, type

Code:

StopMidi
'And then, you should unload the midi from memory, so you don't get one of those ugly out of memory messages...
UnloadMidi Midihandle%

And that's all there is to playing and stopping Midis... Jesse Dorland (maker of Qmidi) has also included a lengthy readme, and there's tons of junk your supposed to be able to do, such as volume (fading, panning, etc) and all sorts of junk. For me, I just delete all the SUBS except for PlayMidi, StopMidi, LoadMidi, UnloadMidi, and IntX.... and it still works perfectly fine (playing and stopping). Good luck to you!

[na_th_an]

And somewhere in the main loop call to

Code:

LoopMIDI

Each time this SUB is called it checks if the MIDI that was playing has finished and if so it restarts it from the beginning.

In the BAT don't forget to unload the drivers when you exit the QB program (place this at the very end of the BAT file:

Code:

...
SBSIM /u
SBMIDI /u

[webberboy]

well, ok, i did everything you said, except install VDMsound. I am not an admin on my computer, so it doesn't let me install it. Will Qmidi work without it?

[NovaProgramming]

If you have Windows XP, then I don't think it'll work

VDMsound is like a "dos music emulator" for windows... and since Windows XP doesn't "do" Dos music...