Hank Leukart's DooM FAQ 6.666
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CHAPTER [18]: Why won't my sound card work with DOOM?
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This chapter helps fix problems with various sound cards in DOOM.
[18-1]: Why won't my Sound Blaster v1.0 or v1.5 work with DOOM?
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The v1.0 shareware release of DOOM does not work correctly with earlier
versions of the Sound Blaster. It is recommended that you receive v1.2 of DOOM
to fix this problem. Information on getting this upgrade is available in
Chapter [6].
If you insist on using v1.0 of DOOM, here are two different ways to fix your
problem, although they are not guaranteed to work on all computers.
* (1) If you have a turbo button on your computer, turn it off. Run DOOM,
and when the title screen appears, turn it back on.
* (2) Disable the internal cache.
[18-2]: Why won't my Sound Blaster Pro work with DOOM?
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If you are using an older graphics card that supports HiColor (16 bit graphics)
you may have trouble getting this to work correctly. The only recommendation is
to borrow a friend's graphics card.
DOOM v1.1 has a bug that keeps the Sound Blaster Pro from working on IRQ 2, and
later versions do not allow usage on IRQ 10.
[18-3]: Why won't my Gravis UltraSound work with DOOM?
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To get DOOM to run properly with both music and digitized sound effects on the
Gravis UltraSound use these three steps.
////// SOUND //////<
(1) Set your ULTRASND environment variable, and use GF1 IRQ less than 8
example: SET ULTRASND=220,1,1,7,5
|_______ GF1 IRQ
NOTE: DOOM v1.2 may be able to use any valid GF1 IRQ including 11,12,15
However, high IRQs are _not_ recommended. See BUGS.
////// MUSIC //////
(2) Doom requires that you have installed the General MIDI patch set from
the 2.06a Install Disks (or later) that came with your UltraSound (and are
also available via FTP and BBS). DOOM will find your patches (using the
ULTRADIR variable) in the MIDI subdirectory pointed to by ULTRADIR.
example: SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND
(DOOM will look in C:\ULTRASND\MIDI for the patches)
NOTE: Step 3 is only required for DOOM v1.0 / Operating System 0.99
(3) You will also need to copy ULTRAMID.INI into your DOOM directory and
rename it to DMXGUS.INI (or find and use the DMXGUS.INI file). ULTRAMID.INI
is a part of the UltraMID/AIL package (also available via FTP and BBS).
////// SETUP //////
Run the SETUP program in the DOOM directory and select the UltraSound for
both sfx and music. Now run DOOM!
////// BUGS //////
NOTE: DOOM v1.2 is known to occasionally lockup with GUS support.
If you experience frequent lockups AND are using a high GF1 IRQ
(10,11,12,15), try using a low IRQ (less than 8).
If you experience frequent lockups AND have less than 1024K of
GUS RAM, try upgrading to 1024K (1 Megabyte).
////// OPTIMIZING //////
========================================================================
Title : GUS1M.WAD
Author : Tom Klok
Email Address : a344@mindlink.bc.ca, a00344@giant.rsoft.bc.ca
Description : An optimized MIDI instrument mapping for
Gravis Ultrasound cards with 1024K on board.
NOTE! If you don't have a GUS with 1024K, this wad will gain you
nothing (but shouldn't hurt anything either).
This PWAD contains no new MUS music files or sounds whatsoever.
Nor does it require any new .PAT files, just those supplied
with the more recent install disks.
========================================================================
Information
~~~~~~~~~~~
As you probably know, Doom's wad file contains a resource named DMXGUS which
contains a list of all MIDI instruments (patch file names) and a table
specifying which instruments to load into card memory. Since all 190+
instruments can't be loaded at once, the DMXGUS file loads a subset of the full
GM set and then maps the remaining instrument numbers to the loaded
instruments.
I was curious about the internal format of MUS files, and pretty happy when the
MIDI2MUS utility was released. Thanks, guys! Mucking around with the original
D_* MUS files Doom is supplied with, I decided to compare the patches they used
with the DMXGUS file to see what kind of mapping was going on. It turns out
there's a lot of it, but much of it is poorly set up. id's supplied DMXGUS file
is almost exactly the same as the ULTRAMID.INI file supplied with Ultramid
2.00. That's a good shot at a generic GM mapping, but Doom never uses many of
the loaded instruments... and many of the instruments it DOES use are mapped to
something else.
Therefore, I've rewritten the DMXGUS file to match Doom's MUS files as closely
as possible. I've booted out about 40 unused instruments and added 29 new ones.
The difference is quite dramatic. Some of the songs have percussion parts that
were being thrown out before; some of the instruments sound quite different.
It's a shame that id didn't take the time to do this themselves, but I guess
they've been too busy tweaking other stuff.
Ok, how do I use it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Extract the GUS1M.WAD file to wherever you normally put new wad files (ie
c:\doom\wad), then use it as you'd use any other new WAD add-on:
doom -file WAD\GUS1M.WAD
That's it! Hopefully you'll hear the difference as soon as Doom's welcome
screen comes up.
Why only 1024K GUS's?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, because that's what I own. :) It's taken about 10 hours of work to get
the 1024K mapping to the point where I'm happy with it. If someone else would
like to help out with mappings for 256, 512 and 768K boards, then go for it!
Feel free to contact me for a few utils I've written to make >some< of this
easier. Much of it is still trial and error.
Will it work with id's shareware release of Doom?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well... yes, it will. I'm not sure that should be a problem, as it's not adding
anything that wasn't there before... no new levels, sounds, music, etc. It's
just touching up something that I feel wasn't properly implemented in the first
place. And more importantly, I can't think of any way of preventing it. The
typical means to foil shareware use for new levels is to either insert them
into episodes 2 or 3, or to use textures/objects not found in the shareware
release. Neither would work here.
Look at it this way: it makes the music Doom comes with sound better on a 1024K
GUS. If you like the change, register Doom and get ALL the music! Please give
id your support. They're writing the best damn games on the market, publishing
them as shareware, and supporting the GUS. What more could we want? Please let
them know you appreciate it.
Copyright / Permissions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Authors may use this optimized DMXGUS WAD in their own WAD files, and may use
it as a base to further modify the GUS's GM mapping, provided they give me (Tom
Klok) credit within the DMXGUS resource and on their PWAD documentation.
Anyone may distribute this WAD, provided you include this text file with
attributions. You may distribute this pwad in via any media (BBS, floppy disk,
CDROM, etc).
(18-4): Why does the game crash when using my Gravis UltraSound?
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DOOM v1.2 has a small bug which causes DOOM to crash on some systems, some of
the time. People have reported that these crashes can be minimized by using an
IRQ at 7 or less, and upgrading the GUS' on-board RAM to 1024k.
[18-5]: Why won't my Pro Audio Spectrum 16 work with DOOM?
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You may be using an older version of DOOM such as v1.0 or v1.1. Get DOOM v1.666
for full PAS-16 support in native mode.
If the game is locking up after the "HU Init" line, there is a solution. Make
sure you are loading your PAS MVPRODD.SYS driver low. Loading it high can cause
DOOM to lock up.
[18-6]: Why won't my ATI Stereo-F/X work with DOOM?
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Turning off DMA buffering in the sound card's SFX.EXE configuration program
should fix this problem.
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