Amiga Format 6/af006.adf/BMP/BMP.doc

Text File | 1987-06-04 | 5KB | 138 lines

                          Background Music Player 2.0
                             Written By J.L. White
                           (C)1989 Merlin's Software

                         Requires the latest Arp.library



 Background Music Player or BMP for short, plays digitized sampled sounds in
the background of slideshows, animations, etc. It's perfect for playing some
special sound you have in your startup-sequence or playing a disk full of
sounds in some demo. I originally started working on this program in early
87 and there have been 5 versions out. I have not put out a new version in
quite a while and thought I would play with it some more since I have gotten
better at my programming skills. Since there were so many new changes, I
decided to release it as 2.0. Hope you enjoy BMP and thanks to all those
who had sent in shareware donations. "You help keep us going!"

 BMP 2.0 combines all the features of the previous versions with many new
ones. I decided to play around with the `ARP' routines to get use of the
file requester. I use TXEd which uses it and have seen a show program called
DAZ that does also. I am currently working on a collection of sampled sound
files to add to our PD collection and thought it would be a nice addition to
BMP. I also added a graph display of the file and a scroll bar to move along
as the music plays. The bar is not 100% accurate but it's close enough. I
also took a few notes from Richard Lee Stockton's code for SOUND. BMP uses
his way of loading the sound into FAST MEM instead of CHIP so you are not
limited to only 130K. Thanks Richard, for releasing such wonderful code!


NOTE: You must have the Arp.library in your libs: directory for BMP to work.


USAGE FROM WORKBENCH:

 Included are two icons. One for BMP itself and one for a sound file. If you
click on the BMP icon itself the program loads up and opens the `ARP' file
requester for the SoundFile you want to play. Once you click on the file, it
loads it, makes the graph, then plays the music. It will keep repeating in a
loop until you hit the close gadget or hit a key. When you do it brings up
the requester again for another filename. Click CANCEL when you are ready to
quit.

 The icon for the soundfile has a few options that can be added into the
tool_types. There are four options:

1. LOOPS=+1
   This allows you to choose how many times to play the file. If you wish
   to have it play continuously until the gadget is hit, enter a +0. The +
   must be there to set it correctly.

2. GRAPHCOLOR=@1
   This tells BMP what color to paint the graph. You can choose 0-3. These
   are the colors set on your Workbench screen. If you are running one of the
   programs that allow you to use more than the basic 4 colors , you can use
   any valid number available. The @ must be there to set it correctly.

3. BACKCOLOR=#2
   This tells BMP what color to paint the background. You can choose 0-3.
   These are the colors set on your Workbench screen. If you are running one
   of the programs that allow you to use more than the basic 4 colors , you
   can use any valid number available. As above, the # must be there to set
   it correctly.

4. GRAPHON=YES
   This tells BMP to open the full graph instead of just a title window. The
   default is YES but if you don't need (or want) to display the graph then
   set it to NO. If you do, this voids out options 2 & 3.


If none are entered then BMP uses its defaults which are:
LOOPS=+1
GRAPHCOLOR=@1
BACKCOLOR=#2
GRRAPHON=YES


USAGE FROM CLI:

 The options are pretty much the same as for workbench but you enter them on
the command line. If you type BMP by itself the requester is brought up and
used as above. You can enter as many filenames as you wish on the command
line (or 255 characters worth). The -Quiet option is also included in CLI.
The default for Workbench is to open the full graph but from CLI the default
is to open just a title window that display the filename and filesize.


 The usage is: BMP -Quiet *GraphOn #BackColor @GraphColor +Loops Filename ...

 -Quiet opens no window or graph. You only have to enter the `-'.
 *GraphOn opens a full graph window. You only have to enter the `*'.
 #BackColor tells what color to use for Background (0,1,2,3).
 @GraphColor tells what color to use for Graph (0,1,2,3).
 +Loops tells how many times to play the SoundFile.
 Filename is the name of the file you wish to play.

 Here Is An Example:
 BMP * #3 @1 +3 SoundFile1 +1 SoundFile2 #2 @0 +0 SoundFile3

 This would play the 1st sound 3 times using White on Orange, The 2nd sound
 1 time using White on Orange, & the 3rd forever using Blue on Black.

 Here Is Another Example:
 BMP +1 SoundFile1 SoundFile2

 This would play SoundFile1 once then SoundFile2 once with a title window.

 Here Is Another Example:
 BMP -Q +1 SoundFile1

 This would play SoundFile1 one time without opening a window. This way is
 perfect to add in your startup-sequence.


    _ , Chat At Ya Later...
   {~}
  ( V-)
  "|Y|"
  _|||_---> J.L. White


This is released as Sharware but can be given out freely to anyone that has
a use for it. If you like it and use it, send a donation of $10.00 to the
address below and get whatever the latest version is with a free disk full
of samples you can use.

Read M-List for all our available disk.

Send donations to:

J.L. White
1304 Four Seasons Blvd.
Tampa,Fla. 33613
[phone]