Experimental BBS Explossion 3/Experimental BBS Explossion III.iso/gus/digestvc.zip/V12N10G.TXT

Text File | 1994-04-11 | 21KB | 538 lines

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GUS Daily Digest            Sun, 10 Apr 94  9:37 PST     Volume 12: Issue  10

Today's Topics:
                                (none)
                       archive.orst.edu probs.
                       GUS Daily Digest V12 #8
                       GUS Daily Digest V12 #9
                         HELP - joystick port
                   How do you get SFX/MUSIC in PQ4?
                         Just saying hello..
                              NHL Hockey
                          Privateer and SBOS
                           Raptor! (3 msgs)
                     Raptor+GUS and 8 channels...
                     Raptor and Doom 32 channels!
                            Raptor worked!
                         should I get a gus?
                          Soundblaster AWE32
                        The Horde supports GUS

Standard Info:
    - Meta-info about the GUS can be found at the end of the Digest.
    - Before you ask a question, please READ THE FAQ.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Apr 94 12:27:18 GMT
From: [e-mail] (David Fenton)
Subject: (none)

subscribe: daily digest
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Fenton [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 1994 16:07:27 ADT
From: "Craig Galbraith" <[e-mail]>
Subject: archive.orst.edu probs.

Anybody else not been able to get onto archive.orst.edu lately?  It
keeps saying "user anonymous denied" or something like that.  I just
would like to ftp from there rather than from the slow WuArchive.
   oh well...

   Craig Galbraith
   [e-mail]


                        are you phishsperienced?

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 09 Apr 94 20:58:18 +0300
From: Yossi Oren <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #8

>Date: Thu, 07 Apr 94 09:08:08 EDT
>From: Henrique 'Snoopy' Vianna <[e-mail]>
>Subject: Number of MIDI voices
>
>Hi!
>
>I'd like to know how many voices PLAYMIDI uses
20 voices.

>and whether I can
>change its default or not. Within Windows I'm using only 22 voices
>enabled,
22=20 MIDI + 2 stereo effect channels.

>but I have some .MID files that will need all the 32 voices;
>in this case, I go to the driver setup and increase the number of
>active voices. How about PLAYMIDI?
-x32 would be your ticket.
HTH,
Yossi.

+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
| = | E |_|/|               Signature 1.31                      | V | ^ |
+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
|Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help    |
|TInternet EMail:[e-mail]     TT The people are T|
||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN                      || with the Golan ||
||Drag yer damn objects around.  I've got work to do.|| Heights!       ||
+====================================================++================++

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Apr 94 00:30:08 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Daniel Nicholson)
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #9

Chris Campell writes in yesterday's GUS digest:

> One thing REALLY PEEVES ME OFF, and I'm surprised no-one has brought it
> up.  Quoting from the rap-help file:
>
>                        =================================
>                        ATTENTION GRAVIS ULTRASOUND USERS
>                        =================================
>
> (The information in this section applies only to Gravis Ultrasound
> owners, it does not apply to any other sound card supported in Raptor)
>
> If you are playing the game, and experience slowdowns in the music
> during heavy action, you'll need to reduce the number of digital
> channels to less than 4. The reason for this is because the GUS card
> cannot handle the amount of information being fed from the game, and the
> music and game will slow down.
>
> [Yeah sure!  If they are using the GUS properly it should be able to
> handle up to 32 channels without slowdowns right?]

Correct. Their problem is probably due to the very poor MIDI routines
they use. While Raptor is an _excellent_ game, the music routines just
plain suck.

> The Gravis UltraSound uses a sound mixing routine that is different from
> any other sound card.  Because of this, it is incapable of keeping up

This is bs. In reality, exactly the opposite case is true: the GUS is much
better suited to playing multiple sound effects simultaneously than the
SB, PAS, etc. It quite literally is 32 times better at doing this :) It's
entirely capable of keeping up. A good programmer could actually play 64
voices on a Gravis without much trouble at all, and without the CPU load of
playing say 16 on an SB.

> channel setting below 4, then you should no longer experience the
> slowdowns. If you do select a setting less than 4, you will no longer
> hear gunfire. The gunfire is the usual culprit of the slowdowns.
> Increasing the amount of memory on your GUS card may sometimes help the
> problem, but this is not a guaranteed solution for the problem.
>
> [If they had used hardware mixing, there wouldn't be a problem]

I'm 99% sure they did use hardware mixing, to some extent.

- Dan Nicholson


==============================================
|        The Levisionet Audio Group          |  Dan Nicholson,
| Soundtracks for interactive entertainment. |   Director of Development
|============================================|
| Watch for: STAR REACH and THE HORDE        |  [e-mail]
|============================================|
| LAG                  |      telephone      |  For more information on LAG
| 553 Thoreau Terrace  |   +1.908.688.0708   |  please send email to
| Union, NJ 07083-9044 |                     |  [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 12:12:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bill Arnette <[e-mail]>
Subject: HELP - joystick port

Hello GUSsers,

My wife recently bought me a GUS for my birthday.  I put the card
in and everything seems to work OK, except the joystick port.  I have
tried everything I can think of.  I have disabled the game port on my
multi i/o card.  I have specfied -ej on the ultrinit command line, and
joycomp still cannot find the joystick.

System info:

GUS version        : 3.4
GUS drivers        : v2.06a + gus0041a/b (removed SBOS first)
ULTRINIT command line    : -ej
ULTRASND variable    :  220,1,1,7,7
BLASTER variable    : A220 I7 D1 T1
Computer        : No-name 386/40 w/4MB
Other cards        : Bocamodem 14.4K modem (com2, irq4)
              Actix GraphicsEngine+ VGA card
              ide-multi i/o card (only com1, irq3 enabled)
              CMS-401-II MPU-401 clone (irq5, 330H)
              Hercules monochrome card (used for printer port)

Is there something I am missing here?

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated,
Bill
--
    /*/ /**\    /*/
   /*/ /*/\*\  /*/   Bill Arnette                      [e-mail]
  /*/ /*/_/*/ /*/    Portable Debugger Development     ...!mcnc!sas!saswta
  \*\ |*****| \*\    SAS Institute Inc.                [phone] x6193
  /*/ /*/ /*/ /*/    SAS Campus Drive - R2275          [phone](fax)
 /*/ /*/ /*/ /*/     Cary, NC 27513
/*/ /*/ /*/ /*/

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 08:52:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: [e-mail] (Sky Woo)
Subject: How do you get SFX/MUSIC in PQ4?

    Sorry if this is a FAQ...  But I have been look at the digest
for awhile and assume no one has had the same problem I've been having.
I can't get any sound or music out of PQ4.  I assume it uses the Windows
drivers to do all its sound processing and I do get music and sound but
only in the introduction.  For the rest of the game it is completely
quiet.  I'm thinking of setting it up for PC speaker if it is possible
because I'm getting nothing from the GUS Windows drivers.  If anyone
knows why it craps out on me when I'm in Windows...  Please tell me.
Or should I just wait until the Sierra GUS drivers arrive.  But who knows
when that'll be.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 14:57:39 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Jarkko Tapio Heinonen <[e-mail]>
Subject: Just saying hello..

I just wanted to say how much I like this digest. It has given me (and
the rest of our group) all kinds of useful information.

Just one question: how much do you think that the demo scene is helping
Advanced Gravis by supporting their awesome soundcard?

How much would it matter if all the demo groups suddenly just stopped
supporting it ?

Just playing with the though..


Samuli "GORE" Syvahuoko
Assembly'94 coordinator
Future Crew PR

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 23:12:05 +1000 (EST)
From: Andrew See <[e-mail]>
Subject: NHL Hockey

I know this has been asked a thousand times, but what is the best way
to run NHL hockey on a GUS?

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 1994 15:15:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: Erek Adams <[e-mail]>
Subject: Privateer and SBOS

Hello!

    According to the lastest version of the G-list, Privateer is workable
with a GUS and SBOS2.0b10, with AILPATCH.ZIP that is.  A couple of questions...

    1)  Why won't it work?  :)  It's annonying me a helluva lot to try to
load SBOS and get a 'SB address already in use'.  After that, sometimes SBOS
will work and sometimes it will not.

    2)  Did I see somewhere that Privateer used 32bit AIL drivers?  Or am
I dreaming?

    I'm a bit lost as why SBOS gives that error.  Any suggestions?



                                         Erek Adams

+---------------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| Erek Adams, Student Programmer, | Internet:  [e-mail]        |
| Northeast Louisiana University  | SnailMail: 5330 DeSiard, #2               |
| Monroe, Louisiana  71202        |            Monroe, LA  71203              |
|                                 | PGP2.3a:   finger [e-mail] |
+---------------------------------+-------------------------------------------+

Monty Python's Quote of the Day is.........

Brother Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high
                 saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it
                 smash our enemies to tiny bits."
                 And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the
                 lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and
                 lima bean-


------------------------------

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 1994 14:24:22 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Hank Leukart)
Subject: Re: Raptor!

>From: Soo Wei Ming <[e-mail]>

>It's a pretty good game (for a shoot 'em up), but I am pretty peeved
>about the lockups when running 4 or more voices (on my machine at least).

    This doesn't happen on all systems, but does on some,
unfortunately.

>Is it just bad programming, or is there any credibility to the claim
>that the GUS can accept the data that fast?

    Raptor uses the same sound code as DOOM -- software mixing.
I don't know the details, but on my system, I get a lot of slow down.
I also get joystick drift when using the GUS, but not my SB.

>It' also like to compare the speed of the game using the SB & the GUS, with
>all the digital voices maxed out.

    On my computer (386-40) the SB is significantly faster, enough
so that I prefer to use the SB, although the GUS sound is much better.

>One thing REALLY PEEVES ME OFF, and I'm surprised no-one has brought it
>up.  Quoting from the rap-help file:

>If you are playing the game, and experience slowdowns in the music
>during heavy action, you'll need to reduce the number of digital
>channels to less than 4. The reason for this is because the GUS card

>[Yeah sure!  If they are using the GUS properly it should be able to
>handle up to 32 channels without slowdowns right?]

    Well, again, it's the software mixing that's the problem.

>I do agree that support is a step in the right direction.
>Congradulations to Cygnus software for the great game.  Later!

    Just be happy the GUS support made it in.  During testing,
it caused so many problems that they were thinking about taking it out. :(
-Hank

--
----------- Hank Leukart ------------ |   "Official" DOOM FAQ v5.5 Writer
--- ([e-mail]) --- |   FAQ by E-mail or "ftp.uwp.edu"
 ------------------------------------ |  Support your shareware companies!
 ------------------------------------ |      REGISTER your shareware!

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 09 Apr 1994 15:29:56 -0300
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Raptor!

Well, once I learned that this game has GUS support, I picked it up.  That
was yesterday.  It's a great game: a shooter is just what I needed to get me
through exams!

About some people's problems with more than 4 sounds:
  First off, I have had no problems with using all 8 sounds.  Maybe it is
because I have 1meg onboard, and a 16bit DMA.
  Anyway I think that Apogee was quite concerned with the problem.  Later on
in that readme file, they mentioned that the "issue was unresolved", and
that they really couldn't figure out why 8 voices worked on some systems,
but not on others.  But they had to give some answer, so they gave one.
(probably paraphrased from whoever wrote the sound library, so I don't blame
Apogee) - besides which, DOOM has only 4 voices in the SETUP menu (but you can
allocate 8 by maually changing the config file) - they obviously had the same
problems at ID, and chose to fix it this way.  Remember, DOOM was delayed due
to GUS problems too.

I would guess that the problem is that they are using several voices with a
bunch of midi patches loaded too.  It probably handles digital sounds much
the same as Ultramid -- by buffering.  And the more simultaneous voices, the
smaller the buffers must be.  You've got a chaingun, rockets, 2 or 3 flavors
of explosion, and a few enemy sounds all at the same time.  Playing them is
no problem for the GUS, but DMA'ing them all, continuously cycling through
them, could cause a bottleneck.
   Of course, the midi patches might not fill a full 1 Meg.  Then the sound
library might be smart enough to allocate larger buffers, or even _keep_ some
sounds (like the chaingun) in GUS-DRAM so that no DMAing is necessary to
play that sound.


Does the game even _support_ 8 voices on the soundblaster?  At any rate the
soundblaster music must be FM, and the digital sound would not be as good --
software mixing means that, on the soundblaster, only one DMA to the soundcard
is required (kind of a reverse of the normal bottleneck), but the sacrifice is
that, with 8 voices, you've _gotta_ be down to only 4 bits of precision.
(I checked. SB does support 8 voices.)

Sorry about the length of this note.  I realize some people pay for their net-
access, and I also realize that everything I just said is speculation, and
maybe total bullsh*t.  But I was bored. :)

Bruce Dodson
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 1994 22:59:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Yaw-Chou Sui <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Raptor!

Don't know about you guys, but I got lock-ups every time I run this
game.  Then I tried OPTIFIX.  :)  IT WORKS!  And I tried to increase
to 8 channels, no slow down either (but then again, I don't have
any other machine with different sound card to compare to).

So, maybe if you have had problems with mod before because of the
faulty chipset, give OPTIFIX a try when you encounter lock-ups running
Raptor.

--
Joseph Sui    Always keeps his head down looking for pennies :)
email: [e-mail]
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 1994 13:03:33 +0800 (PST)
From: Francis Li <[e-mail]>
Subject: Raptor+GUS and 8 channels...

I have been playing Raptor with 8 simultaneous digitized sounds with
absolutely no problems at all.  It could be that its because I'm playing
on a 486DX-33, but at least its not impossible..

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 1994 18:56:44 -0400
From: KHAN  NAJEEB MOHAMMED <[e-mail]>
Subject: Raptor and Doom 32 channels!

I have used both Raptor and Doom with 32 channels.  On my computer it causes
no slowdowns whatsoever.  If you want to try it then you have to edit the
 ini file in the Raptor/Doom directory and change the number of sound channels
to 32.

I was completely blown away when I first heard these games with 32 voices.
ie. in Doom you can still hear the guys screaming when you kill them while
you are using a gun like the plasma rifle.

On a friend's computer Raptor seemed smoother after changing the number of
voices to 32.

GUS! GUS! GUS!

Najeeb

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 09 Apr 1994 19:34:39 -0500 (CDT)
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Raptor worked!



------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 01:02:57 -0500
From: Andrew John Burnette <[e-mail]>
Subject: should I get a gus?

Hi-ya GUS users.  I'm thinking about getting a 16-bit sound card, and
gus is right there at the top of my list.  The only problem is that
I read the digest everyday, and hear about the problems people have
with it.  Is GUS really that much of a pain in the ass?  Are these problems
caused by GUS's incompatabilities, or individual hardware configs.  I
understand that most of you people are EXTREMELY pleased with your gus,
but could you give me a reason why it is the absolutely best sound card
in the whole f*ckn' world?  Also, a bit off the subject, has anyone
heard the sonic sound card from diamond computer systems?  How is it?
Thanks for the imput, in advance.

ANdrew
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 94 18:07:07 -0400
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Soundblaster AWE32

Yeah, I was kind of wondering why the AWE32 only has 1MB ROM.  But hen agai,
you're supposed to plug a Waveblaster into it, if you want hassle-free GM
support.  And it explains how you can get 64 voices this way--the AWE32
and Waveblaster aren't both GM devices (only the WB uses the MPU-401 interface)

The AWE32's TSR interprets the MIDI data, or repipes it to some other port
addres (if you believe CL.)

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 12:50:55 +0300
From: Erik Bunn <[e-mail]>
Subject: The Horde supports GUS

(Sorry if this is old news!)

Just a tidbit of information for you gamers: The Horde, a rather
original game (at least I haven't seen the concept before.. grow cows,
whack hoardlings, defeat evil councellors =), supports the GUS. Good
music, good effects, sampled speech, no hassles whatsoever (actually
it doesn't even ask what card you're using).


Try it out if you're looking for a cute semi-strategy-action game.


--
Erik Bunn // DiscworldRingworldCerebusSandmanC&HBrazilWandaXpilotRaceDrivin'
They drove back through the dawn, while the cassette player played J. S.
Bach's Mass in B Minor, vocals by F. Mercury.
        -- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

------------------------------

From: (null)



------------------------------

End of GUS Daily Digest V12 #10
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