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CHROMATI.TXT
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____ _ _ _ _
/ ___| |__ _ __ ___ _ __ ___ __ _| |_(_) | _____
| | | '_ \| '__/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _` | __| | |/ / __|
| |___| | | | | | (_) | | | | | | (_| | |_| | <\__ \
\____|_| |_|_| \___/|_| |_| |_|\__,_|\__|_|_|\_\___/
The first International PC Multi-Group Music Disk
Volume I
April 28, 1994
Documentation by Trixter (Jim Leonard)
Table of Contents:
What is Chromatiks?.........................................2
Hardware Requirements.......................................2
Quick start.................................................3
Detailed Start..............................................3
command-line options....................................3
Controls....................................................4
displays................................................4
additional keys.........................................5
Troubleshooting.............................................6
locks up your machine...................................6
PAS 16..............................................6
No sound, or garbled sound..............................6
songs do not load or play correctly.....................6
Screen doesn't move.....................................6
Notes don't display correctly...........................6
Music sounds wrong......................................6
16-bit sound card...................................6
stereo panning method...................................6
GUS sound is wrong......................................6
GUS doesn't output sound................................6
ULTRINIT............................................6
History.....................................................7
The Future..................................................7
submissions.............................................7
Acknowledgements............................................7
Music formats that Chromatiks can play......................8
MOD.....................................................8
STM.....................................................8
669.....................................................8
S3M.....................................................8
MTM.....................................................8
Explanation of Terms........................................9
Chromatiks..............................................9
Music Disk..............................................9
Demo....................................................9
Intro...................................................9
Group...................................................9
Scene...................................................9
Mixing..................................................9
Page 2
What is Chromatiks?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chromatiks is the first International PC Multi-Group Music Disk. If
you aren't familiar with the concept of a music disk, then I strongly
suggest you skip to the end of this document and read the section en-
titled "Explanation of Terms". If you are familiar with music disks,
however, then here's a quick list of "should's" and "shouldn'ts":
Why you SHOULD listen to Chromatiks:
- Variety. Music has been contributed from all over the world,
from different groups. There's something for everyone!
- Quality. This volume features music from some of the most well
known composers in the scene, like Purple Motion / Future Crew,
Cybelius / Sonic, and others.
- Clarity. The Chromatiks Player has been optimized for loud, true
playback on 8-bit cards, and also optimized for crystal clear,
exact playback on 16-bit cards, like the Sound Blaster 16 and the
Pro Audio Spectrum. With the exception of DMP, PMP, or IPLAY, I
doubt you'll find a better player. (You can even use the Chro-
matiks player to play your own MOD, 669, STM, S3M, or MTM files!)
- Originality. There have been many music disks before this one,
but they have featured music from the same group. Chromatiks has
music from different groups, from all over the world!
- Versatility. You can use the Chromatiks player program to play
your own songs!
Why you should NOT listen to Chromatiks:
- Since I added GUS support, there isn't one. :-)
Hardware Requirements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- 386 or higher
- 100% compatible VGA card and monitor (Chromatiks uses tweaked
modes, split screen modes, and fast palette fades)
- 570K of RAM (or less, depending on the sound card and quality
mode used)
- 2 Meg of EMS memory
- Microsoft Mouse
- And if you own a GUS, 512K GUS RAM
And, of course, one of the following sound cards:
- Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster 16
- Pro Audio Spectrum, Pro Audio Spectrum Plus, Pro Audio
Spectrum 16
- Windows Sound system
- Sierra Aria chipset-based card
- Gravis Ultrasound
Page 3
Quick start
~~~~~~~~~~~
1) Load Chromatiks onto your hard drive and type "Chromati" and hit
<ENTER>.
2) Use the left mouse button to select things and the right mouse
button to exit the section you're in.
3) Listen to the great music. Look at the cool displays. :-)
Detailed Start
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Before you begin, make sure that you meet the hardware requirements.
If you need to use a memory manager to get 580K DOS memory free, then
please do! Chromatiks has been tested successfully with QEMM, 386MAX,
and EMM386. (Besides, you'll probably *have* to load a memory manager
to provide Chromatiks with the 2 MEG EMS memory it needs.) Load your
mouse driver if necessary. To simply run Chromatiks, type "chromati"
and hit <ENTER>.
That's all there is; Chromatiks should immediately go into its title
sequence. Before you simply run Chromatiks, though, you should know
about its command-line options:
-query overrides the sound card autodetection. (If you hear
nothing out of your sound card, or what you hear is
garbage, your card may not be autodetected correctly by
Chromatiks' internal routines. Selecting this option
will tell Chromatiks exactly what you have.)
There are also speed selections that control the mixing speed and
quality:
-slow is for slow computers, like a 386 at 16 or 20 MHz.
(Hopefully, Chromatiks is fast enough to avoid the ne-
cessity of this switch.)
-medium is for medium speed computers, like a 25 MHz machine.
(Use this switch if you feel your computer can handle
this quality level.)
-fast is for fast computers, like 33MHz or higher. (Use this if
you want to see if your computer can handle the maximum
quality level of your sound card. A 33MHz machine or
higher is highly recommended to use this switch.)
Finally, there are miscellaneous switches, like:
-title, which skips the title screen if you've seen it too many
times.
Page 4
You can also pass the name of a MOD, 669, STM, S3M, or MTM file as the
first argument. This way, you can use Chromatiks to play your fa-
vorite songs.
Example: If you wanted to play your favorite MOD through your snazzy
16-bit sound card, but you only have a 386-16MHz and Chromatiks isn't
finding your card correctly, then you would type:
chromati gslinger.mod -slow -query
After starting Chromatiks, you should see title sequence, and then you
will be provided with a stereo selection screen (this depends on your
sound card, and whether or not your card supports stereo output).
Choose the stereo panning method you want with the mouse. As you move
the mouse onto one of the selections, you'll hear the music change to
reflect what the panning sounds like.
Controls
~~~~~~~~
After you select your stereo panning method, you'll go to the player
screen. The player screen has two sections; the informational text on
the bottom, and the displays on the top. The text on the bottom is
written by the composers themselves, and what text you see depends on
what music you're listening to at the time. At the top are the
displays:
- The bar display shows the exact volume level of each channel.
- The oscilloscope display shows what the sound waveform looks
like. (Disabled in GUS mode)
- The note/staff display shows what notes the individual channels
are playing.
- The titles display shows what song is playing and which song you
have currently selected.
Page 5
If you do nothing, Chromatiks will start at the first song and play
all six songs, and then loop around and play the first one again. To
end Chromatiks, press the right mouse button, or the <ESC> key.
While the music is playing, you have several options. To view a dif-
ferent display, you can move the mouse left and right, and the top
section will scroll to follow the mouse. Once you get over to the ti-
tles screen, moving the mouse up and down will move the selection
highlight; pressing the left mouse button will stop the current song
and play the one you've selected.
Here are some additional keys:
+ Skip the song forward one pattern.
- Skip the song backward one pattern.
L Make the volume louder.
S Make the volume softer.
P Toggle playback. Hit it once to pause the output, hit again
to resume
J Toggle "jumptracks." When this is on, the display will
"jump" in time to one of the tracks. Press J again to turn
"jumptracks" off; press any number key to select which track
to jump to. This option is not very useful. :-)
<ESC> Exits the player program and goes to the credits screen.
Page 6
Troubleshooting
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you are having problems with Chromatiks, check this list:
Chromatiks locks up your machine or hangs: Make sure your
current system setup meets Chromatik's hardware and memory
requirements. Note: Some PAS 16 owners with 386-40's have
noticed that they cannot get Chromatiks to work unless they
use the -medium option; if you fall into this group, use
that command-line option.
No sound, or garbled sound: Chromatiks might not be cor-
rectly autodetecting your sound card. Use the -query option
to manually specify your card and it's settings. If your
card is not explicitly listed, see if it emulates another
popular sound card. Note: If you are unsure of your sound
card's makeup, use -query and specify a Sound Blaster with
IRQ 5 (or 7, if your sound card is over 2 years old), PORT
220, and DMA 1.
Some songs do not load or play correctly: Make sure you
have 570K free DOS memory and 2 Megabytes of EMS memory.
Note: When Chromatiks loads it's songs, it displays a pe-
riod for every song. If any periods are flashing, they
didn't load correctly. This can be due to a corrupted file
or not enough memory.
Screen doesn't move around: Make sure your Microsoft-com-
patible mouse driver is loaded before you run Chromatiks.
Notes don't display correctly: Notes that fall above or be-
low the octaves displayed on the screen are not displayed.
A larger display will be in a future release.
Music sounds wrong, staggered, or slow: Make sure your com-
puter is fast enough to support the quality of your sound
card. Use the -medium or -slow options if you have to. A
386-40 or higher is recommended to hear sound at its highest
quality setting on a 16-bit sound card. Also, using the
"speaker" stereo panning method takes up less CPU time than
"headphones", so use the "speakers" method if you have a
slower machine.
GUS sound is wrong: This version of Chromatiks had its GUS
support added late in its development. It uses a vastly
different playing engine than the mixing routines, and some
notes may be dropped. Also, you need 512K GUS RAM to hear
most of the songs correctly.
GUS doesn't output sound at all: Sometimes the GUS does not
get initialized correctly by Chromatiks. Try running
ULTRINIT with no parameters before running Chromatiks.
If you still have problems, please contact Jim Leonard using one of
the methods described in the submit!.txt file provided with the Chro-
matiks distribution package. I will do everything I can to get Chro-
matiks working on your computer.
Page 7
History
~~~~~~~
Chromatiks started in October of 1993 as my personal project: I'd seen
many music disks, but none that had music from all different groups.
I posted a message to the Usenet group comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos asking
for interest, and Kalle Kaivola (Edge / Unexpected) replied. He con-
tacted all of his friends in different groups and got the first six
songs rounded up. With his help (and beta testing), Chromatiks was
released on April 28, 1994.
My sincere gratitude goes to Kalle and all of the people who were kind
enough to donate tunes to a project they knew nothing about: Kalle,
Prism, Purple Motion, Tonedeaf, Cybelius, and Jayjay; that kind of
generosity is hard to come by.
The Future
~~~~~~~~~~
Chromatiks is not "a flash in the pan"; rather, we plan for Chromatiks
to come out every two months, with all new tunes and continued ad-
vancements to the player program. Chromatiks depends on submissions
from musicians to continue, however. If you're part of a group but
don't have a project planned, please contact us! What better way to
have your great music spread around? If you're not part of a group,
that's okay too: Chromatiks is not necessarily limited to people in
groups. To contact us, see the file submit!.txt included with the
Chromatiks package.
Acknowledgements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trixter would like to thank the following people:
Jussi and Otto of Virtual Visions, for their suggestions and in-
sight. Those guys are real professionals.
Brian Hirt, for always looking at my code (even though he knows
he's a *much* better programmer than I am), offering insight and
a simple fix to a complicated problem.
The XLIB people, for providing the best information yet on pro-
gramming Mode X.
Tristan Tarrant, for translating the XLIB library to something
more manageable.
NDanger / Unexpected, for redrawing my idea into a masterwork of
a title screen, and for providing the credits font. (My mouth
hung open the first time I saw the new title screen!)
Page 8
Music formats that Chromatiks can play
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MOD: Amiga Protracker. The most popular music file format
in the demo scene. Originating on the Amiga computer,
MODs contain up to 4 channels of music. Later PC im-
plementations of the MOD format introduced 6 or 8 chan-
nels.
STM: Scream Tracker. This music format was created by Psi /
Future Crew. Very similar to the MOD format, it also
contains up to 4 channels.
669: This music format was created by Tran, formerly of Re-
naissance. It was the first 5+ channel format on the
PC; contains up to 8 channels.
S3M: Scream Tracker 3.0. A later modification of the STM
format. Supports up to 16 channels; the tracker used
to create these modules is possibly the best on the
scene.
MTM: MultiTracker. A new format created by StarScream / Re-
naissance. Supports up to 32 (!) channels.
Page 9
Explanation of Terms
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chromatiks: The first truly multi-group music disk for the PC.
Chromatiks was coded by Jim Leonard in Borland Pascal
7.0 and it's built-in assembler. Additional routines
were provided by Otto Chrons and Jussi Lahdenniemi.
Music Disk: A program that plays music from musicians of the
demo/intro scene. PC music disks use mixing and other
demo techniques to play MODs and other file formats.
Demo: A program that shows off the power of the computer and
the skill of its programmer using light, color, shapes,
sound, music, and ingenuity. Many demos have detailed
artwork, 3D objects swirling around the screen, and
rousing music, for example.
Intro: A demo that is smaller than 100K. Usually does one
thing only, like introduce a new group, event, or BBS.
Group: A group of individuals who write a demo or intro. Usu-
ally consists of at least one of the following: a
coder, a graphics artist, and a musician.
Scene: Slang; a collection of groups that share a common in-
terest.
Mixing: A technique to overcome the limitations of PC sound
hardware. Normally, PC sound cards can output one or
two channels of digitized sound, which isn't very use-
ful if you want to play music with 8 or more channels.
Mixing overcomes this limitation by utilizing the power
of the computer to mathematically mix all of the chan-
nels into only one or two channels inside of the com-
puter. The resulting channel or channels is then out-
put through the sound card. (The number of channels in
the output depends on whether the sound card is mono or
stereo.) The quality of the output is usually excel-
lent, but can depend on the number of channels being
mixed and the speed of the computer.