Is there an original music compilation of Hexen?

paraemuladores

Hi there. I remember a few years ago I asked for the original music of Heretic, the one of those old Sound Blaster sound cards. Now I would like to ask if there is a similar pack, but for Hexen and its expansion. Does anyone know anything of the sort?

skyjake

How about this one: http://sycraft.org/content/audio/hexen.shtml

I just tried the "low" quality version, it worked perfectly with Doomsday 2.1, but I did have to rename the .zip to .pk3 first.

There is also another option nowadays in the 64-bit build of Doomsday 2.1. There is a music backend plugin called "FluidSynth". You can give it an SF2 soundfont file with music instrument samples of your choice and it will render a software emulation of what the Sound Blaster cards used to do back in the day. For a retro feel, one could find a small 4MB SF2 file, or for a better audio fidelity there are much larger SF2 files to be found on the internet. Doomsday 2.1 comes with a decent-quality soundfont called GeneralUser GS, and it is the default setting.

paraemuladores

Thanks for the answer, skyjake. But, I'm not certain on how to install it. You see, I downloaded the low quality version (the mp3 files), decompressed them in a directory, and then selected that directory inside the Doomsday Engine. When I do that, sometimes the engine crashes, and some others it doesn't; but either way, no new addons appear in the Hexen game. Am I doing something wrong?

Bob Hoskins

Did you follow the instructions in the Sycraft_music_readme.txt file?

deus-ex

 

paraemuladores

I tried, Bob Hoskins, but they are massively outdated. I'm not seeing any Doomsday Engine folder in My Documents, neither any folder of the sorts that it's indicated in the txt in the Doomsday Directory. I'm using the x64 version. Where should I put the music?

paraemuladores

deus-ex, I can't see what you wrote, your message appears empty, just with your user name, date of creation and edition, and the Quote button.

deus-ex

paraemuladores wrote: »

I downloaded the low quality version (the mp3 files), decompressed them in a directory[...]

You are not supposed to unpack the archive:

• Rename sycraft-hexen-low.zip to sycraft-hexen-low.pk3
• Copy sycraft-hexen-low.pk3 to your configured Doomsday addon directory, or into Doomsday's subfolder \Data
• Launch Doomsday and select your Hexen game
• Click on the 'Mods' button, add sycraft-hexen-low.pk3 to the addon loading list
• Start Hexen

Usually that should do it and you should be hearing Sycraft's Hexen music.

paraemuladores

Thank you, deus-ex, that worked like a charm!! I haven't used the engine in a while, so I suppose I got a little rusty.
However, skyjake, while this music sounds amazing, and I will use it, it still isn't what I was looking for, which is the original MIDI music back when the game was released. The same type of music that I was given for Heretic. Does it even exist?
In case it doesn't (Sycraft said so), I thougt I'd give a try to configuring the sound driver of the engine like you suggested, but I'd like to ask you if you could point me to a tutorial on how to set it up, where to get the instruments, etc, because I really didn't understand most of what you explained.

skyjake

original MIDI music back when the game was released

Well, I don't recall seeing any music packs that try to replicate the original Hexen music as it would have sounded in 1995, although to be clear the way MIDI music sounds depends on how it's being played back (sound card, software emulation, etc.).

Back in the day, Sound Blasters used to have a certain set of instrument samples that were used for MIDI, and you could load up new samples (the "sound font") to the card to make the music sound different. MIDI just contains instructions about which notes to play, it doesn't contain the full audio waveforms like a modern-day MP3/AAC does (for example).

This is how you load up an SF2 soundfont (in Doomsday 2.1):

1. In Doomsday's Audio configuration, set "SFX Plugin" to FMOD, and "Music Plugin" to FluidSynth.
2. Load up the game (e.g., Hexen). The sound font setting is game-specific so it doesn't appear without a game being loaded.
3. Again in Audio configuration, click on "Browse" in the "MIDI Sound Font" and use the file dialog to select the SF2 file you want to use. SF2 files are not considered add-ons/mods by Doomsday, they are just regular files you put somewhere on your hard drive and let Doomsday know where to load the file.
4. The sound font setting takes effect when the next piece of music is started, e.g., when the next map is loaded or when the current map is restarted.

deus-ex

skyjake wrote: »

MIDI just contains instructions about which notes to play, it doesn't contain the full audio waveforms like a modern-day MP3/AAC does (for example).

To be precise, MIDI files do not contain any audio data, just the notes of the song and setup info about which MIDI instruments to be used for playback. Good audio recreation of a MIDI song depends both on the quality of the software synthesizer and soundfont.

Regarding a good soundfont for DOOM/Heretic/Hexen, that stays close to the original
music recreation, I can recommend the soundfont included in GZDOOM. Either download the 32 or 64-bit version, extract GZDOOM (or just the soundfont) to your local harddrive.

Launch Doomsday:
1. Click 'ESC Task Bar' button in lower right corner or press Shift+Escape
2. Click taskbar cock-wheel
3. Select Audio, setup SFX/Music plugin as shown in screenshot



Launch Hexen:
1. Open main menu, goto Options, select 'Show Taskbar' or press Shift+Escape
2. Click taskbar cock-wheel
3. Select Audio, verify settings as shown in screenshot, click 'Browse', select GZDOOM.sf2



That's all there is to it. Enjoy your DOOM/Heretic/Hexen experience.

EDIT: added undocumented keyboard shortcut for taskbar to descriptions

skyjake

Open main menu, goto Options, select 'Show Taskbar'

There is a built-in keyboard shortcut to do this step: just press Shift+Escape.

deus-ex

skyjake wrote: »

There is a built-in keyboard shortcut to do this step: just press Shift+Escape.

Interesting, I wasn't aware. This shortcut is not available in the ingame configuration menu, therefore I added my own global shortcut to the bindings.cfg. This shortcut should be added to the ingame shortcuts menu.

Also, a graphical dialog to list and edit the global launcher shortcuts is missing.

skyjake

Editing the global shortcuts would be useful, I agree. I added this to the tracker (with some notes): https://tracker.dengine.net/issues/2286

paraemuladores

Thanks a lot to everyone for all the info, It worked like a charm!! Now the music sounds a lot like Heretic's original music!! Thanks a lot, guys!!