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From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: MIDI (was Re: They're Making A New Doom)
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2024 11:51:15 -0400
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On Wed, 12 Jun 2024 08:57:08 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

>On Wed, 12 Jun 2024 00:08:38 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
>
>>Dune 1 (adventure) had memorable MIDI music to me from my original SB 
>>ISA card even though I didn't like adventure games.
>
>Dune 1 had an excellent soundtrack, even on the SoundBlaster.
>
>>Does anyone remember iMuse in LucasGames like in Star Wars games? 
>>That one was amazing even with FM MIDI!
>
>I remember being impressed with how well the Star Wars theme sounded
>in Dark Forces. I don't remember if it used iMuse but I think it did.

I didn't remember "Dark Forces" using iMuse but I just fired it up,
and yeah, the 'interactive' music is definitely in evidence. It's a
far better use of the system than "X-Wing", which had such a tiny
selection of song-snippets that everything started to sound the same.
There's much more variation in "Dark Forces".

Of course, iMuse didn't really have much to do how the music
/sounded/. It was just a virtual composing system that altered what
music played depending on the action on the screen. Its biggest
'trick' was that it had a myriad of short cues that interconnected the
longer pieces that made the transitions almost seamless. Actual
quality of sound was much more dependent on the human composer's
choice of instruments, the drivers (and the patch sets used), and the
hardware itself.

 AFAIK, iMuse just output its music composition to the sound drivers
(originally included as a separate binary written by the company that
was nominally part of iMuse but really its own code. Later LucasArts
outsourced the soundcard drivers just like everyone else and used a
third-party system rather than try to program support for all the
hundreds of sound-cards that were on the market).

Honestly, I can't personally remember being all that impressed by how
the Star Wars games sounded using the SoundBlaster's FM synth over any
other game. Was it cool to hear the Star Wars fanfare coming out of my
computer speakers? Sure. Did it sound better than the beeps and boops
of the PC speaker? Undeniably. But it was still the same rough-edged
OPL3-powered synth sounds as any other game. 

Now... with a Roland or a wave-table synth.... NOW you had some good
sounding music. ;-)