A discussion on restoring EQ's music once and for all

[mgellan]

Originally Posted by Gamkek [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Man, this is exciting! Carry on, brother.

Makes me kick myself for all the times I tossed out or gave away old hardware thinking, "There's no way I'll ever use this again..." [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah, I've done that a few times and regretted it so now I'm a packrat - lucky old boards don't take too much room [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Win98 is loaded and running, just bought a dual RCA - phono cable (damned AWE64 has R/L phono plugs) at lunch to hook it up. I'll run the phono into my netbook for recording, probably easier than trying to get the P166 to play and record reliably! I should just be loading the MID files from the site and playing them right?

Regards,
Mg

[doacleric]

Originally Posted by rikustrength [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Again, I would like some clarity on the situation (and in game if that's possible, but we'll talk about that later).

Is the current goal to find a way to accurately play the old midis in their HQ version, and record it as new easily playable mp3's? And if that is the goal, how then will our current client read them if the current files in place are all .xmi? Won't it not read a like-named file if it's extension is different?

On that note, would the SB Live! previously mentioned do the trick? Or is that something that's most likely going to only work on older computers... Just looking for an answer, I wouldn't mind shelling out a few dollars for those rad tunes.

The current goal is to try to get an old EQ client to playback the original music so that it can be recorded and enjoyed. There is NO way that the current Titanium client will be able to playback the original music correctly, even if an AWE/Live soundcard is installed in the computer. That functionality has been long since removed by the original developers.

In addition, there is no way (to my knowledge) to make the current client playback mp3's the way it plays back the xmi files. Each xmi file doesn't store just one midi tune, but stores several tunes that are to be played back in each zone. For example, Gfaydark.xmi has several songs - one that plays in front of Felwithe, one that plays in front of Crushbone, one that plays around the Kelethin area, and another that plays by the wizard spires (to name a few).

Yes, you can create a file named gfaydark.mp3, but my guess is that it will simply play that file every time you enter that zone, throughout the entire zone. Thus, you will be limited to one song per zone, and it will play no matter where you are in the zone. I don't believe this is the effect that most people want.

In addition, there is no way to get back the "situational" songs that play, such as the boat theme that plays when you board a ship. Combat music should work fine though.

[doacleric]

Originally Posted by mgellan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah, I've done that a few times and regretted it so now I'm a packrat - lucky old boards don't take too much room [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Win98 is loaded and running, just bought a dual RCA - phono cable (damned AWE64 has R/L phono plugs) at lunch to hook it up. I'll run the phono into my netbook for recording, probably easier than trying to get the P166 to play and record reliably! I should just be loading the MID files from the site and playing them right?

Regards,
Mg

First of all, you don't want to be playing back any MID files, period. Those MID files could only have been obtained using an XMI -> MID converter, which changes the tempo and pitch of the music. Not something we want. You would need an app that can playback the original XMI files directly, without any conversion.

Next, you would need to upload the EQ soundfont file into the AWE's soundbank, and then playback the XMI music. The thing is, i've already done this exact thing, and the recorded MP3's in the previous links that you guys have been listening to are the result of that effort. There is no reason to do that again...

What we REALLY need to do, is to get an old EQ client (1999-2000 era) to playback the music directly, instead of using an outside program. This way any modifications/enhancements (if any) that the EQ client makes to the music can be heard and recorded. The client has its own way of loading the soundfont files, so you won't need to do that.

The trick here is to actually get into the game on an old client to listen to the music. You would need to find an old version of eqemu, or possibly eternalquest to run to log into the old client. Thus, you would have to run your own server and probably use a minilogin to get in. However, once in, recording the music should be a trivial task.

[apio]

maybe someone remembers this:

there used to be a way to "hack" the tutorial portion of the game to load any zone u wanted. I remember using it to take a peek into Plane of Fear back in the day. The zone would load, ofcourse devoid of mobs, and you were able to run around. I am pretty sure that the music worked fine when you loaded it that way.

This might be a way to actually get the files to play without "logging" in to the game, and it would work with the old client, without using an Emulator.

So if you actually find a way to playback the correct files on P1999, above solution would provide with a way to actually enter the zones and playback the midi files to record them.

I did a small google search on it and i couldnt find it yet, but ill keep looking

edit: it was called EQ Zone Viewer
edit2: here a reference to it on the eqemu forums, unfortunately the Download Link is broken but maybe you can contact the guy who started the topic, he seems to have a copy of the executable.

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/sho...d.php?p=131603

[Dac321]

Originally Posted by binibren [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There may be an easier solution. If you can find someone with old hardware and an AWE32 -- I just tossed mine about 6 months ago [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] -- you can run all of the midis through winamp and output them to mp3 files. You can then replace the sound files in Titanium. It's been a while since I've messed around with the Titanium client but I *think* it supports both mp3 and midi.

For those who were not so lucky as to have played EQ with an AWE32 here is what Kelethin sounded like with that magical sound card:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atHxsHPt7Fc

Here is Kelethin with "normal" sound card:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO4_8A9Uiwg

I honestly didn't even know it was suppose to sound that good back in '99.. I figured it was suppose to sound like it was from a 1984 Casio keyboard..

The AWE32 really brought that music to life.

[mgellan]

Originally Posted by doacleric [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The trick here is to actually get into the game on an old client to listen to the music. You would need to find an old version of eqemu, or possibly eternalquest to run to log into the old client. Thus, you would have to run your own server and probably use a minilogin to get in. However, once in, recording the music should be a trivial task.

Does anyone have an original CD that can they can iso? I can't find my original Kunark disk, still looking tho. What client did the original eqemu use, any idea? Pretty sure it was Trilogy?

Regards,
Mg

[doacleric]

Originally Posted by apio [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

maybe someone remembers this:

there used to be a way to "hack" the tutorial portion of the game to load any zone u wanted. I remember using it to take a peek into Plane of Fear back in the day. The zone would load, ofcourse devoid of mobs, and you were able to run around. I am pretty sure that the music worked fine when you loaded it that way.

This might be a way to actually get the files to play without "logging" in to the game, and it would work with the old client, without using an Emulator.

So if you actually find a way to playback the correct files on P1999, above solution would provide with a way to actually enter the zones and playback the midi files to record them.

I did a small google search on it and i couldnt find it yet, but ill keep looking

edit: it was called EQ Zone Viewer
edit2: here a reference to it on the eqemu forums, unfortunately the Download Link is broken but maybe you can contact the guy who started the topic, he seems to have a copy of the executable.

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/sho...d.php?p=131603

I don't believe this will work. Music support was not added into the game until after EQ was launched. The tutorial exe is dated Feb 1999, which more than likely does not have music playback ability. And in general, the tutorial client is very very stripped down anyway.

[doacleric]

Originally Posted by mgellan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Does anyone have an original CD that can they can iso? I can't find my original Kunark disk, still looking tho. What client did the original eqemu use, any idea? Pretty sure it was Trilogy?

Regards,
Mg

I certainly do have an original CD, as well as original Kunark and original Velious. But more than needing these CD's, you need to find a version of an emu that is able to log into a 1999-2000 era client. Finding the emu, database, and then a copy of the correct dated client files will be a difficult task indeed.

[Dac321]

If you notice from the original MIDI to the recreations of what current sound cards make the trumpets (or must horn instruments) and violin are sampled or replaced with a synthesized version. I don't know how to reverse it though. =/

[FatMagic]

I have the Beta 4 CD, Original EQ, Kunark & Velious CD's if anyone needs ISO's of them for this project. That's about all I can contribute [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]