Daggerfall .HMI files by D/Generation at 4:22 AM EDT on October 14, 2016
I'm looking to record Daggerfalls .HMI music, but using the original bank files (MELODIC.BNK, DRUM.BNK) not general midi. I realize that winamp and foobar2000 can play these but I don't think they support the bank files.
I've searched all over, and there doesn't appear to be any program, DOS or otherwise, which will play these back appropriately. Any help?
EDIT: Maybe support for .HMI could be added into Hoot?
The original bank files were most likely the Fat Man patch set, since that's what most HMI sound system games distributed. That set is included in the Adplug driver of foo_midi, if you prefer it.
by D/Generation at 10:07 PM EDT on October 14, 2016
Is there any way to check the exact differences between banks? I'm comparing the music to dosbox output and it sounds quite different.
I am able to play them using the HMI setup what sounds to be correctly, but it is time consuming to rename each of the 133 files to TEST.HMI everytime and it also loops the tracks.
You also need to set Adlmidi to the correct sound bank. The closest match on set is the OP3 (The Fat Man 2op set). Several other sets use some or all of the same instruments but not the same drums.
I will probably end up adding the Daggerfall banks to the HMI set list anyway, even if the majority of the instruments are identical to existing sets. Thankfully, the instrument selection and storage system handles redundancy by remapping instruments into other sets. Not like it really matters, since they're quite small, but it's still a compression of 12 bytes down to 2 bytes (instrument number), and pseudo two op and two op instruments take up two of those 12 byte instruments and 2 instrument numbers per preset. Then each bank of 128 melodic and 128 drums contain 2 byte preset numbers. Multiple levels of data abstraction, all care of Bisqwit, and added on to by myself and possibly others.
I've asked about HMI and Hoot way earlier, but unfortunately that music driver uses protected mode, something Hoot doesn't emulate. There's a command line HMI player, so you might have more luck with that + Dosbox.
by D/Generation at 6:22 PM EDT on October 15, 2016
@kode54
Yes, I'm using that sound bank but those missing instruments really make a difference, so It might be better if I wait for support to be added in. Unfortunately, I don't understand much of the technical side of the files.
@Knurek
Ah, that makes sense. Could you point me in the direction of the player? There is a windows player made by HMI, however I haven't been able to get it to work because it requires a PCM rom file.