RazRez Music Player Version 4 'The ACC version' Written by Wheee the fibble of Top Notch ~24/09/92 Liff ----- Don't you just hate having to search through chip music for that tune to go with your new screen/game/program? Don't you hate it when the music player you're using doesn't recognise a music driver and won't let you play it, or doesn't recognise the file because it's packed? Well, you're troubles are over! Just run my high quality music player and your problems will fade to shadowy memories in seconds! Anyway... About ------ I wrote this program after becoming really annoyed at having to search through piles of disks to find any given piece of music seeing as the music players I had previously only dealt with one type (usually mad max) and didn't depack. So, being the nice chap I am, I took it upon myself to rectify the situation. Features --------- The program will recognise and play the following music drivers: Mad Max Count Zero Chrispy Noodle Lap (1990, 1991 and 'one scanline') Big Alec ('offbeat' and 'delta force' types) Synth-Dream 'SMF'/'MUF' (miscellaneous '+4' types) LTK Megatizer Zound-Dragger Undead TAO (chip and digidrum) Ralph (chip and digidrum) Xenex TriMod (Tristar music converted with Eagles high quality utility) Nexus Ben Daglish (sort of) It will also depack files packed with the following packers: Ice v2.4 Fire v2.0 Atomik v3.5 Automation v5.01 Usage ------ Most of the program is pretty straight forward (load, exit etc), but I'll give a brief rundown of the less obvious parts. The box a the very top of the dialogue which says 'RazRez Music Player v4' can be clicked on. After clicking on it an alert box will come up with some credits and buttons. 'TSR On' and 'TSR off' refer to what happens when you click on the 'EXIT' button on the main dialogue. If you click on 'TSR on' you will enable the Terminate and stay resident feature. This means that when you exit, the music, if possible*, will keep playing. Surprisingly, 'TSR off' will disable it again (the default mode). The text lines containing the type and size of the music file are only updated AFTER you click on 'PLAY'. * Only some types will stay resident. Any 'suspicious' drivers or those with digidrums are always turned off. Notes ------ Sometimes the program seems to ignore a disk-swap. You sometimes change disk and select a file, but it fails to load it. It seems to be a GEMDOS error 'cos I can't see why my program would do this. If it happens, just select the file again and it'll work ok. When playing some types of digidrum music, the mousebuttons can stop working. The way to get around this is to click on whatever button you want, then move the mouse quickly to one side or the other. If you have TSR enabled, then DO NOT CHANGE RESOLUTION! Seeing as my program loses control of the music once you press 'EXIT' the tune will continue playing when you change res and could find the old memory block erased by a new accessory. The music number will go upto 24. This is to allow you to play the music from 'The Killing Game Show' by Count Zero. Be warned that you can reset your machine by trying to play Mad Max files with music numbers greater than 15! This isn't a problem with any other drivers seeing as they are all checked for. Sometimes the double-click will be disabled after playing some digidrum music (usually Synth Dream). Until I figure out why you'll just have to put up with it. Technical ---------- The program is now written in 100% assembly. This was done for several reasons. Firstly, the previous STOS versions were all about 50k, or 15 packed music files, in size. Secondly, I wanted to make it into an ACC and C, GFA and Pascal all had various drawbacks and problems. Thirdly, I thought GEM wouldn't be too much of a pain to program using DEVPAC's macros, but I was sadly mistaken... The memory block you are given is 50k long. This ought to be sufficient for any music files currently going around. I suppose when some more musicians start using Falcons (perhaps that should be 'if') the size of music files will go up, but until then it should cover most music files. 50k may cuase half-meggers some problems I suppose, but what do I care? I may alter the program in the next update so that it checks the filename and sets the size of the block accordingly, ie 'RAZREZ90.ACC' would give a 90k block or 'RAZREZ30.ACC' would give a 30k block. Or then again, I might just leave it the way it is. The music is usually dumped on the VBL queue at $4D2. A couple of the drivers, Lap 'one scanline' stuff for instance, also bugger up other locations, but if they do, they all get restored when you stop the music. I'm not sure if desk ACC's ever get relocated after they are installed. I've ran various programs with the ACC in and they all seem to work ok, but one can never really be sure. The programs I've tried it with are: DEVPAC, Turbo ASM, HighSpeed Pascal, Warp 9, Universal Fileselector, Quick ST, First Word, ProText, Redactuer, Degas Elite, Disk Doctor, Knife ST, Wercs and a host of others, so I suspect it's pretty safe. I've also tried it on various different TOS and memory configurations with no problems whatsoever. The relocation would cause a problem because I only calculate the addresses needed when the accessory is first installed and relocation would cause some severe problems. The program always assumes you are in 50Hz. I had toyed with the idea of making it force the frequency, but I decided it wasn't worth it. The program will run in mono, but of course the music will be rather fast. After the fileselector is closed, the program will hang around for a while doing nothing. This was the only way I could make it redraw all of the GEM windows before drawing up the dialogue box again. It makes a call to evnt_timer for about 1 second and then continues, which is long enough to update 4 windows in low-res. I'm still trying to figure out a better way of doing it, but until then it'll need to do. Please ------- Please please please can people stop using any old extension for chip music! Please try to stick to the following conventions: MUS : chip music MUD : digidrum music MUF or SMF : bizarre '+4' types (Whittakers etc). My program will recognise '.MUF' and '.SMF' extensions, but hopefully '.SMF' will be replaced (are you reading this Genesis Inc.?). You may wonder at my banging on about this, but it makes life so nice and jolly when you can have "*.MU?" to list all of your music files. Imagine if people used random extensions for modules and pictures - a NEO file could be a tracker module or you could be loading PI1's into ProTracker. Everyone manages to stick to .MOD, .NEO, .PI1 etc so why not the same with music files? Would the world fall apart? Would the Earth be struck by a giant meteor? I don't think so. I apologise to the English-speaking community out there who may question the "MUF" extension - it's unfortunate I know, but what the hell, I don't care (what a rebel...) Legalities ----------- This program is public domain and may be freely copied and spread providing this doc is kept with it (some chance...), but the code remains copyright to me. Also, I am in no way responsible for any damage resulting in the use or misuse of this program, so if you try and play that new bit of digidrum music you found and it resets losing your valuable source which your had almost got around to saving, then tough. Me --- If you want to get in touch, maybe you have a driver to add, then please get in touch. Write to: Billy Allan, 66 Highmains Ave, Dumbarton, Scotland, G82 2PT.