Observations

Simon · Post by **Simon** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 3:56 am

Yesterday I started playing Dungeon Master again, using the Chaos Strikes Back For Doze/Linux. I first played it on the Amiga, and although it's based on Atari, here are some observations I made:

1) There is no sound for 'War Cry'. Amiga version would go 'Yeaaaaar!'

2) The amount you can carry depends on your stamina. On the amiga version, it would not be a sliding scale - you'd always be able to carry the same amount regardless of your stamina, until it drops to a certain level. It seems that on this (perhaps because it's based on csb?) that the maximum amount you can carry changes all the time if your stamina changes.

3) There is no moving sound for monsters. This was perhaps the most atmospheric of all the things in DM. Each monster would have a different sound, from the 'dun-dun' of mummies, to the slimey noises of those green things on level 4 (5?).

4) Spell sounds. When monsters cast spells, there is no sound. If I remember correctly, it used to play the sound the same as cast 'zo' magical door - when the spell hits the wall it makes a spell sound. Not sure about this.

5) The horn of fear had it's own sound when it was blown.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 4:55 am

I think a lot of these things got dropped because of the
limitations in disk size and memory size on the Atari 512ST.
There are a lot of places in the code where it is clear
that memory size was on the minds of the programmers.
CSB was a smaller dungeon in physical size but it had
a lot more stuff in the dungeon. As I recall, they used
every last actuator that was available.

Does anyone know if the CSB graphics file has data
for the monster movement sounds? The sound driver
has provision for playing each of the sounds at two
volume levels. And does anyone have the sounds
themselves? Maybe someday we could wiggle them into
the code.

The Warcry should be easy if someone can supply the
sound itself.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 9:06 am

Gambit had these sounds for use with RTC - or perhaps someone could rip the sounds directly from the graphics.dat of the amiga version?

stamina - i can't say for certain, but i don't think the mechanics are different between the two...i do remember the levelling with the amiga that after a certain point you lost weight, it wasn't tied...but i also remmebr that the stats also fluctuated with 'adreniline' - i think a bug, where fatigue should have reduced your capacity, but actually increased it because of a mis-placed plus/minus. Because of this boost maybe you are taking the unnatural level as a normal state, and so when it slowly drops back, you think that you are being affected by a stamina sliding scale, when its not

what is different with stamina is how food affects it...i'm sure the atari version seems more severe than the others. In amiga/PC, no food/water = a natural half stamina level, and no food or water = no stamina...in CSB4win it seems to want to go to the no stamina state when you lose either - perhaps i'm justplayign with more powerful characters b ythe time lack of food becaomes a problem (more stamina used up to restore stats)

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 12:17 pm

I remember those being ripped looooong ago from the Amiga as they were in a raw format. I loaded up one of the dat files into a sound player as raw data on my Amiga one time and they were all there. For DM 2 it was particualrly easy as well. In fact the music for amiga was also a sinch since they are all MODs.

wish I had my Amiga still plugged in and my disks in order. I woulda uploaded them.

I did grab them from Alandale once upon a time though and I put them.. erm wait.. the DM clone project (runs to look...) yep they are there..

http://enzofr.free.fr/files/DMSOUND.zip

Knew I had them at one point

moo

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 12:31 pm

figures.. LOL. They don't have the EEEYAAA or the horn sounds.. yet he had two that werent even in DM. Whip and oof. Everything else is there like the slime moving and the water and the duh duh as It's described above..

Go figure..

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 7:48 pm

Any idea what the whip was meant for? Special appearance of Indy? The "oof" sounds very familiar, are you sure it's not in one of the games at present? And the steps... remember them now - would be great to have them in, brings back the Amiga gameplay feeling now... *panic*

Regards, PitD

Post by **ChristopheF** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 8:32 pm

Here you can find all the sounds:
http://dmweb.free.fr/Sounds/

These are .wav files directly extracted from graphics.dat using my script available on the site.

Paul, can you use these .wav files directly in CSBwin, or would you need to encode them in the same format as the Atari ST sounds?

This would make a fine addition to csbwin as many people who originally played the game on PC or Amiga have complained of the lack of these sounds in the forums.

PS: Paul, I can confirm that the movement, warcry and the horn of fear sounds are not included in the graphics.dat files from the Atari ST versions of both DM and CSB.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 11:11 pm

My real question now is:

The monster data is also in the Graphic.dat. Do the
records contain some sort of indication as to whether
a sound should be played? When it should be played?
Which sound should be played?

I would prefer the encoded sounds. I will otherwise have
to undo whatever you did to convert them to .wav files.

Post by **Zyx** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 11:32 pm

About the monsters'sound, I confirm the gaphics.dat holds the information about which attack sound makes a monster.

I don't know about moving sound. And some monsters are special, like the knights, who can "double-attack". The double attack is a swoosh sound and I don't know if it can be changed by modifying the graphics.dat.

I am very interested in understanding the sound format. I more or less recall they're 6000Hz wav (without header) by looking at the sound code in the CSBwin sources. But I don't understand the C++ so it is very dim for me.

Rain's extractor creates file 0533 to 0555 which are the sound files. As they're almost the last files it should not be that difficult to add some more files to the graphics.dat, although it would require a little more investigation.

Simon · Post by **Simon** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 5:05 am

cowsmanaut wrote: wish I had my Amiga still plugged in and my disks in order. I woulda uploaded them.

Can you not use the ADF amiga disk image thingy and get them from there?

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:39 pm

I don't have any idea of how it could be extracted from an ADF...

it seems like the solutions I was intending to provide is uneeded as the sounds have been provided already as best as I could have possible done in the first place.. Thankfully so too as I'm not particularliy fond of the idea of rifeling through a large 1 meg or more file for a few tiny 8 bit sounds.

moo

Simon · Post by **Simon** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 3:32 pm

cowsmanaut wrote:I don't have any idea of how it could be extracted from an ADF...

it seems like the solutions I was intending to provide is uneeded as the sounds have been provided already as best as I could have possible done in the first place.. Thankfully so too as I'm not particularliy fond of the idea of rifeling through a large 1 meg or more file for a few tiny 8 bit sounds.

moo

I was thinking fire up workbench and find the file on the disk with the sounds in (graphics.dat perhaps from what I read above?) and then use an amiga tool to extract it somehow....? Afraid I don't know much about how the game stores its files :/

There is the last resort option of dumping the game sound in the amiga emulator to a file, and simply loading DM and playing the sounds, then editing the wav file it produces. It's not a 'clean' copy but it's better than nothing?

Post by **ChristopheF** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 7:28 pm

I will otherwise have to undo whatever you did to convert them to .wav files.

No, because I extracted the sounds from the PC version. The sounds in the Atari ST version are in another format (some ADPCM I think, but I never properly decoded these).

See here for the information I know: http://dmweb.free.fr/FFData.htm

So in conclusion, you cannot take the binary data of sounds in the graphics.dat file from another version of DM or CSB and "insert" them in the Atari data file. You must either encode the sounds yourself or use plain .wav files. If you choose to encode the sounds, you'll have to fully understand the format, and I'll be glad to complete my web page with more details about it.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 9:06 pm

Christophe: Thanks. I do understanmd because I had to
convert the Atari format to .wav format in the runtime.

others: I am still waiting to hear if the graphics.dat file contains
the information necessary to assoicate a sound with a monster.
And if so, where to find it.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 9:44 pm

I think if you ask zyx, I'm sure he's done it

Post by **Zyx** » Thu Jan 01, 2004 11:45 pm

Paul: the graphics.dat contains the info about which sound is associated to which monster attack.
I recommend you use the rain DMextractor and CSBedit to access this info.
1) Extract all the files from a gaphics.dat with DMextractor.
2) Edit the dmout.gil with the CSbedit
3) Go to monster, see the value in the sound zone.

Or edit the 559 file: the scorpion sound is the value 0x04 at offset #02A5)

Or hexedit the graphics.dat, look for the "THE" and "YOU" words. After these words is a zone full of 0x00 and then begins the info about monsters.

If this is not enough, I will try to point out the exact offsets in a given graphics.dat.

- Z - · Post by **- Z -** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 3:44 pm

Ooooh... please, please, please...

(holding breath)

Creature movement sounds. Ooooooh, please...
This would be so great.
Pleeeeeeease....

Say no more, saaay no more.

(Tapping for fake walls has already been implemented, I understand?)

Dungeon Master Forum

Observations

Observations

Movement sounds in CSBwin