Overwritten.net
Community => Art => Topic started by: Quemaqua on Sunday, January 18, 2009, 10:47:49 PM
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So probably nobody will even read this stupid thread except me, but I had to share my utter joy.
Basically, back in the early to mid nineties, I played tons of Epic games. This was back when Epic was known as Epic Megagames and had hits like Epic Pinball, One Must Fall 2097, and Jazz Jackrabbit captivating all of us DOS users for hours on end. Because of this, a friend and I fell in love with the style of music used in so many of the things, and we began to take an overall interest in tracked music because of that. So this is super nostalgic stuff for me, and I love a lot of it to this day, and just the way tracked music from that era sounds. The popular formats were MOD (the general format), S3M (ScreamTracker 3.2 format), and PSM (Protracker Studio Module or something like that). XM (Cubic) was also around.
Anyway, last night I'm playing the copy of Lumines Supernova I downloaded on my PS3, and I see that they have a sequencer thingy you can play with to make your own music. It's a little goofy and certainly not all that fleshed out, but I had so much fun messing with it, it made me want a real tracker program again so bad I couldn't stand it. I'd tried getting ScreamTracker going before, but this was a program that came out in 1993 for DOS, and I hadn't had any luck getting it going with either VDMS or DOSbox. But I decided to try again, and after much fiddling with both programs, I finally managed to get it going. I got it working in VDMS, but the sound was borked, so I tried again with DOSbox and eventually got it going in full.
(http://www.theflyingmonkeyapparatus.com/music/ST302.jpg)
(http://www.theflyingmonkeyapparatus.com/music/ST301.jpg)
Then I stayed up 'till about 3 in the morning fucking with it. MAN I LOVE THIS STUFF. And here is a little something I came up with based on the Epic Pinball theme's general concept (it uses the same instruments, as those were all the samples I had at the time).
Quemaqua - The Redolent Inferential (http://www.theflyingmonkeyapparatus.com/music/Quemaqua - The Redolent Inferential.S3M)
EDIT - Quemaqua - Reboot Interrupt (http://www.theflyingmonkeyapparatus.com/music/Quemaqua - Reboot Interrupt.S3M)
EDIT x2 - Quemaqua - The Dwarfening (http://www.theflyingmonkeyapparatus.com/music/Quemaqua - The Dwarfening.IT)
I don't know exactly what you need to play these things. I think the more current versions of Winamp support MOD and S3M, though mine needed the plugin detailed below because I use a much older version. The Cubic player was what I always used to use back in the DOS days, as the thing was fucking brilliant, but it's probably a little... obtuse for the average user now. I don't know anything about XMPlay, the last option, but that seems to be pretty modern and to support a wide variety of stuff.
Anyway, check it out! I'll probably do some more stuff in the near future as I love this program like crazy. If so, I'll toss it up on here for whoever might care.
http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details/79320
http://www.cubic.org/player/
http://www.un4seen.com/xmplay.html
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Jazz Jackrabbit... man that brings back memories.
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Winamp 5 plays it just fine and it was pretty neat, I liked it.
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Thanks! I know VLC plays MOD files (not S3M, I don't think), but it couldn't get the speed right when I did it as a MOD, so it was really slow. Winamp 2 with the listed plugin works like a charm, though, and I did seem to remember Winamp 5 having native support. I can't even remember why I use the older version. There was a reason at some point.
EDIT - And here's another!
Quemaqua - Reboot Interrupt (http://www.theflyingmonkeyapparatus.com/music/Quemaqua - Reboot Interrupt.S3M)
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It is complete. Experience... The Dwarfening (http://www.theflyingmonkeyapparatus.com/music/Quemaqua - The Dwarfening.IT). 9 minutes of Epic Dwarfness.