Beneath a Steel Sky floppy intro with SoundFonts

This is a demonstration of using SoundFonts with ScummVM on Windows, WITHOUT the need for SoundFont compatible hardware.

How to do it? Here, I wrote a guide: http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=6303 . If you have trouble getting it to work, post on the forum, not here.

What you're watching: The alternative (aka floppy disk) introduction to Beneath a Steel Sky freeware PC CD-ROM version played on ScummVM 0.12.0 Windows with the music played on Shan's SGM-V2.01 General MIDI SoundFont.

The angle: Instead of Adlib or MT-32 emulation, the Windows MIDI music driver is used and the MIDI data routed to a software synthesizer capable of playing SoundFonts. ScummVM has integrated support for SoundFonts but it's not available on the Windows platform. Of course you can use SoundFonts on Windows if you have compatible hardware but what if you don't? This is a way around it.

Info on the source material: Beneath a Steel Sky is a cyberpunk point'n'click adventure game by Revolution Software, originally released in 1994 for DOS, Amiga and CD32. In August 2003, the game was released as freeware and support for it was added to ScummVM, allowing it to be played on a number of operating systems and platforms. /raina

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• ScummVM
• SoundFont
• Windows
• MIDI

[zackpliskin]

Great game. I like both the "campfire" intro with the raid on the Gap and the "copter" intro. I wonder if there's a way to get both?

[Lotta383]

You could probably see them both sequentially by hacking the game scripts or ScummVM.

/raina

[TenMirrorsAndKills]

best game for IBM^^

i love BASS

[igorbog88]

Using roland virtual sound canvas as default midi device sounds more natual imo... you dont get the higher quality sounds you hear here, but sounds more "like it should".

Shan's soundfont is second alternative for my soundfonts in most games after rvsc and the yamaha softsynthesizer (which audibly hums and crackles even with 4mb soundfont)

[Lebostein1]

Sounds horrible! I am feel better to hear MIDI music with unrealistic instrument sounds. This sound font emulation is near the uncanny valley (see wikipedia: Uncanny_valley) of music.

[Meile3]

Ich hab das Spiel gespielt. Es war super.

I've played the game. It was great.

[marcoenh]

if you add "alt_intro=true" in your scummvm config file in the "[sky]" section you will always get the floppy intro.

[Nikioko]

Nice. Unfortunately I never got this music

[MattWindsor91]

Great... too bad I've always played the CD version, so I never got to see the floppy intro, which IMO is far better >.>

[Wales8686]

Amazing game ! I've loved it !