FMS - FAR Music System v1.00à5 ============================== (c) Copyright 1993 TDS Inc. FARPLAY ======= FARPLAY uses the FMS engine for playback. The FMS engine is being developed by Mattias Larsson/Traveller of TDS Inc. The FMS engine will be released as an .OBJ file as soon as it works correctly. No need to rip the player out of this file as it will be released within a few weeks as a freeware player (maybe cardware) for use by anyone. All code was made with Turbo Assembler 3.0, and it's written in Real-mode 386 code. It should run without problem in V86 mode (with QEMM, EMM386, multitaskers etc), but it won't run on a 286 computer. Why run it on a 286 computer anyway? The FMS engine has a few interesting features: þ Clock, indicating 1/100 seconds since the FAR module began playing. Useful when you want to synchronize music and objects in a demo. þ Support for bopbars. Useful for VU meters and alike. þ Uses very little memory þ Uses hardly any CPU time Note: This feature list is not applicable on alpha versions. Since this is an alpha version it's not optimized fully yet. The ready version will probably only take 2KB memory. There are lots of bugs in this version. Here is a list of all known bugs: þ Octave 2,3 does not sound correctly (I just found out that octave 0,1 does not sound correctly either ). This is because of a small problem I have with the frequency table. Here it is: fu_Freq dw 4288,4546,4816,5102,5406,5728,6068,6430,6812,7216,7646,8100 ; 2 dw 08576,09092,09632,10204,10812,11456,12136,12860,13624,14432,15292,16200 ; 3 dw 17152,18184,19264,20408,21624,22912,24272,25720,27248,28864,30584,32400 ; 4 dw 34304,36368,38528,40816,43248,45824,48544,51440,54496,57728,61168,64800 The first line is C-0 to B-0, the next C-1 to B-1 etc. If someone please could help me making a correct table it would be greatly appreciated. This table was calculated from a table in an old GWBASIC manual Some of the values are too high to be correct (44100>). þ Finetempo up/down is not correctly implemented yet. It is implemented but I belive it finetunes in to large steps. þ There is no UltraClick removal implemented. I will implement this as soon as the player works satisfactory. þ You may get a memory deallocation error when exiting. þ It has not been tested with 16 bit samples. Although it SHOULD support 16 bit samples, there is no guarantee that it does. Hopefully, the soundcard I ordered with 16bit sampling will arrive shortly, and then I will have the possibility to try it out! þ It has the same restrictions as FAR 0.8B, for example, samples can not be more than 64KB. It does not support 256 samples (just like FAR 0.8B. Daniel potter has made a big mistake, and made a bitmap for the samples that only supports 64 samples if I'm not mistaken) þ Treble does sound distorted sometime. This has something to do with GUS, and I do not know what it is. Any help is appreciated! Besides all of this it works quite well. I've tested it with THUNDDRM.FAR and NOANSWER.FAR plus a few .MOD's converted to .FAR. If you find a FAR that does not work with FMS, please tell me where I can find the FAR (ftp, fidonet-freq or modem v.32"). I will try to add Beeper and D/A support in the future. SB support will not be implemented as I do not have the money to buy a SB programmers guide from Creative Labs. If someone sends me one, maybe I'll include support. (Who uses a SB today anyway?) Bugs fixed since first public release: þ Tempo has been corrected. It showed up that I had set the tempo far too slow. I think it's somewhat better now. þ The problem that screwed up a few modules is solved (I think). It showed up that when I entered and exited FAR.EXE, the modules would sound as they should. After consulting the SDK and ULTRADOX I found out that my reset routines were incomplete. It has been fixed anyway! If you want to get in touch with the author (Mattias Larsson) or TDS Inc, write a letter to any of these addresses: TDS Inc. FidoNet: 2:203/219 Mattias Larsson VirNet: 9:463/220 Blaklintsvagen 20 SBCnet: 14:1700/204 S-445 57 SURTE e-mail: Mattias_Larsson@tds.bbs.bad.se SWEDEN Please send us bugs-reports, help and .FAR modules! (If you send FAR modules, UUENCODE them and split them into 32K chunks. Please only e-mail FARs, do not send them via FidoNet/SBCnet or VirNet as these networks does not allow filetransfers via netmail) Greetings: ========== Andreas Henning - Thanks for FTPing this to epas! Yodel - Where's our .MOD? Daniel Potter - There's lots of bugs in your .FAR format. It took me a few hours to debug it. Also, you have lots of redundant information (No, I do not mean the editing information!)