From: Paul_Trauth@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US (Paul Trauth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.audio
Subject: Re: Monkey Island MODs
Distribution: world
Date: 14 Dec 92 21:08:32 CST
Organization: The Amiga GateWay BBS * New Orleans, La.

In a message dated Mon 14 Dec 92  1:01, Clueless@bradley.edu (mark Kristie)
wrote:

 CK> Matthias Krok (m_krok@tron.gun.de) wrote:

: -> MI2 is even less likely: Lucasfilm used their own, much-promoted
"iMus"
: -> music format, which sorta responds to what's going on in the game.

 CK> Apparently iMuse generates the music on the fly... That way its
 CK> supposed to 
 CK> make the music interesting and non-repetitive...  Unfortunately, it
 CK> sounds 
 CK> IMHO like it was designed for 8 voices or so, and is cutting out 4 of
 CK> them to
 CK> play on the Amy.... 

No, i think iMuse works *something* like this: the composer writes a bunch
of little chunks of music with certain flags attatched to 'em; then the
player sequences 'em up. It's like if you wrote a mod where certain
patterns could easily lead into several other patterns, then "manually"
chose the next pattern based on what's going on in the game, instead of
just following the list. (I had some ideas once for a game that would
assign a 'tension level' to the current situation, and have several
patterns available at each tension level to pick at random...)
You're right, though, it's definitely not written for a 4-voice system.
Sounds a lot like when you play a SMUS score with too many tracks - notes
get cut off awkwardly, and just dropped.

 CK> well,...  noise (not music)...  You know how playing music in most
 CK> games 
 CK> takes virtually no overhead (CPU wise) and is the least concern? 
 CK> Well, if you
 CK> load up IJ4, and move the pointer around before the music starts, it
 CK> moves 
 CK> quickly... then the music starts and I swear I thought I was using a
 CK> Mac... 
Ick! Fui! Must be doing some extra stuff in IJ4, 'coz the music in MI2
doesn't seem to affect the gameplay much... (unless an '010 would make a
difference, which i seriously doubt!)

 CK> Why don't
 CK> big companies take a look at, say, Hook and see that it is possible
 CK> to have
 CK> games like that run _quickly_ and _playably_ on a 68000 w/good
 CK> graphics and 
 CK> animation?  (If I ever saw a swinging door in a Sierra game or
 CK> LucasArts game,
 CK> with the same framerate etc, I would fall off my chair....)
Tell me about it. For some reason i just played through Larry 3 yesterday.
Ugh, framerate from hell. (I won't go into the substitution of random
player killing for real puzzles, as that's just Sierra's problem)
Because they don't give a @#$% about the Amiga, that's why. (Except
occasionally to ask the people on c.s.a.audio to write a theme.mod for
their game to puke out of a SoundWaster.)




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