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Many Pocket PC games contain “tracked” “module” music that are very easy to be extracted and listened to without actually running the game. Just run a search for “tracked” in my games reviews (or follow this link).

In my article on listening to the .MOD tracked files of the great shoot’m up game Enslave, I’ve already elaborated on the quite Spartan and MOD-only JT MOD Player 1.0. In the current article, I elaborate on the latest developments in the Pocket PC world as far as playing back tracked music is concerned. In the second section, I also explain how you can use the tutorial to listen to the great tracked music of Astraware’s hugely popular Bejeweled (2).

There are a lot of tracked file formats; .MOD used by Enslave is only one of them. The above-mentioned JT MOD Player doesn’t handle any else (for example s3m / Impulse Tracker) formats. Neither does, unfortunately, CorePlayer (the commercial successor to the best Pocket PC all-in-one multimedia player TCPMP) or any other “traditional” Pocket PC music / media player (without additional plug-ins, that is).

On the Pocket PC, there are two tracked music playback tools (not counting in the mod-only JT MOD Player): MilkyPlay and Zerker’s MortPlayer / GSPlayer plug-in.

MilkyPlay

This free standalone player plays almost all the existing other tracked formats (to see the list of the supported files, see this, this and this), except for, unfortunately, Impulse Tracker (*.IT) files. This means, for example, it has no problems with Bejweleled’s .s3m music. It, however, can’t play back Bejweleled 2’s Impulse Tracker (.IT) music.

To make MilkyPlay work, just download the archive here or here (not available on pocketpcfreewares.com and the original homepage doesn’t work) and transfer MilkyPlay (ARM).exe to anywhere on your Pocket PC. Start it, go to the Playlist menu and, in the upper frame, find and, then, select the files (you can use mass-selection in a directory with the All button and also scan for files). After adding the files, you can safely play them.

It’s worth pointing out that another very important, free (!) product of the same author is Milkytracker, a fully-fledged, highly recommended module tracker for all computing platforms (for example, even the Sharp Zaurus / Amiga OS4), including the Pocket PC (!).

(here, it shows the Bejeweled 2 music loaded in on the Pocket PC; a screenshot of the configuration screen is here)

Zerker’s MortPlayer / GSPlayer plug-in

This title, as opposed to MilkyPlay, is a plug-in into either MortPlayer or GSPlayer (two high-quality multimedia players for the Pocket PC I’ve often elaborated on; see for example the Midi Playback Bible and the Bluetooth remote control (AVRCP) Bible).

It can play back Impulse Tracker (.it) tracks (and has no problem with the Bejeweled 2 music). It, however, can’t play back some other module types (see the list of the supported types here and compare it to that of MilkyPlay.)

The installation is easy: just follow the quick tutorial on the just-linked homepage and copy the two provided DLL files to the player’s home directory.

CPU usage

Fortunately, these two players don’t consume much CPU cycles; the CPU usage is around 10-11%, which is about the same as with standard MP3 playback (also see the figures here (the “CPU usage: no equalizer / DSP's” row in the chart here)) with the built-in WMP, slightly larger than with TCPMP and considerably larger than with iPlay BUT lower than MortPlayer and considerably lower than with Conduits Pocket Player.

Conversion to WAV / other formats

You may also want to convert your module files to WAV files to, then, reconvert it to MP3/ WMA / OGG / anything to avoid the need to stick to a second media player to play your Module files. Unfortunately, MilkyTracker isn’t able to export WAV files; however, it’s able to read .IT files and it saves all files in the very common .XM format, which is already digestable by MilkyPlay.

Note that the PPC version of MilkyTracker is also able to load .IT files as can also be seen here. Using a full tracker to play back a file is, however, a real overkill. It, however, is also able to do the above-mentioned trick of the desktop version: it’s able to load .IT files and, then, export them as .XM files, which can already be played back with MilkyPlay. A really excellent and useful program, even if you don't plan to actively use it as a tracker, just as a file converter!

If you’re ready to fight with making MS-DOS programs run under XP, convert the file with the original MS-DOS version of Impulse Tracker (also see this on making it work under Windows) to WAV file for further conversion.

Now, let’s move on to explaining where the music files of Bejeweled (2) are to be found.

Ever wondered how you can listen to the in-game music of Bejeweled (2) while not playing?

Many of you may already know Astraware’s Bejeweled and Bejeweled 2, the most famous Pocket PC (and Palm OS) titles of the Color Matching game category.

Both these titles have really excellent in-game music. The music of the first part was entirely composed by well-known Finnish musician Skaven aka Peter Hajba), the composer of the PC FPS megahit Unreal, well-known for its excellent music and sound. The music track (which is over 30 minutes long!) of Bejeweled 2 has been co-authored by him.

If you’d like to listen to these music tracks while not playing the game actively, just do the following:

get the games and install them

go to the home directory of the two titles (\Program Files\Astraware\Bejeweled\ and \Program Files\Astraware\Bejeweled2\ for the two titles when installed to the main storage)

with part I, the three tracked music files are named Bejeweled-music*.s3m, where * is either 1, 2 or 3. They can be played back with both reviewed applications

with part II, the over 30-minute-long music track is bejeweled2-music.it. As has been explained, you’ll need either Zerker’s plug-in to natively play it back or convert it to .XM to be played back in MilkyPlay.

BTW, as some additional information on the two games on both the Pocket PC and Palm OS multimedia-wise, following is a quick comparison of the latest versions: