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Music on Sierra-ish games (on PPC) - SoundManager, Quicktime issues?
Posted by: Byrd on 2023-04-24 17:06:04
Hi,

I'm getting a pile of games installed on some late PPC Macs (largely running Mac OS 9.1), and finding most of the Sierra adventure titles (eg. Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis) run fine but the music is very patchy, often muddled or with missing instruments.

Are there any work arounds - I note Sound Manager isn't installed by default with Mac OS 9.1 - should I try such an extension, or adjust something with Quicktime MIDI patches, etc? I've a Sound Canvas SC88 but find that works best on my PC.

Thanks

JB
Posted by: ArmorAlley on 2023-04-28 01:44:00
Do you have the same problems when you make a disk image of the CD and run the game from the mounted image?
Posted by: Byrd on 2023-04-28 02:13:41
Yes, CD image games like Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis speech is perfect however music has missing instruments or out of time.
Posted by: Phipli on 2023-04-28 03:10:23
Hi,

I'm getting a pile of games installed on some late PPC Macs (largely running Mac OS 9.1), and finding most of the Sierra adventure titles (eg. Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis) run fine but the music is very patchy, often muddled or with missing instruments.

Are there any work arounds - I note Sound Manager isn't installed by default with Mac OS 9.1 - should I try such an extension, or adjust something with Quicktime MIDI patches, etc? I've a Sound Canvas SC88 but find that works best on my PC.

Thanks

JB
With the age of some of the games you mentioned, I'm no sure that all, or possibly any of them use the more modern Sound Manager, or MIDI, or QuickTime Instruments. Do you know they do, or is a chance they are generating their own sound? Space Quest is surely too old for that sort of thing, Indiana Jones might support some of it (I've seen Lucas games that did support MIDI on mac I think), I'd have to read the manual.

The sound on really old games was sometimes done by directly manipulating the sound hardware / buffer on early macs and breaks compatibility with later machines. The other thing is... there is a chance it is just weird!

It doesn't sound great here, could be the emulator they're using :


I can try some of them on a IIcx later, if you want. Thats basically the original colour Mac hardware - 24bit ROM, basically the same platform as a Mac II but with an 030.

What Macs are you testing them on?
Posted by: Phipli on 2023-04-28 15:17:55
@Byrd

I dug out my IIcx and loaded Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis onto it.

Not sure if it is the version of the game, the 16MHz processor or a fault with my machine, but as with you, and the person emulating, it sound pretty bad :
Posted by: Phipli on 2023-04-28 15:31:18
Early versions of Monkey Island sound a bit better. There are three sound quality levels, the lowest is just beeps, the following is the middle setting and the IIcx can't cope with the high quality - the timing goes all over the shop.
Posted by: Phipli on 2023-04-28 16:38:15
And last of all, 16 colour Space Quest.

You must be using some kind of newer engine. This one wouldn't even run in System 7.1 in 24bit mode for me!

That might be the cause of your issue - are you using some kind of emulator on your PowerPC? ScummVM or something?
Posted by: Byrd on 2023-04-29 01:00:07
@Phipli thanks for the videos! It seems the faster the CPU and OS, the worse music becomes (missing instruments, out of time, etc). I'm trying to run various Lucasarts, Sierra adventures on a TAM with a G3 400Mhz at the moment. Clearly a compatibility issue but wondered if others had work arounds (eg. install an older version of Sound Manager extension, alter Quicktime music settings).
Posted by: Phipli on 2023-04-29 01:15:37
@Phipli thanks for the videos! It seems the faster the CPU and OS, the worse music becomes (missing instruments, out of time, etc).
I'm not sure I'd draw that conclusion, I'd say more modern computers are less compatible with early Mac games.

Many of these games struggle to run in System 7, let alone 9. Although in some cases there are significantly updated versions (such as for Monkey Island I think).

Be aware that I think the number of musical instruments in the monkey island and other songs changes depending on the platform, version number and sound settings, you might be playing a version with 4 channel sound for early macs, and expecting the Amiga CD release soundtrack, or some such thing.

I'm trying to run various Lucasarts, Sierra adventures on a TAM with a G3 400Mhz at the moment.
Clearly should be playing Quake, MDK and F/A-18 Hornet 3 / Korea.


Clearly a compatibility issue but wondered if others had work arounds (eg. install an older version of Sound Manager extension, alter Quicktime music settings).
Seek out the newest version of each game and if that isn't enough, install an old version of ScummVM - games from that era sometimes were not compliant and directly accessed hardware instead of using Apple's toolbox. The result is broken compatibility when hardware changed over the next decade before your TAM was released.

I don't think quicktime or Sound Manager will be your issue for games created in the 80s. The updated Sound Manager 2 was introduced in mumble mumble mumble unspecified year, probably around 1989, after most of these games, and Quicktime was even later.

Such things will be used by updates from the first half of the 90s, but are... probably not your issue.
Posted by: Phipli on 2023-04-29 01:20:28
It's very old, so don't expect too much :
Posted by: Byrd on 2023-04-29 16:23:52
I'll keep experimenting with extensions and settings; my TAM is my main vintage Mac that serves files to the others, lots of games and applications installed. Next up I'll give the SC88 a shot too.
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