d@alice.UUCP (01/18/87)
I went out and plunked my money down for Deluxe Music Construction Set
yesterday. Quite a piece of software, though I am wondering why in
the world it crashes so much? I am running a 512K Amiga with 1.2 Gamma 1 -
could that be the reason? Most often, the crashes are non-fatal. (I guess
they really aren't crashes), but the screen fills with fuzz, and you
have to guess your way around to hit the gadgets before stuff clears
off.
Now my biggest and greatest question:
You can save stuff as an SMUS-IFF file. Very nice, but what I'd like
is some way to have music I've composed in DMCS (and elsewhere) play
from within my own programs. Has anyone made something like PlaySMUS
or something, or do I have to spend clumsy years doing it myself?
If the thing *did* work from the CLI (that is, PlaySMUS), how could
a body get it working from their own C Programs? (I want to know
this because I'd like to do the same thing with SeeILBM and such.)
All of anyone's help is, as always, appreciated.
--
# Daniel Rosenberg (CE) AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill / Mi parolas Esperanton.
# disclaimer: These opinions are necessarily mine, not my employer's.
# UUCP: {ihnp4 || research || allegra}!alice!d AT&T: 201/582-6455 (work)
# INTERNET: d%alice%btl@csnet-relay or d@alice.att.com You are what you is.hsgj@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Dan Green) (01/21/87)
In article <6550@alice.uUCp> d@alice writes: >If the thing *did* work from the CLI (that is, PlaySMUS), how could >a body get it working from their own C Programs? (I want to know >this because I'd like to do the same thing with SeeILBM and such.) > ># Daniel Rosenberg (CE) AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill / Mi parolas Esperanton. ># disclaimer: These opinions are necessarily mine, not my employer's. ># UUCP: {ihnp4 || research || allegra}!alice!d AT&T: 201/582-6455 (work) ># INTERNET: d%alice%btl@csnet-relay or d@alice.att.com You are what you is. There is an AmigaDOS command called Execute. The syntax is: Success = Execute ("PlaySMUS filename",input,output); input and output are AmigaDos filehandles to an input or output file. For your case, you'd probably set them to NULL. Execute is a cheap way to run a CLI command from inside a C program; I use it all the time to set the Date from my "clock" since I don't think there is an AmigaDos (as opposed to CLI) setdate program. PS: Reference is AmigaDOS Developers Manual. -- Dan Green -- ARPA: hsgj%vax2.ccs.cornell.edu@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu UUCP: ihnp4!cornell!batcomputer!hsgj BITNET: hsgj@cornella
page@ulowell.UUCP (01/24/87)
DMCS uses a 4-plane custom screen, which slows down the Amiga enough (see Matt's timing stats of a few months back) that the MIDI data coming in gets lost, DMCS gets confused, a buffer overflows someplace, and BOOM ... guru. I wonder if EA did any beta testing? You can't use MIDI-in with DMCS. If DMCS were a 3-plane screen, all would be fine. ..Bob PS I don't have DMCS, since I need MIDI-in capability. The above information comes from Golden Hawk Technology, makers of the MIDI Gold interface. -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. ulowell!page, page@ulowell.CSNET
cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (01/26/87)
In article <971@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>, page@ulowell (Bob Page) writes: > ... that the MIDI data > coming in gets lost, DMCS gets confused, a buffer overflows someplace, > and BOOM ... guru. > > I wonder if EA did any beta testing? You can't use MIDI-in with DMCS. > If DMCS were a 3-plane screen, all would be fine. > Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. ulowell!page, page@ulowell.CSNET Yes DMCS dies horribly, I talked to the customer service representative at Electronic Arts and he said that the MIDI input feature was only in "step" time, and that the note extending functions did not work very well. So if you have set the little requester box that specifies how many seconds are to pass before the note extends. *DO NOT* hit more than one note on the MIDI keyboard in less than that amount of time. (So if it is set to one second, don't press notes faster than one per second) If you do it will crash. Also don't ever hit notes faster than step time even when it is playing. So no, you can't play along with that base and rhythm track you just designed. Third never hit the MIDI keyboard when the program isn't expecting it. I was placing notes on the staff with the mouse and my wife pressed a key on the keyboard (Boom - GURU). And finally, if you read the manual like me, you would have seen the sentence "To use your Instant Music intruments with DMCS see Appendix B." Unfortunately Appendix B doesn't exist. That did not discourage this interpid code mangler, nay I copied all those intruments and songs from the IM disk onto my hard disk along with the DMCS stuff, loaded it up and selected one of the Rock Blues tunes from IM (Boom - GURU) move the instruments from the directories "Library 1", "Library 2", etc to the top level and tried again. Now it is 50/50. Sometimes it crashes, sometimes it doesn't. [SRB ignition ...] All in all I think this is the worst piece of junk that EA has ever had the gall to release, it definitely puts it up there in the Ranks of the SubLOGIC fiasco. [..Go for SRB Sep] -- --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.