Extract MIDI files from Judgement Rites?

[Nacluv]

Has anyone had any experience with this? Considering how big the game is, it would be very time-consuming to record them all one by one.

I've had experience with ripping MIDI from Sierra and Lucasarts games which generally has been very simple in comparison. All kind of Windows games are also often easier to rip the MIDI files
from such as Captain Claw, Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety or Final Fantasy 7 to name a few.



But when it comes to Judgement Rites, I'm kinda lost. Has anyone else attempted this before?

25th Anniversary would be meaningless since it (at least my copy) only has MT-32 MIDI and to my experience, such files cannot be extracted accurately from the game. They MUST be recorded within the game to get the instruments right since the files are not independent, unlike General Midi. At least this is the case with all of Sierra's games unfortunately.

 

[Borjis]

I don't think it's possible to extract them. They seem to be wrapped in a proprietary file format within the game engine.

 

[Nacluv]

I don't think it's possible to extract them. They seem to be wrapped in a proprietary file format within the game engine.

A DOS utility managed to find some XMI files inside the data.001 file, but I could not find a way to extract it or even get information such as file name. All it told me was the individual sizes of the XMI files. It's possible that the rest are spread around in the other .001 files such as madness.001.

 

[Mr_Homn]

i have no idea how to help, but i sure hope you find a way if it's possible. i love the music in that game

 

[Nacluv]

i have no idea how to help, but i sure hope you find a way if it's possible. i love the music in that game

I'm still looking for a way to extract the original MIDIs.

I did however play the game earlier today since it was such a long time ago and I recorded some music and after finishing the Trelane level, I realized I had recorded pretty much. So I got the idea to assemble the cues and upload them to YouTube for all the Trekkers out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hhx_Q_TDGc

I still want to acquire the original files though for many other reasons. But of course, if I manage, I would probably upload the complete soundtrack to YouTube.

 

[Mr_Homn]

i have no idea how to help, but i sure hope you find a way if it's possible. i love the music in that game

I'm still looking for a way to extract the original MIDIs.

I did however play the game earlier today since it was such a long time ago and I recorded some music and after finishing the Trelane level, I realized I had recorded pretty much. So I got the idea to assemble the cues and upload them to YouTube for all the Trekkers out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hhx_Q_TDGc

I still want to acquire the original files though for many other reasons. But of course, if I manage, I would probably upload the complete soundtrack to YouTube.

Very cool, thank you!

 

[Nacluv]

I've recorded some more...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKpH2P5iUn0

 

[Danlav05]

Is it possible to do the opposite? Rip the music-free dialogue?

 

[Jeyl]

It seems like the music actually changes depending on the situation. For example, the first piece that's played on your second upload can take an entirely different approach. It's almost like you have to edit a whole sequence just to get it all in.

 

[Nacluv]

It seems like the music actually changes depending on the situation. For example, the first piece that's played on your second upload can take an entirely different approach. It's almost like you have to edit a whole sequence just to get it all in.

That's actually not uncommon for MIDI music in games. That's actually the reason why in many Windows games, you'll often find it in XMI as XMI is a much more simple format than the regular MIDI format to loop and give commands to switch to another.

If one could crack the code and the format of Judgment Rites, you would get all different pieces as separate files and even one piece splitted into two. And then there's of course alternate versions.

But since I have not been able to establish anything else beyond that it seems Judgment Rites uses the XMI format, more common for later Windows games, I cannot verify my assumptions. All of the music in my videos are recorded during gameplay. For Judgment Rites, I actually mostly used DosBox's own MIDI recording utility but I do tend to use different MIDI loopback drivers also.

 

[Nacluv]

Is it possible to do the opposite? Rip the music-free dialogue?

What do you really mean?

 

[Harvey]

He is asking if the dialogue can be extracted in isolation. That is, without any music (or sound effects).

I think.

 

[Nacluv]

He is asking if the dialogue can be extracted in isolation. That is, without any music (or sound effects).

I think.

Yes. As long as he sets the music setting to MIDI, he can record the dialogue. Sound effects cannot be excluded. Though that shouldn't be a problem to fix afterwards since they rarely occur simultanelously with dialogue. The sound you hear as you choose an option in a dialogue is MIDI based and won't be recorded with the dialogue.

If he however choose an exterior recorder, outside of DosBox, he will be have to set the music setup to "No music" if it exists (I can't remember) since those programs most likely will not be able to differentiate between MIDI and sound.

I believe the command for recording sounds to WAVE in DosBox is Ctrl + F6.

 

[Nacluv]

Is there any music in 25th Anniversary that isn't in Judgment Rites? Just curious.. some MT-32 to GM conversions actually turn out pretty good.

 

[Lance]

Is it possible to do the opposite? Rip the music-free dialogue?

I don't know if it's possible with Judgement Rites, where the dialogue files are hidden away in the game data. But 25th Anniversary comes with all the recorded dialogue already available on the CD as individual files. You can listen to it freely, you just need the right sort of media player.

There are alternative takes of the actors saying lines in different ways to how they are used in the game as well (I seem to recall one instance where the game has a 'back and forth' between Kirk and Spock, but there's a version of it on the CD where Nimoy says all the dialogue in a single exposition speech without any input from Shatner). Very cool to sit and listen to.

 

[EddyDrama]

Has anyone had any experience with this? Considering how big the game is, it would be very time-consuming to record them all one by one.

But when it comes to Judgement Rites, I'm kinda lost. Has anyone else attempted this before?

Have you tried asking from ScummVM developers? As I understand they have had to reverse engineer some of the sound players of old game engines in order to get those games working with the ScummVM software. I know that at some point at least some people have worked on Judgement Rites and 25th Anniversary but never got any games to be completable on ScummVM, so they might have some knowledge. Other than that, I have no other ideas.

 

[Python1980]

Hi,

If you still need a way to extract the .001 files I stumbled upon this util awhile ago http://oezmen.eu/gameresources/ just scroll down the list to Star Trek: 25th Anniversary/Judgment Rites. It worked fine on the floppy version of Judgment rites and mostly fine on the CD version.

On a kinda related note has anyone ever had MT-32 working properly with the limited edition CD version of Judgment Rites? Using the Daum SVN of dosbox (which has munt built into it) I have no trouble with the floppy version but the CD version seems to play a GM track even when setup for MT-32. I have been seeing if anyone on the Vogons website could help as well so if someone is interested in taking a crack at this please also look at http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=35933#p316421

 

[Borjis]

whoa! playing the midi files via MT-32 would have much nicer sounding instruments correct?

Like those games that supported the SoundBlaster AWE32 back in the day?

 

[Python1980]

Yes, as long as the game has music written for MT-32 it will sound better than the General Midi or Sound Blaster options but not all games that have an MT-32 option were written to use it (see incomplete list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MT-32-compatible_computer_games). Also keep in mind that older MT-32 games did not have a separate driver option for sound effects so in those games you will only get music when using MT-32.

25th anniversary and judgment rites both have MT-32 music (and sound really good played this way) but as I mentioned in my above post there seems to be an issue with the CD release of judgment rites.

Obviously the best results for playing MT-32 games come when using a real MT-32 but thanks to Munt there is a pretty good software approximation available. Munt is built into some custom builds of Dosbox like Daum. All you need is a copy of the MT-32 rom (which for copyright reasons you will need to find yourself) put into the Daum root folder, edit Daum dosbox.conf line "mididevice=default" to "mididevice=mt32" and configure the games options to use MT32. Dont forget to change back "mididevice=" to default when playing non MT-32 games (or use different profiles for each game you run in dosbox).

 

[Python1980]

For anyone who is interested a gentleman by the name of tiakalat on the VOGONS forum has fixed the MT-32 detection issue for STJR CD. The game will now load and use MT-32 during game play. See here for patch http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=35933&p=319701#p319345