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                          ######=======------+
                          | tfmx-play/SDL 1.1 |
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      --== writing to a file is possible again, on Linux as well ==--

written by Jonathan H. Pickard <marxmarv@antigates.com> (the domain seems to have gone offline) maintained by Neochrome <neko@netcologne.de> oversampling code by Peter Schlaile <udbz@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> bugfix by Stefan Ohlsson <stefan@starship.pp.se> NetBSD patches by Thomas Klausner <wiz@danbala.tuwien.ac.at> bugreports by Michael Schwendt <mschwendt@yahoo.com> original MacOS-X port (PortAudio) by Ben Shanfelder <unity4u2@yahoo.com> TFMX format detection code from UADE contributed by Michael Doering

<mldoering@gmx.net>
even more help and bugreports also by Michael Doering <mldoering@gmx.net> bugreports and -fixes by Sven Janssen <sven@stalkingwolf.de> bug report/feature-request by Raik Lieske <raik.lieske@gmx.net>

USE

Rule "ichiban" (#1) is that -h shows the usage. All the info about the cool features is in here (though you won't need to know if you just want to use this as backend for Sakuraplayer/TFMXcess/kTFXshell...)

COPYRIGHT

KNOWN BUGS

Currently not all TFMX files are played correctly.

One (possibly packed) version of the Z-Out theme sounds weird and used to segfault the SDL-version on MacOSX (it now just enters an endless loop), the PortAudio-version does not crash, but it sounds weird as well, on Linux-x86 it works fine. Looks like a byteorder-bug or (evil, evil!) alignment-bug which is triggered there...
The Z-Out theme available from http://exotica.fix.no does work fine.

Performance is worse than the old non-portable OSS implementation for Linux, but almost all machines today should be able handle it. If you come up with a way to optimize performance, any hints and patches are welcome! :)

########## the following section is mostly taken from jhp's original readme ###

This version includes stereo "blend" to make better sound for headphone wearers. Degrees of blend run from 2 (full stereo) to 0 (full mono). Note that this is changed from prior versions which had blend! I decided to have one level of blend that I considered comfortable to keep from slowing things too severely.

This version also includes a simple low-pass filter with four settings: off, high, medium, and low (describing the cutoff frequencies). Don't ask me to give you exact ratios of the cutoff frequencies; I don't know or understand the math behind weighted-sum filters. Approximately, though, the time constants of the filter are: high=1.2, medium=1.5, low=2.4, referenced to the playback frequency. This sounds reasonable-ish. If anyone has the real numbers, please send 'em.

This player should play most stuff. I know for a fact that it plays all my stuff rather well =:^) , and I did use some twisted TFMX constructs in places. Otherwise known to play are MasterBlazer, Apidya (mostly), Turrican II and III, and JimPower. Most TFMX-1.5 stuff (Turrican, et al) sound broken in some places, and admittedly, it's not my highest priority to fix it.
NOTE: Turrican III title tune could use a little patch if you don't hear any lead lines in song 1. History behind this was, the module as ripped crashed most TFMX players. I modified the thing with a hex editor (converting the offending commands to wait's) and passed the version around. Unfortunately, the wait paralyzed the whole soundmacro for 5 seconds before it would give us audio. Anyway, I have the (un?)fixed MDAT available. Email me if you need it and you can't find elsewhere.

#################################################### jph section ends here ###

Here are some more tunes I have tested:

MUDS (OK, check it out - it's brilliant!) R-Type Theme (mostly OK, a short part is broken) Z-Out (OK, except for one (packed?) version of the title tune, which causes

a segfault and sounds pretty wrong otherwise on MacOSX) The Oath (OK)
Curse of Ra (seems to be OK, but I'm not entirely sure) Der Patrizier (OK)
Logical (OK)
Oops-Up (OK...unless you have an unsupported rip) Factor-5 Turrican 1 Musicdisk (OK)
The Secret of Monkey Island (mostly OK) GemX Theme (broken, JHP was working on this one, but never finished it - the hack should automatically be activated, it can be forced with "-G") GemX Ingame (OK)
Danger Freak Theme (OK, command-line switch "-D" should no longer be needed) BC Kid (OK, except for the Factor 5 tune, which does not play at all) Battle Isle (OK)
Carl Lewis Challenge (OK)
Grand Monster Slam (OK)
Hard'n'Heavy (seems OK, but not 100% sure)

WANT TO HELP ?

If you want to contribute to this project, just contact me (neko@netcologne.de), help is always apprectiated.

UPDATES, ETC.

Look for the latest TFMX tools for Linux here: http://darkstar.tabu.stw-bonn.de/~neo/audio.html

For more cool stuff go here:
http://darkstar.tabu.stw-bonn.de/~neo/