It does MIDI.

DX7 can (indirectly) do MP3, if you don't mind streaming off the hard drive.

From what I know, it can't do any tracked formats (S3M/XM/IT/whatever). There are commercial libs that do, but they're not cheap (lowest one I've found is $900).

There's a free lib (w/source) called MIKMOD but at first glance it seems rather primitive to me.

I would gladly pay $$$ for a tool that takes an XM/S3M/IT file and converts it to DirectMusic's format.

If anyone knows of such a thing, let me know.

Mason McCuskey
Spin Studios
www.spin-studios.com

[This message has been edited by mason (edited October 25, 1999).]

I know that this is a brute force solution, but here goes:

A cheap and easy way to get an XM or similar to play in DirectX is to convert it to a wav file and play it on a loop.

I know that some games do this, but wav files can get quite big, and you need to make sure that your song loops naturally.

oh well.

There is also a C++ library named SEAL (open source).
You can use it with VC++, DJGPP, Borland etc.
But it doesn't play .IT files.

If it's non-commercial, MIDAS from HouseMarque is what you're looking for - it's a complete replacement of DirectSound (plays FX too) supposedly a lot faster.

(Anyway, check out http://www.housemarque.fi)

/Niels

I use MIDAS for sound effects and music in Paintball NET .

It has a Shareware license that provides a nice "step" to their commerical license.

I haven't heard of any new development on MIDAS for over a year, though, and it's Impulse Tracker (.IT) support is only marginal.

------------------
DavidRM
Samu Games

Got a web page / any additional info for SEAL?

Mason McCuskey
Spin Studios
www.spin-studios.com

www.egerter.com/seal

Personally I prefer SEAL to the others, because it is very portable, and it seems more feature rich than Midas.

If you're only interested in Windows development, there are some other choices also. The FMOD library is supposed to be extremely fast, at www.zip.com.au/~fl. I just downloaded a new API called GAUDIO at http://idf.net/gods/sommaire.html, which plays tracker formats as well as mpegs. I haven't implemented these 2 at all, but they sound about as good as the others.

By the way, all tracker players should support digital sounds effects also, so you don't need any other sound APIs (like DSound), and these players are generally more efficient anyway.

Rock

SEAL is released under the GNU lesser general public license.
There isn't an URL included so you just have to find it using yahoo.com (altavista is a disaster).
It uses a DLL for win32 and libraries for MS-DOS programming languages (DJGPP, WATCOM, BORLAND).

As im too lazy to download the DX7.0 SDK (i hope you'll forgive me) I was wondering if this DirectMusic thingy was just for MIDI files or can it do XM files, MP3, and so on?
If not, anybody know of any decent engines that arent shareware / non-commericial only?

thanks!