WORLD OF GAME MIDS - FAQ

WHAT'S THE EASIEST WAY TO USE THE 'WORLD OF GAME MIDS ARCHIVE' UNDER WINDOWS?

Use Winamp. Download, install and run WinAmp 5.666 full installation, it has one of the best Midi input plugins inside and the player hasn't any problem with playing Midi files almost out of the box. Only problem is Winamp's ZIP archives support, which is rather poor. Surprisingly, Winamp supports ZIP archives somehow, but not directly, only through playlists editing (read more if you really want to use archives in WinAmp). Also please note that this is the Windows-only solution, even Wine emulation under Linux doesn't play Midis properly and Winamp for Mac is more like a joke

OK, AND WHAT'S YOUR RECOMMENDED WAY TO USE THE ARCHIVE?

Hm, I expected this question somehow I had best experience with XMPlay. This player has great archives support, handles large playlists and is able to do all the common stuff the player should. It has only one problem, as it in this world goes - it doesn't support MIDI natively. What is does - through its midi plugin - is that it loads the externally downloaded Midi soundbank (e.g. for General MIDI) and using this soundbank it simulates what Midi card does. The old-skool people maybe remember Gravis UltraSound soundcard, which used the same principle (and also lot of soundbanks came from the GUS times). Nowadays, when the size doesn't matter, there are already several soundbanks for General MIDI with very good quality. Here is a complete step-by-step howto use the MIDI archive in XMPlay:

1. Download and install XMPlay.
2. Download "Midi input plugin" from this page, as well as at least one archive with SF2 soundfont provided on the page (the ChoriumRevA.SF2 seemed to me as closest to classics for most of the games).
3. Copy xmp-midi.dll into the directory where you unpacked XMPlay
4. Unpack archive with soundfont somewhere on the disk
5. Run XMplay, right-click the XMPlay screen and select "Options and stuff"
6. Select Plugins / Input, select MIDI and click "Config"

7. Click "Add" and select your soundfont (*.sf2) file

8. Click "Apply" and close window
9. Download game midis you like.
10. Open the playlist, add the ZIP archives to playlist, and if the Midi Plugin was recognized, the tunes should be properly played.

Advantage of the XMplay-approach is that it is platform and Midi-driver independent. I tested this solution under Windows and Linux (at 23.02.2016) and it worked. In addition, you can download SF2 soundbanks for Midi sound-cards, like Yamaha XG or Roland MT-32 (for example from this page) to play tunes from non-GM compatible games in very decent quality. The disadvantage is that the quality of some (like MT-32) is really "decent" and there are better ways how to play the tunes more accurately with more Midi-native approach.

BUT I LOVE WINAMP, DID YOU MENTION I CAN PLAY ZIP, RAR AND OTHER ARCHIVES THERE?

Yes, I did. Though it is not as simple as it could. Winamp supports playing the files from archives (basic scale of archives like ZIP, RAR or ARJ is supported), if you create the Winamp's m3u playlist and treat the archive file as a directory there. But no other user interface is done for this, so if you want to play music in archives, you have either to manually create m3u files (this is uncomfortable), or temporary unpack them, create playlist and then delete temporary files. Here is step-by-step what to do if you want to make large playlist from inside ZIP files using second way (because it's a bit long work, I recommend to do it once on all your zipped archives):

1. Firstly, download, install and run Total Commander. This is not really necessary step, but it will help you a lot with managing and multi-renaming files. This howto will count with the fact you have Total Commander installed (I really don't need to mess with Windows explorer, as you will see later, some operations could be done hardly using this "great" application ).
2. Download ZIP archives you want and place them into one directory. In this example, let's call this directory C:\Music .
3. For backup purposes, I recommend to backup whole directory C:\Music into some backup folder (let's say C:\Backup) for the whole process.
4. Move all the files from directory C:\Music to temporary directory, let's call it C:\Temp
5. Unpack the files from C:\Temp to C:\Music in Total Commander (ALT+F9). Before unpacking, additional dialog box will open. Check the box "Unpack with path names.." and "Unpack each archive to separate subdir (name of the archive)". The second option isn't checked by default so be sure you have it checked. Start unpacking then.
6. After decompressing, you should have all the archives unpacked with folders in C:\Music folder. Select all the archives, and run Total Commander's Multi-Rename tool (CTRL+M).
7. In Multi-Rename tool, chhange Extensio field from [E] to [E].zip , in the "Search for:" field write ".." (two points) and in "Replace with" write "." (one point). Run the process clicking "Start" button.
8. Now you should have folders named exactly as the ZIP archives previously. Run WinAmp, create playlist and add all the files from C:\Music to it. Don't forget to save your playlist and store it at safe place (you can use Winamp's Media Library for that...)
9. Delete all the contents from C:\Music
10. Move all the ZIP archives stored in temporary folder C:\Temp to C:\Music
11. Play the playlist you created in Winamp. The files should be played from the ZIP archives, if you did everything well.
12. If you did backup of your files, compare the C:\Music folder with C:\Backup. They should be the same. Then you can delete the C:\Backup folder, you're done.

Ugh. Let's make things simple You see now why I recommend XMPlay where you don't need to do crazinesses like this?

Using XMPlay to create Winamp playlists for archives

You just have another possibility to create playlist without need of unpacking archives, using XMPlay:

1. Download, install and run XMPlay player with Midi input plugin (follow this step-by-step howto). If the XMPlay Midi plugin crashes for you, you can use AdLib plugin instead of it (it's more reliable) and enable MIDI files loading (ignore that the Midis won't be played properly, just add them to playlist).
2. Add all the Zipped archives with Midi files to your playlist, save your playlist to some *.pls file (let's call it plist.pls).
3. Edit the file plist.pls in some text editor (notepad is ok) and replace every '' character with backslash '\' (if you have problems with the character replacement, you can copy the weird character located in the line before the .mid filename to clipboard, choose, 'replace' (in notepad CTRL+H), paste the character into the 'Find what' fiels and into 'Replace with' field type '\'. Then run the replacement with 'Replace all command' and save the result file). The resulting file should NOT have any special nor unrecognized character inside, if this operation went successful.
4. Open the resulting *.pls file in Winamp, it recognizes *.pls files correctly, so the tunes should be playet well..

WHY DO SOME MIDI TUNES SOUND SO STRANGE?

As I mentioned on the mainpage, midi files sound different on every soundcard. It may be an advantage, because the better soundcard you have, the better sound it should produce. But it has also very big disadvantage, because there are many various midi standards (depends of the sythesizer the midi is made on), and these standards aren't compatible between themselves. Although these midis CAN be played on the sound card that doesn't support the corresponding midi standard, they sound "strange". What means "they sound strange"? It depends how lucky you with your soundcard are, sometimes it is normal quite listenable tune only with some unimportant instruments changed, but sometimes it is completely unlistenable jerk.

WHAT ARE THESE MIDI FORMATS AND WHICH FORMAT PLAYS WHICH CARD?

So, here I'd like to explain and make some comments for the most common midi formats. Don't take these infos very serious, they are only my experience and they should make you only general information. If you want to know more about midi formats, visit other pages. This description is compatible with description of the midi files at World of game Mids. So if in the archive is written "Format: MID (GM, MT)", that means in the archive are General Midi and MT32 midi tunes. Remember all the files are MID (have MID extension) and you cannot guess the midi format without nearby info file. That's why many files in the archive haven't specified this format. I simply don't know it. So the most common MIDI formats are (ordered from most compatible to less one):

GM - General MIDI - this is most common format, based on Roland SCC-1 standard, which should be compatible with most todays soundcard. General Midi should sound well on SB AWE cards, Yamaha XG cards (although these cards often need some emulation batch to run GM properly), and all other General Midi compatible cards. But don't take serious if your midi player detects tune as GM - it couldn't be really GM. Because many converters (from XMI or HMP tunes) convert tunes automatically to General Midi, but if the original one is not in General Midi, they will leave original sample map. The result is, the player "detects" GM, but the tune plays wrong on cards which aren't compatible with the format the tune was made on.

GS - General Sound - this is extension to General Midi, which use more samples. Very few sound cards have native support for this and those that do use different samples than Roland's, providing poor playback. That's why GS is only properly supported by Sound Canvas cards and cards incorporating SC technology, like the Diamond Monster Sound MX200. (thanks to Sakura Matsumoto for more info with this). But on the other side, in praxis and in this archive - the GS Midis sounds quite good also on sound cards like AWE32 and co. Don't ask me why, simply take this as a positive news So you should look if your sound card is GS compatible, but if you don't know, simply try the tunes, you should hear them ok.

AWE - Advanced Wave Effects - AWE tunes have been probably created to be best played under SoundBlaster AWE card (SB AWE was predecessor of SB Live and SB Audigy cards, but because SB Live and Audigy cards have exactly the same Midi output, they are fully compatible also with SoundBlaster Live, Audigy, with all editions.). If you don't have SoundBlaster AWE card, you shouldn't have problems to play AWE songs on normal General Midi card, because they are compatible with GM.

XG - eXtended General Midi - it's very good format which extends General Midi with many new samples, but here begin also some troubles with compatibility. XG is made by Yamaha and only Yamaha sound cards have XG hardware compatibility. Fortunately, Yamaha released good software wavetable emulator called "Yamaha SoftSynthesizer", which can emulate XG and also GM on any SB16-compatible sound-card. With this software you cannot only normally listen to XG tunes, but you can also listen to GM and GS tunes if you haven't wavetable soundcard (e.g. SoundBlaster 16).

MT - Roland MT32 - the most problematic midi type for todays sound-cards. It's because General Midi compatible cards are NOT MT32 compatible and also are NOT MT32 compatible SoundBlaster AWE cards, nor Yamaha XG cards. Only true Roland MT32 can play these tunes properly, and even then it needs correct Sysex data loaded before which are standard way not part of Midi. Roland MT32 was here sooner than General Midi standard, and that's why many PC games from late 80s and early 90s have their tunes only in this MT32 format. How they sounds on todays cards, depends on the instruments that have the musicians used, but mostly it sounds like a false piano and you won't survive listening to the tunes long time..
Fortunately, there are some possibilities to play these tunes today very close to the original. Read this section for more information.

SC88 - Roland SC88 Super SOUNDCanvas - follower of Roland SoundCanvas (on which was based the General MIDI compatibility), but comparing to this you need to have this card to play SC88 songs properly, it's not General MIDI nor AWE compatible! It's also the same for SC88 Pro, follower of SC88.

FM - Frequency Modulation - again problematic type, it isn't actually true MIDI type. You can meet FM MIDIs again in older games, MIDIs like these could be converted from CMF files (using CMF2MID converter, CMF is "Creative music file" format), but often the midis are stored in the games in FM MID format. Surprisingly, the FM Midis don't sound so bad on today's General Midi cards (SB AWE, or Yamaha XG) as the MT32 ones, but they have far away from sounding properly. You should get good result if you use "Creative Music Synth" (Port 220) on AWE-compatible sound cards, then you should get good sound, though only synthesized (not Midi). Btw., I mostly ignore these FM tunes in games and don't include them in the World of Game Mids collection, if they don't have some other MIDI equivalents.

ND! - No Driver! - This isn't actually a format, it's my sign to ripped/converted PC games, that have ripped music, but it doesn't contain proper drivers for sound-card. This way are ripped almost all PC games, but game with the "ND!" sign means that the music sounds often really horribly. Don't download these files if you want to listen to neat and clear music! You have to re-arrange them with proper samples to listen to the tunes properly, and then you maybe should send me the proper re-arranged version, because the others want to listen to proper music too (look also in the next question for more info).

Other - yes, there are some other MIDI types, but they are very rare.

If there are two formats in brackets e.g. GS [GM], it indicates music composed for GS devices but which only uses the first 128 patches, allowing playback also on non-GS devices.

WHY THERE ISN'T SIMPLY PLAYER WHAT PLAYS ALL THESE MIDI FORMATS CORRECTLY?

This player doesn't exist and will not exist. The reason is, that information about midi format and driver isn't written anywhere in the MID file, all files are normal MIDs and treat like MIDs. If there wasn't some text file, where is specified the MIDI type, you won't have a clue which type it is, and the program won't have a clue too... Only partial solution is to load some "emulation" (which temporary rewrites instrument information in your soundcard to play incompatible formats) or "converter" (e.g. mt2gm). But anyway you again have to know exactly to which tune you need to run which emulation, so which tune support which formats. If you don't know it and you will apply e.g. the mt2gm tool to non-MT tune, the result will sound bad. And nobody will tell it to you, you only have to listen to the tunes

THAT SUCKS.

Yes, I agree, though that wasn't a question. I don't like Midis too, because of this incompatibility, you simply can't make big playlist and listen to all tunes without being disturbed with false songs sometimes, or with duplicate versions of the same songs made for different sound cards. But if you don't like it, don't listen to MIDIs, there are many formats with great tunes, that sound same on every soundcard and if you have good player, you shouldn't have problems like these. Maybe you should try MOD tunes at the sister site World of Game Mods, I like Mods much more than Mids, just because you can download all tunes, just insert in the playlist and listen to the great music which is sure the same as it was originally made.

WHY DID YOU MADE SUCH A BIG SITE LIKE 'WORLD OF GAME MIDS', WHEN YOU DON'T LIKE MIDIS?

Because I'm big game music fan, and I collect almost all game music tunes in all formats. There're still very much great tunes (especially PC games from years 1992-1995), which haven't been released on any other platform and if you want good tunes from these games, you can have them only in MID format (if I don't count MP3s, which take a lot of space). Or do you think that tunes like Descent, Doom, System Shock, Dark Forces, Warcraft 1-2 or Heretic are bad? And you won't find these on any other platform! Also many remakes of many consoles and 8-bit tunes have been done in Midi, because of easy creating and small size. If you want to know something more about purpose of making these sites, look here.

WELL, SO WHICH GAMES SHOULD I DOWNLOAD FROM THE ARCHIVE IF I HAVE STANDARD GENERAL MIDI COMPATIBLE SOUND CARD? (most common case, it includes all SB AWEs)

Generally, most compatible formats for today are GM, GS and AWE. If you don't want to have weird tunes, download these and you shouldn't have problems. Also XG is recommended, but if you don't have Yamaha XG soundcard, you should install Yamaha SoftSynthesizer, software emulator of XG. And to be strict - you should also avoid all the PC tunes (Game rips and Converted), because they often don't have proper drivers (see previous question why). But note that you'll miss also many excellent tunes then.
Mostly in PC games, it often happens that MIDI tunes are included in the archive in more than one version (e.g. GM, GS, MT and FM). If is it so, I try to include all these versions in the World of Game Mids, although there are the same songs more times then. I found it wise because then there is at least one group of songs which plays ok on any soundcard. Unfortunately, often happens that I don't know which song is which standard and I can only guess that. But don't worry about that, my experience says this: If the game songs are included in more than one format and at least one format is GM, the other formats won't sound so bad on General Midi cards. Surprisingly, often is the same song with different instruments very good and original . Most problems will cause games whose tunes are NOT included in General Midi format, only in MT or FM format. These will probably sound bad on todays General Midi compatible cards and you should stay aware especially from these.

SOME MIDIS FROM ARCHIVE DON'T PLAY UNDER MY MIDI PLAYER, ARE THEY CORRUPT?

Well, though everything can happen, the tunes are probably NOT corrupt. The problem is mostly with your sound card and also music player. I know some cards don't like some MIDI tunes and they won't play them in some players, although other card or other player plays them well. That is not problem of MIDIs, that's the above mentioned problem of MIDI format, which means that every sound card plays it differently and in some rare case some rare cards don't play it either... If it is so, it will mostly help to use another MIDI player, I have very good experience with KBMedia Player, it played all tunes in the archive on *my soundcard*! (I tested it on SB AWE64 and SB AWE128, and some on Yamaha DB50XG).

WHY DO SOME PC GAME MIDIS SOUND ELSE THAN THE SAME TUNES IN THE GAME ON THE SAME SOUND CARD?

Well, not enough having problems with different Midi formats, this is another BIG problem of Midis. :( Midis provided with game often come with driver, which converts midi data (found relatively easily) to be playable properly on different soundcards, or to gain some other enhancements from them. Because you cannot take this driver from the game unless you reverse-engineer it, you can save only the MIDI data, but this may sound badly in some cases without the driver. Additionally, the tunes are not stored in game always in .mid format, but they can be stored stored in more or less known exotic formats (most common are .hmp, .xmi, .cmf). Although conversion tools to some formats were made to convert the tunes to mids, this conversion often looses quality or samples of tunes. So, generally said, in some cases simple "ripping and converting" tunes doesn't work, and will result in damaged or otherwise bad files not properly playable on any card.

On the other side, in most games the tunes ripped this way sound okay. But you have to remember - in the World of Game Mids are always only ripped/converted MIDI data of the original tunes. Not drivers for the game. In most cases the tunes are okay also without the driver and with simple conversion, but if I find the game suffers on this behavior, I mark these "unlistenable" tunes with the sign "ND!" in the MIDI format description. I included the tunes in the archive anyway, because there's still a way to make these tunes listenable. The way is in re-arranging the tunes, with using the proper samples in them, or by recording the MIDI directly from the game (see complete question about PC midi ripping here).

HOW CAN I HELP TO FIX PC MIDIS WHICH SOUND BAD?

As I mentioned, the way is in re-arranging the tunes, with using the proper samples in them, or by recording the MIDI directly from the game (see complete question about PC midi ripping here). This is of course lot of work, but if someone do some rips or rearrangements of these midis, he could send them to me and so others can do other games . There are many ways of help somehow - if you are musician or have a patience, look at the "ND!" files in the archive, do some re-arrangements, and send them to me Of course, you should also look at "MT" or "FM" or other non-standard MIDI files and make the "GM" or "AWE" versions

YOU MENTIONED I CAN PLAY THE ROLAND MT-32 TUNES PROPERLY?

Yes, today it's possible to play the Roland MT-32 (or LAPC-I or CM-32L) tunes (almost) properly with or without the Midi hardware. But it's so not straightforward. The biggest difference is that having only ripped Midi files from the Roland MT-32 games is mostly not enough. In vast majority of cases, the games required also SysEx data, which sent to the device special information to program some extra instruments beyond the manufacturer's default setup. These data must be ripped either in form of separate .SYX file, or injected directly in the .MID file before playing it (and then delaying the play on few seconds). First possibility requires the .SYX file and midi player which supports injecting this file before playing the tune (Winamp does it with some tricks). Second possibility mostly doesn't come with the game itself and the midi must be updated with this.
In mirsoft.info archives, we try that all the tunes will be playable the easiest way, so we go with the second option. All the "MT"-marked tunes should have these SysEx data pre-loaded already. So you should not see .SYX files and the MT-tunes should play properly with the guide below. However, there are still some exceptions from this rule which must be caught and updated later (feel free to do it ).

So, let's assume you have "proper" MT-32 Midi file with injected SysEx data (you can test it with games from archives like Lemmings 2 PC, Civilization, Supaplex, Lotus 3 etc.). You have four possibilities how to play these files properly (ordered according the accuracy and usability):

1. Winamp - Winamp, in its default full installation offers very good Midi input plugin which offers MT-32 driver with very good quality! You only need to switch to this driver from default one (tested at 23.02.2016 with latest Winamp 5.666 and midi plugin in_midi v3.55). :

• In Winamp, select Options/Preferences (or CTRL+P)


• Select "Nullsoft MIDI Player v 3.55", click "Configure":
  
  


• In the first "Device" tab, select the Device with the chinese characters in it (it displays these on 64bit Windows, don't know why):
  
  


• Leave other settings default, click OK and Close and restart the midi tune.

• Download, install and run Munt


• Select Options/ROM configuration


• Browse to the ROM Directory where the unpacked roms are pesent


• Mark checkbox by one PCM and one Control ROM. Use for example CM32L_* roms.


• Click ok, select Tools / Play MIDI file and test e.g. 01-maintune.mid from Lemmings 2 PC archive

THE GAME XYZ HAS COOL ADLIB TUNES, CAN I PLAY THEM AS MIDIS, TO SOUND BETTER ON MY MIDI CARD?

Mostly not. AdLib song is quite different comparing to Midi song. It uses absolutely different output and music format. The difference is like between MOD and MP3, or like between MID and MOD. Therefore you cannot simply convert or save AdLib tunes to Midi, unless the game doesn't support any Midi music (MT32, General Midi etc.). Some older games often offer the Roland MT32 playback together with the AdLib sounds, and this music is convertable to General Midi using MT2GM tool (but this looses quality, of course). However, you can listen to the AdLib tunes on the PC in its original FM quality using the specialized players. Read more about it in AdLib section here.

I HAVE SOME TUNES YOU DON'T HAVE, WHAT CAN I DO?

Well, send them to mirsoft.info! Together we can make really biggest midi collection, that's why I accept any game music MIDIs, which are not included in this archive and which either directly ripped from games, or in General Midi, XG or AWE compatible format. So what should you do if you have some tunes?

• Read carefully Collection rules on mainpage to know, if the tunes you have really belong to this archive. If you're not sure, ask me.
  
• Create and fill in the "info.txt" file (see below for more info)
  
• Zip all tunes plus the info.txt file in one ZIP archive (no subdirectories), name it exactly as the official game release title is (e.g. "Eye of the Beholder 3.zip")
  
• Use this form to upload data. If the size of ZIP file is bigger than 2MB, let me know first via email, write me the game title and size. I'll contact you with info what to do.
  
• If all is okay, the new tunes should be up in the next archive update.
  

WHAT IS FORMAT OF THE "INFO.TXT" FILE?

This file contains all information about archive and because the system reads data from it to display information on the main page, this file is required in the archive. Firstly, copy this template to info.txt file in your archive:

Archive created by -=MIRSOFT=-
Look for game MIDs at http://gamemids.mirsoft.info

*** Archive info ***
Archiver: Mirsoft
Type: Arranged
Format: MID (GM, AWE)
Original Composer: Chris Huelsbeck
Sequencer: Janko Hrasko
Num of tunes: 4
Complete: 100%

*** Game info ***
Name: Antrax Challenge
Platform: PC
Year: 2001
Genre: Action
Publisher: AlKaida Interactive
Developer: Usama Binary Division

*** Additional info ***
Write here what you want, or write here some facts etc..

Now, edit the contents step-by-step with the game info. Here is help what means what:

• First two lines are here for your comment. You can write some info about your webpage, greet your girlfriend, tell anyone you had a dinner, just anything. But only two lines, please!
  
• Third line is empty.
  
• By fourth line begins the "Archive info". It's information about this archive.
  
• Archiver - this means the person who ripped the tunes, possibly converted them to mids, created this info.txt file and made zip file from that - so write here your name or nick, to everybody know who was so kind and made this archive .
  
• Type - there can be three types:
  
  Game rip - music ripped directly from game
  
  Converted - music ripped from game and converted to MID format
  
  Arranged - music ripped from game, converted to MID with changed some instruments, added extra tracks or embellishments to an existing song, all the while keeping the same style of the song.
  
  Remix - keeps the same basic melody as the original song, but is in a different style. It may also contain abstract parts (i.e. interludes, improvisation, single-instrument solos).
  
  Soundtrack - music made according the officially released soundtrack. For example, if "Final Fantasy 6 Original Soundtrack" is officially released, in the archive should be the tunes named and ordered exactly as on CD, but of course arranged to MID format. These soundtracks are very wanted thing!
  
  
• Format - type extension of MID files here (if the game has more extensions, write all of them, comma separated).
  
• Original composer - name of original composer of the song. If you don't know, leave the field empty (so the line will look like: "Original Composer: ").
  
• Sequencer - name of the person who made MID version of the tune. If the tune is ripped from game, the name will be probably the same as name of Original Composer, but if it's arranged or remix, you have to write here name of person who arranged or remixed the original tune.
  
• Num of tunes - how many tunes are included in the archive (number of MID files in archive)
  
• Complete - how many tunes from the game are included in the archive. Wanted: 100% complete
  soundtracks . But write 100% only if you're sure that really ALL game tunes are included. If you're not sure, leave this field empty or write estimated % there.
  
• With "Game info" begin the information about the game itself. (This should be the same also if the archive will be updated).
  
• Name - full name of the game
  
• Platform - platform which is music ripped from. If the type is "soundtrack", platform is "Audio CD".
  
• Year - year of game release. If you don't know, write 198? or 199? or 200? or 19?? and so on...
  
• Genre - Genre of the game. Use one of these genres:
  Shooter - kill em all and don't ask anything
  
  FPS - First person shooter (like shooter, but from your own sight)
  
  Jump'n'Run - jump, go, take, jump, bong, aaargh, again
  
  Action - mission acomplished!
  
  Beat'em up - fight, bang, boom, ouch, FATALITY!
  
  RTS - Real-time strategy - build base, order harvester, and TAKE ON THE WORLD!
  
  Strategy - Turn Based Strategy - Your turn, Computer's turn, Your turn, Check, Mate you lose again
  
  Logical - Why do I have so much headaches from them?
  
  Simulator - Why are so many clocks in them
  
  Adventure - My name is Guybrush and I wanna be a pirate!
  
  Classic - Here are all Pac-Mans, Arkanoids, Manic Miners and so on...
  
  Classic Remake - The old classic game released again in new graphics etc..
  
  Sport - He winds up, he shoots, oooh, he misses the net...
  
  Cars - Yes, he's first again. And it was Schumacher again, as we all expected...
  
  RPG - Role playing game - Left, right, forward, forward, monster, aaaaargh!
  
  Mixed - Mix from different genres
  
  Other - All that is not above
  
  
• Publisher - write name of the company which published the game here.
  
• Developer - write name of the company or person who developed the game. If the company who developed the game is also the publisher, write name of publisher there.
  
• If you want to write something more to the archive, you can write write it under "Additional info" section. This section is OPTIONAL and don't need to be in the info file (if it isn't, the file simply ends with "Developer" line). Here you can write any comments which can be as long as you wish ) (oki, the size of text file shouldn't be bigger than size of the midis ) ).
  

I HAVE SOME INFOS ABOUT TYPE OF TUNES AND AUTHORS, SHALL I SEND THEM TO YOU?

Sure! Just mail me, and send me either the info.txt file with proper names (wanted is also specification of MIDI type, if it's GM, MT, FM etc...), or you can write me the info in the mail and I'll add it into the info.txt file.

HOW CAN I RIP MIDI TUNES FROM OLD PC GAMES PROPERLY?

Well, this is very complex piece of cake, and I will try to explain it quickly, and will try to tell my experience what is good to do and what to avoid. But firstly, thanks for this section go out to these people:

• Borg No. One - without lot of help from this guy would this section very hardly exist. He has given me most of information about ripping tunes, connecting two computers (including the Gameport Midi cable which he sent me and using which I was able to set up the two computers midi recording environment), setting up the DOS environment for games (also boot disks for running DOS on todays fast hardware), virtual cable settings, lot of Winamp info about converting the tunes from exotic formats and playing files from archives and final feedback&comments for this help file


• Totoro - for initial explanation of recording Midi music from DOS games using two computers, first rips and MIDI gameport-gameport through din connection idea.


• Hadanite Marasek - for lot of VDMSound tips, and for MidiYoke tip too.

If the game is in different format than MID, DO NOT use conversion tools like XMI2MID, HMP2MID, CMF2MID etc. They loose quality of the songs more or less, and are absolutely useless now. Use Winamp's conversion to convert the tunes instead, or in worst cases use direct recording to achieve songs in better quelity (read below more).

Best method for ripping MIDI from PC games

Most perfect method of ripping tunes at the time is recording them directly from the game. The basic idea is like this:

1. We have to set up the recording environment, which is able to record MIDI data. The best is to use two computers, where the first one sends the midi tune through the MIDI OUT port (most of the sound cards have it on Gameport), and second computer receives the midi data through MIDI IN port. You will need the additional cable which connects these computers through MIDI IN-OUT port. Most sound cards use Gameport for this, so you have to create simple cable with gameport connectors and connect pin12 of outgoing computer with pin15 of incoming computer.
   Thanks to Borg No. One, who made and sent me this cable, I have set up this environment and confirm that this way definitely works!
   
   Here is simple schema of this cable:
   
   
   
   As you can see, the pin12 and pin15 are connected in both ways. This is because now you can use the cable both ways between two connected computers, so the both ones are able to record and receive data from other one. For very simple one-way connection you don't need to do the connection marked red, but then you can connect the first connector to the sending computer and the second one to the receiving computer and record the data only one-way.
   WARNING, BE CAREFUL you connect the proper pins, because the bad connection may result to destroying sound cards on sending or receiving computer! Often common mistake is connecting the same pins (e.g. pin12 with pin12) - this may do really bad things! Also watch this page to see which pin does what on the gameport (for us are important only pins 12 and 15,though).
   
   To have better imagination how the complete cable should look, here are few photos from Borg No. One's finished cable (click on pictures to enlarge):
   
   
   
   
   If you are not into cable making, there is a more convenient, but more expensive solution - buy two adapter cables from gameport to MIDI in/out (DIN connectors) and one MIDI cable, which connects these two DIN connectors between themselves. This idea was sent to me by Totoro and I didn't test it at all. But as he told me, this should work as well as previous solution
   
2. On the "receiving" computer we will install the software, which receives the Midi data and is able to save it to some form, which is then convertable to Midi (good way under Windows is Midi-OX - freeware program, which can do lot of things, and one of them is ability to log Midi input to the "Midi to text format". This is simple text file, which "logs" the Midi data into human readable and editable form, and what is most important, it is lossless convertable to classic MID file using the T2MF tool). Here is briefly described what to set up in Midi-OX, if you use Gameport Midi cable described in previous point:
   
   
   
   • Open the File/Log configuration dialog and set it following (the data will be saved into the filename which you will write in the "File name" field):
     
   • Set up input and output devices, by opening opening the Options/MIDI Devices Configuration dialog. Choose the Input device where leads the Gameport midi input from (you should have some Midi input device available between the input devices list, its exact name depends from your receiving sound card). Also open some output device (this is actually not necessary, but you can hear the received music then through output device you selected). E.g. for SoundBlaster Audigy you should select the input/output devices following:
     
   
   
3. Run the game on the "sending" computer and play the corresponding tune, while output leads to MIDI OUT port. The best would be if the sending computer would be "pure DOS", hardware should be somewhere around Pentium 200MHz (to be able to run the games fast enough, but not too fast and incompatible), with ISA sound card (e.g. SoundBlaster AWE32 or 64) and with MIDI output redirected to MIDI OUT using the native sound card driver. Most todays sound cards don't have native DOS drivers, and you have to find some way how to run these cards under DOS (for SoundBlaster PCI cards like SB Live! or Audigy, you can find the DOS drivers here) and additionally, how to .redirect the Midi output to MIDI OUT. You should try to choose any MPU-401 device as music card (in most cases it goes through port 330) and this should work - in the sound card setup use any music card which goes through port 330 (Roland, General MIDI, etc.) and you should be able to see the input data in the second coputer's MidiOX input window (if the cable is connected and MidiOX input port is set up properly), as soon as the music starts to play. Note, you need always to watch which soundcard the data output is for. For example, the Roland MT32 Midi may be successfully recorded through any soundcard's MPU401 port, but for correct playback after processing you will need real Roland MT32 soundcard, on other cards it will sound crappy. The SoundBlaster AWE32 Midi output may be more tricky, because it doesn't send the data to port 330 by default. You will either have to set up the AWE32 output to port 330 somehow (it's not common setup and sometimes it's not possible without modifying the INI files somehow) or if you know where the AWE music data files are stored, try to replace the music file to the General Midi file and set up General Midi (this will cause that the AWE32 tune will play when General Midi is setup, if set properly).
   
4. On the receiving computer, store the tune properly while playing (clicking on "LOG" square in bottom right corner on Midi OX you will start to log the Midi data into the file), save it as MIDI (or export to text file if you're using Midi-OX, and then using T2MF.EXE convert it lossless to midi). It is good to cut each song descent if the recording process was not exactly or just a litle bit too long (you can edit the file in Midi sequencer, or if you're using Midi-OX, you can edit resulting text file and remove repeating song from the end of the file, before converting with T2MF.EXE). And that's all, the ripping is complete!
   

Programs which make your life a bit easier

The above is very basic idea for ripping tunes, which cost lot of resources and is very hard to achieve (you need two computers, cable, pure DOS, old DOS driver for soundcard...). But this is really "ideal" environment. Fortunately, in current fast computers era we have some tools, which will help us to rip most of the tunes more easily, and as soon as it doesn't loose the quality of the ripped song, we can freely use them. But remember, always double check if more simple method really doesn't loose the quality of the output, because they really may do sometimes. Well, these are our "smart bombs" :

VDMSound - I would call this "emulator of DOS sound for Windows". Like DosBox, it emulates sound in games, but unlike DosBox, it doesn't emulate the system as whole, it emulates only sound from it. However, sound support was most problematic feature in DOS games under Windows (especially Windows NT/2000/XP, because these systems don't emulate SoundBlaster in their DOS command prompt) and mostly it was the reason why the games couldn't be run from DOS window properly. Using VDMSound many games will work with proper sound emulation. The advantage comparing DosBox is that the games are often faster (sometimes too fast ), disadvantage is the number of emulated games, which is less than in DosBox. But like DosBox, you can use MidiYoke and other tools to record Midi output on one computer in Windows environment, so it's best to try the desired game in both environments.

MT2GM - This tool is handy if the tunes are originated for Roland MT-32 and are not found in General MIDI form. You can use this tool to convert the MT32 tunes to General Midi. Though you cannot count that the tune will sound exactly as on MT32, it will sure sound better on GM card than original (MT32 uses other instruments and other order of instruments). But beware, you have to be sure the originated tunes are for MT32, otherwise the conversion will result to absolutely crappy sounded junk. (and as I told before, MIDI format doesn't store the information which system was it done for, so only way is to know it or simply to try the conversion and check if it sounds better than original...). The MT2GM tool is conciped to be "generic" converter from one patch bank to another, only clue is to have proper PATCHCNV.TXT file, which defines the conversion rules. Because of this philosophy, you can find near "original" patch file also another called PATCHCNV(vdmsound).txt provided to me by Borg No. One. This patch file uses a bit different patch bank for converting MT32 files, and the result is sometimes better, sometimes worse than original patch bank. To apply, just copy PATCHCNV(vdmsound).txt over the PATCHCNV.txt and apply the conversion. When I have to convert tunes, I mostly leave both versions (mostly I'll create directory GM, where I place tunes converted with original patch conversion bank, and directory GMV with files converted using VDMSound patch bank).

Extractor or MultiRipper - handy tools which allow you to extract music/picture files from big archive files. Though both programs do almost the same, they differ a lot and therefore I recommend to try both of them. Extractor is rather new, has nice Windows graphical user interface with many interesting functions, it supports libraries from newer games and is very good not only for MIDI/MOD files, but also for many of todays streamed formats. On the other side, MultiRipper is rather old, but recognizes more "old" formats and file libraries, it's cool especially for some rare MOD formats, so in our MIDI/MOD ripping situations it may be more successful, though it has obsolete DOS user interface, which doesn't work well sometimes on todays Windows machines (I cannot say it doesn't work, but it doesn't work well sometimes ). Additionally, the last 3.0 beta version of MultiRipper is completely freeware, while Extractor is shareware (unregistered version of Extractor limits the saved tunes to 30 and registration costs approx. $10). However, I am still looking for a program, which could scan and analyze PC memory for known tunes.

So, if you think you can get onto it, feel free to "revise" the tunes in World of Game MIDs. Many of them are in the state they should be re-ripped again the better way. You can try it using some tips above, and maybe you'll get better version of your favourite music, or you will be able to get something wholy new, which is not in the archives. And if you don't forget, you can send the tunes to me, so I can put the tunes on the website and share them with others to make me and them happy too .

WHY DO YOU USE ZIP ARCHIVES IN WORLD OF GAME MODS/MIDS, WHY DON'T YOU USE BETTER ARCHIVERS LIKE RAR, ACE OR SO?

The reason why I use zips in World of Game Mods/Mids is because zips are most compatible with music players, and they are also compatible with my web engine (so I can directly read from zip files the info.txt files which can be displayed online, which isn't possible to do from other archivers without having a support from them). And ZIP is also the fastest archiver, which is important not only when handling large playlists in players (maybe it isn't important when you play one file, but it IS different if want to create playlist containing 10000 or more files...), but also for the web angine. These reasons are for me more important than saving few kbytes using the better-but-less-usable archiver.

IS THERE A WAY TO DOWNLOAD ALL TUNES FROM THE ARCHIVES?

Sorry, it's not possible. It was possible in the past, but due to lot of technical problems and also thanks to abuse from some intelligent users (you know it wasn't nice to see the private FTP account in some messageboard easy searchable by Google ;) ), I definitely disabled possibility to download all the files easy way. The only way to do it is to download files one-by-one from the web, sorry...

IS THERE ANY WAY TO CONVERT THE TUNES TO MP3 OR WAV, SO I CAN PLAY THEM IN MY CD PLAYER OR CAR AUDIO?

Sure it is, though this sometimes annoys me, because I like mods or mids especially because of their format - the tunes are very small and smart, and the MP3 conversion only looses the quality and raises the size a lot. So, if you really don't have a reason, don't do this and try always to play the tunes in their original MIDI or MOD format, really lot players on PC play them cool. But I understand that sometimes you will want to burn the tunes to CD and listen in the car player or discman, which often doesn't support formats like mids or mods. So this is brief howto do that:

1. Download music player, which allows to write sound output to disk instead of your music card. You will create WAV file using this step. It is very important step, because from the music player you choose will depend the output quality a lot!
   
   
   
   • For MOD files, I had best experience with ModPlug. Download latest version, play the file, and click "Save Wav" option, where you can set lot of additional settings for the saved WAV file. You can also try recording the WAV using DeliPlayer, which offers different sound output like ModPlug (I cannot say better or worse, simply different ), and also offers to convert lot of Amiga's exotic music formats this way. But it's not free - the shareware version offers only mono stream, you have to buy full version to stream completely in stereo. And last-but-not-least, you can try XMPlay, which offers not only good WAV files writing (normal and normalized), but also direct encoding to MP3 using external MP3 encoder.
     
   • For MIDI files, WinAmp does it well using the Nullsoft Disk Writer plugin (it's provided free with the WinAmp Free Full distribution (at least it was in version 5.02, when I wrote this article). Install it, choose Options/Preferences/Plug-ins/Output, choose "Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in" (you can configure it to choose the path of output file). Now go to Input tab, choose "Nullsoft MIDI player", click "Configure", choose tab "sampling", check "Sampling enabled" box and "Send to Winamp's output system". Re-play the MIDI song and you should get the song saved. Note, you can use the WinAmp saving also for MOD files, but because WinAmp has a bit worse MOD sound playback than ModPlug or DeliPlayer, the resulting WAV file will be worse too (I recognized random silent cracks there sometimes)
     
   
   
   
2. When you have WAVs saved, you can burn them as Audio CD, or convert the files to MP3, to save some of space (e.g. CDex does that well) and burn the MP3s, if your audio player supports MP3 playback. Yes, and don't forget to write ID3 tags to MP3s, MP3/Tag Studio does it well.
   

I WOULD LIKE TO CONVERT MY MP3/DIGITAL AUDIO GAME MUSIC INTO MIDS, IS IT POSSIBLE ?

No. It is technically not possible, only with really dramatic loss of quality. To be absolutely strict, some programs tried to do it, but the result was always really horrible. The only chance to do this is to re-create the tune in MID music program by hand, but don't except that any program will do it instead of you

AND WHAT ABOUT ANOTHER MUSIC FORMATS LIKE SPC OR NSF, THEY CAN BE CONVERTED TO MIDS, ISN'T IT?

Yes, some formats (formats for older platforms), can be more or less easily converted to MIDs. Hovewer, I don't see any big reason to do it. They will sound best in format they were made in anyway, so why to convert them to MID?

HM, SO I COULD CONVERT THE SPC OR NSF TUNES TO MIDS AND SEND THEM TO YOU?

You could, but I'm accepting only conversions, which bring some use to user. For example, converting Amiga Exotic tune to MOD has sense, because Amiga Exotic tunes are very poorly played in original format, so converting to MODs will bring much better use and play in much more music players. The same e.g. about AdLib tunes. However, pure conversions from SPC, SID or NSF files using some converting program are useless, because they can well exist also in original formats and the conversion will only loose their quality. But you if you will re-track the tunes or do some enhancements, and the result will pass through my little "quality-check", I'll be happy if you'll send them..

SOME ARCHIVES HAVE 0 TUNES, ARE THEY EMPTY OR WHAT?

Yes, some archives have no tunes, and they are empty, they have only info.txt file inside.
Simple answer: It's because in these archives have been only the same files as in another archives, so they have been all deleted.
Detailed answer and why is it so: Before releasing the archives online, my system checks all files inside archives for duplicates. Because often happens that one song plays in more various games, and I simply don't want to have duplicate files in the archives (for example, the game Time Runners has 30 parts and some parts have the same songs - if I wouldn't do it that way, I would have one tune 30 times for every Time Runners game, which is wasting of listening time, disk space etc..). That's why my system checks the files inside archives for duplicates. If the duplicates are found, they'll be left only in the first archive, from the next archives the file will be removed and in the "Additional info" section of the info.txt file will be written something like this: "File cover.mod has been removed because it was the same as in Time Runners 20". Of course, sometimes it may happen (and it also happens), that one game has EXACTLY the same songs as another one, and all its songs are therefore deleted from the archives because of duplicity. Then it's very wise to include empty archives with the information about duplicity of files in them, bucause if I wouldn't, the people would send me the songs to these games again and again because they wouldn't be included in the archives (and I wouldn't remember that they are twice, which would result in many many duplicate files as it may be seen in other big collections).

I'M LOOKING FOR MID FROM GAME XY FOR LONG TIME AND I HAVEN'T FOUND IT IN YOUR ARCHIVES, CAN I SEND YOU A REQUEST?

No, don't do it please. All tunes I know I've either included in archives or in some cases (e.g. the authors or anybody else wanted to remove them), I've written at least info about that fact. I didn't left nothing for myself, so if you haven't found any info about your wanted tunes, the music either doesn't exist in MID format or wasn't re-arranged to MID. But it always means that I know nothing more about it and your music request will be useless.

I WANT TO LINK YOUR SITE ON MY SITE, CAN I?

Yes, you can, and I'll be happy if you'll do it. Though you cannot expect I will link your site for exchange (I have only few very special links in my Linx section and these link to my favourite pages, not to pages, which link to me ). You don't need to notify me about that (although you can and I'll be happy if you do). I'm sometimes searching and browsing the pages which link to me, and I'm really happy if I'll find any feedback. Because I'm not advertising the site anyhow (look here why), it always makes good mood when you see you made someone happy with your site However, I'd like to ask you to obey few simple rules:

• The best way is to link to these main areas of mirsoft.info sites:
  
  
  
  • http://www.mirsoft.info - Mirsoft.info - Main navigation and all the links
    
  • http://gamemods.mirsoft.info - World of Game Mods - biggest archive of game mods from the World
    
  • http://gamemids.mirsoft.info - World of Game Mids - biggest archive of game midis from the World
    
  • http://gmb.mirsoft.info - Game Music Base - searchable database of Games, Games music and games soundtracks
    
  
  


• If you will want to link directly to some game or music information page, you can do it by using the page's URL. These URLs I maintain to be permanent and shouldn't be changed, hopefully. For example, linking to Turrican 2 game info you can use link http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/game_info.php?id_ele=MTg0OA== or linking to Turrican: Arranged Soundtrack music info link to http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/music_info.php?id_ele=Mjk4Ng==


• If you will want to link directly to game music (MOD or MID) download, please NEVER link directly to download page (so script wogm_download should not be in the URL, because it creates the links dynamically and changes often). Instead of this, make link to music record info page. For example, if you will want to link to Turrican: Arranged/Remixed tunes (MOD), link always to page http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/music_info.php?id_ele=MTE1Mw== and not to page http://www.mirsoft.info/wogm_download.php?data=..... It's in your own interest, because the second link changes frequently and it will sure appear broken sooner or later.


• - and if you will need some picture for linking, here it is
  

WHAT IS PURPOSE OF SITES 'WORLD OF GAME MODS' AND 'WORLD OF GAME MIDS', HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU EARN FROM THEM?

Well, to understand why have been these sites made, you have to understand what am I. My very big hobby is game music and I'm very big game music collector. I have collection of game music tunes for many various platforms - SIDs, SPCs, NSFs, MP3s, MODs, MIDs, AdLib formats, AYs, and some more. While some tunes have been very easy to find and download (I simply found site dedicated to some platform like Zophar's Domain for SPCs or NSFs, or High Voltage SID Collection for C64 SIDs), some very good formats simply haven't site on the web that would satisfy me, and if I wanted to have complete collection of these tunes, I had to visit hudreds of sites and make often my own rips of tunes from games. And the biggest problem I had when I searched for two formats - game MODs and game MIDs. I spent many many hours, days and months to make the collection of these formats not only listenable, but also to make some infos to tunes (like author, company who did the game etc..). Important is, that all I did, I did for myself, not for anyone else. I simply wanted to listen to mods and mids and that was the reason why I was doing that.
As the time came, I started to be web programmer. When I have a bit more time, I'm doing some things on my Mirsoft's homepage, and one day I made a routine that allowed me to release my music archive online without spending a time editing the HTML code of the page. I asked Spyros, my provider, if it would bother him much to have bigger amount of data on his server, and because he is very kind guy, he allowed me to do that. And the result was, that I could release all my modules and mids online, without taking me much time for making updates, and I could manage also some statistics like TOP downloads, helps etc... I could also release my SPCs, or other tunes, but it wouldn't have sense, because I downloaded them almost 1:1 from one other site. That's why I released my MODs and MIDs - simply two types of tunes, which took me most of the time collecting them.
From this story results the answer to your question - target of these sites is NOT making money and target of the sites is NOT to be most visited web site in the world with big traffic (the funny thing is, that if the site will have too much traffic and too many people will download the tunes, site should slow down the server and my provider will have the reason to stop me, because I'm not paying him anything ). Only purpose why these sites are made is that it's my hobby, I have made these archives for myself, and it doesn't cost me very much time to help other game music fans not spending hours on searching their favourite tunes like I had to do. Because of that are these archives part of my homepage, and because of that I won't care if someone will have something against it, it won't make me problem delete any archives, and possible stopping the site costs me pressing the few keys . The sites simply aren't main target of my work, main target are the tunes I can listen to. So enjoy them, until they are here!