pouët.net

Thanks for the kind words everyone! There are a few important caveats that I want to mention here.

First of all, there is no synchronization with timer interrupts or anything. The tempo of the music is tied to the frame rate, which is tied to the CPU clock rate. This sorta almost works, since the number of cycles per frame stays more or less constant, so we can configure the target clock rate in dosbox to achieve the desired tempo. Still, this sucks, and is something I aim to improve in future releases.

Second, the soundtrack is pretty much only intended to be played on the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth in Windows. In particular, we never turn off any MIDI notes, except for the string channel - instead relying on choice of instruments and 32 voice per channel polyphony to ensure that notes aren't audible for too long. I suppose that inconsistencies between instrument libraries is a general MIDI problem though ;)

Also, there is probably not going to be an album release anytime soon, but the soundtrack is now available to download as a MIDI file. It contains more or less the exact same events that are generated by the executable, except for some minor cleanup at the end - which means that it has the same problem with not releasing notes as mentioned above. But at least you can enjoy the tune in Windows Media Player :)

I should also add that the soundtrack was totally an afterthought. I had a decision between stripping a 156b effect down to 128b and going for next year's Lovebyte, or add music and go for 256b at this year's Revision, and I'm very glad I chose the latter. Still, I only spent about 12 hours hacking it in right before the deadline, so I think there is a lot of potential for further exploration here. I'm happy that it was so well received though, and I hope to hear more tiny intros going in this direction forward!