New DOS Civilization (1991) Jukebox music player (CivPlay)

[rahorvat]

Hi everyone,
As a part of OpenCiv1, I have made a new Civilization music player which plays all of the tunes, including special effects (source code included).
The EXE needs to be placed in original Civ game directory. The player supports additional drivers: Pro cards (OPL-3) driver (PSOUND.CVL) and General MIDI sound driver (GSOUND.CVL, before use configure it with SOUND.EXE configuration utility).

I guess it can be very useful to people trying to capture tunes from the old Civilization.
Unfortunately some tunes are by default on repeat, so they play endlessly (To fix the problem sound drivers would need to be disassembled and analyzed).

Known tune numbers:
3 - Main theme
4 - Evolution music
5 - American theme
6 - Aztec theme
7 - Egyptian theme
8 - Zulu theme
9 - French theme
10 - Roman theme
11 - Russian theme
12 - Greek theme
13 - English theme
14 - Babylonian theme
15 - Chinese theme
16 - Mongol theme
17 - Indian theme
18 - German theme
19 - Short American theme
20 - Short Aztec theme
21 - Short Egyptian theme
22 - Short Zulu theme
23 - Short French theme
24 - Short Roman theme
25 - Short Russian theme
26 - Short Greek theme
27 - Short English theme
28 - Short Babylonian theme
29 - Short Chinese theme
30 - Short Mongol theme
31 - Short Indian theme
32 - Short German theme
33 - Prepare for war music
34 - Win game music
35 - Lose game music
36 - Civil disorder music
37 - Illegal move effect
38 - Win a battle effect
39 - Lose a battle effect
40 - Win a battle with a modern unit effect
41 - Lose a battle against a modern unit effect
42 - Nuke effect
43 - Bomber plane effect?
44 - City constructs a building music

If you recognize some of the missing tune names or sound effects please share

 

[Lord_Hill]

Wow, that's great! Just had a play through them all.

Tracks 19 through to 32 are the short versions of each Civ's theme (in the same order as the long versions above, so 19 is Lincoln, 20 Montezuma etc). This plays when you capture a city or the AI wants to contact you to start diplomacy for example.

33 is the music that plays when you anger another Civ in diplomacy and they tell you to prepare for war.
36 civil disorder
37 is the alarm if you do an illegal move (like trying to move next to an enemy unit if you're already next to one)
38 win a battle
39 lose a battle
40 win a battle with a modern unit
41 lose a battle against a modern unit
42 nuke
43 not 100% sure but I think it's a bomber plane, it's a louder bang than modern unit win but quieter than nuke,
44 city constructs a building

 

[tupi]

Wow, this one is great! It would be very interesting to read the source to try to understand how the game stores its music. Maybe it even be possible to translate them into more standard MIDI? How different are they from this? At the time (1991), MIDI standard simply did not exist, I think?

 

[rahorvat]

Wow, this one is great! It would be very interesting to read the source to try to understand how the game stores its music. Maybe it even be possible to translate them into more standard MIDI? How different are they from this? At the time (1991), MIDI standard simply did not exist, I think?

General MIDI driver (GSOUND.CVL) is compliant with MIDI specification (and is not instrument specific), while MT-32 (RSOUND.CVL) is specific to a Roland device. Look at Wikipedia, full MIDI specification was published 1985, at that time many devices already implemented some form of MIDI protocol. Atari ST (1986) had the MIDI protocol already implemented, and that was a big deal for a musicians.

You can capture MIDI output (GSOUND.CVL) from DosBox into .mid file, but the problem are tunes which repeat endlessly.

 

[Blake00]

This is a great work mate