Stereo sound in Civ2 - a test file

[frunobulax]

Can someone do a test for me - I just discovered that I can play stereo soundfiles in my Civ2 Mac MPGE, when I was making a theme tune for my new Foundation & Empire scenario

The test is to see if this also works on a PC... so, would any of you PC users out there care to download the 'theme1.zip' file (see link below) and put the unzipped soundfile in the Sound folder of any existing scenario you have, plus add the following text into the 'events' file...

@IF
SCENARIOLOADED
@THEN
PLAYWAVEFILE
theme1.WAV
@ENDIF

....and then, see if it plays in stereo when you launch the scenario! Obviously you need a PC that has stereo audio out - it sounds fab on my G3 Powerbook's speakers

The soundfile is encoded as an interleaved stereo WAV file -> 22050Hz / 8bit / PCM.

For Mac, it works if you encode as an interleaved stereo AIFF file -> 44100Hz / 16bit / PCM.

My "theme1" is 35 seconds long, hence it's size: in this WAV version it's 1.4MB (cos it's only 8-bit), but in AIFF format it clocks in at 5.9MB (stereo 16bit AIFF files are approx. 10MB per minute - or about 167 KB per second).

thanks in advance - look forward to the results...

Frunobulax

Download soundfile here

(btw. I zipped the file with neither PC or Mac prefs, just as 'neither', so it should unzip OK for PC... let me know if not).

 

[Henrik]

If you are using "zip it" that would be the correct option yes (i've done it a lot for my pc playtesters)

 

[techumseh]

Stereo has always been supported by Civ2, whether PC or Mac. I don't know why the stock sounds used by Microprose for the main game or scenarios are all mono.

 

[frunobulax]

Originally posted by techumseh
Stereo has always been supported by Civ2, whether PC or Mac. I don't know why the stock sounds used by Microprose for the main game or scenarios are all mono.

Thanks for this techumseh - the only reason I found out about this was becuase I recently started playing Civ2 on a G3 Powerbook that has built-in stereo speakers. I'd not seen anything in any documentation about stereo soundfiles - shame it hasn't been utilised !

Has anyone used stereo sound in any scenarios they've made ?

 

[techumseh]

I made a bunch of stereo sounds for my sci-fi scenario Millennium 4. They're mostly weird science fiction type sounds but a number of them are very stereo. Its on Civ Fanatics, here: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2scensci.shtml

 

[oryx]

Some stereo sounds game with MGE/ToT. We should remember that when CIV II first game out, that 486's were a common machine and that the pentium was a cutting edge machine. Many sound cards supported only 8 bit mono.

I can't comment about the Mac world at that time.