bertrandguegan

Hello everyone! I'm back with some good news. :) First I just uploaded a few days ago the entire OPL3 soundtrack on YT. So no need now to download to files to enjoy the music. No more excuses, you can OPL3 DOOM party anywhere anytime! :D Also, DOOM II OPL3 remaster will be probably released this year! I'll keep you updated! In my quest to rehabilitate the OPL3 soundchip, I'll also remaster the same way iconic music from some early 90's DOS games so, if you want to follow up on this, please don't hesitate to subscribe to my YT channel ;) Here's a brand new remaster of the Monkey Island's iconic theme:

Hi everyone ! I remastered DOOM's music in OPL3 a few months ago, and I composed music for a couple of retro games since then, featuring good old OPL music :) The Interval is one of them. It's a retro FPS with strong wolfenstein-doom vibes, and it's free to play. It's kind of short though, as it was made during a game jam, but still is good time to spend for a couple of hours during winter holidays ;) Soundtrack is 100% OPL3 style (I re-used some instruments I created for the DOOM's remastered project). Download link -> https://sean-noonan.itch.io/interval

You really know your way around the OPL chip @Hisymak ! I've always found OPL music more organic than other kinds of chiptunes, and you remixes do justice to this statement, as they sound organic, smooth and musical too. Kudos to you :) You mentioned that lots of people tend to dislike (even hate) this kind of music. Many composers from the 90's didn't like those sounds too, because they would so much prefer deal with real instruments. I understand why, but it's throwing the bathwater out with the baby IMO. As one can be so creative with OPL ! I may be biased since I grew up listening to OPL music, playing DOS games back in the early 90's. But still... And I'm happy to know that even today there are still people out there loving those OPL sounds :) Your Doom's remix is awesome! Did you ever send it to Mark Klem ? I'm sure that he would really love to hear your OPL version ! :)

Sounds really warm and balanced ! Well done!! :) During choruses it feels like sometimes one of the two instruments playing the melody is a little bit off (in terms of timing). I wonder if there is an issue with the MIDI part or if there is maybe a too long attack in the ADSR envelope for one of the synth? What do you think ?

That would be an interesting thing to do, but don't you think that it would sound a little bit too close to the original version ? (I mean by original the Roland SC version, as Bobby Prince composed doom music with that gear) But as you said, maybe it's worth trying. I wonder why anyone didn't try this before, custom instruments aside, it would be just a simple remapping, doesn't it?

I agree, many composers from this era considered AdLib FM synth as "cheap", and there was nothing but frustration around this chip. That's because there were trying to replicate real acoustic instruments (maybe subconsciously IDK). I was very aware of this when working on this remastered version. Except for the drums part where I clearly intended to make them sound realistics (because I think OPL3 can sound really good for kick and snare), I tried different approaches for the other instruments. Stephane Picq's work (Dune, Conspiracy/KGB to name a few) inspires me as he really tried to use AdLib for what it was (thanks to the HERAD system, which allowed to "automate" the chip's parameters, that was just awesome). BTW I absolutely love the MT-32's DUNE2 soundtrack. That's fun that you're mentionning it, because I'm scoring a commercial game using exclusively an MT-32 ;) I didn't used custom parameters for it though, but this is something I'm definetely interested in. That's why an MT-32 version of Doom2 sounds interesting to me, I'll think about it. For now I'm more thinking about making an OPL3 version first, but I didn't make up my mind yet.

Thanks for listening ! In terms of spectral response, sure that my version sounds "thicker" (and broad) compared to the original one. I carefully set the volume instruments (low-end and high-end) by using references tracks though, so I'm kind of surprised that's such an annoyance to you. I'm sorry for that. Are you talking about casual listening or in-game experience ?

I just released a new pack for GZdoom users. Process is now very straightforward :) (link in the YT video's description)

Thank you so much @Lippeth ! You were right, the trouble was caused by HRTF turned AUTO. Switching it to OFF solves the issue :) I'm uploading right now a new file containing the music WAD file and instructions, so it would be a straightforward process for anyone who wants to try it with GZDoom. (BTW That was the first time I tried GZdoom, this port is awesome!)

Hi everyone, Some of you may already know that I recently made an OPL3 remastered version of DOOM. I wanted to try the music pack and see how it feels in-game, using gzdoom. So I imported the ogg files, making a WAD file using SLADE3. Then I launched the game by dragging this WAD into the GZDOOM.EXE It worked, as it was a straightforward process. But unfortunately, it seems that there was a huge quality loss in the process... Music sounds really bad once imported into Slade3. Have you ever encountered this issue ? Is there a better way to play custom music with DOOM? Thanks :)

Thanks for your insight ! That settles it I suppose... more than half of my instruments are 4ops :/

Oh my.. you're right, there's definitely something wrong with those OGG files! I did my last "thorough listening check" just BEFORE exporting them into wav files. I found out what went wrong (and that was kind of stupid, as it appears that sometimes for some reasons I just forgot to solo the track before bouncing to disk...) Thinking about this, it may have been for the best that I didn't noticed it the night when I uploaded the pack : I would have certainly thrown my pc out of my window!!! xD (as I was completely exhausted as I recall) It won't take long to correct that mistake though, I should be able to find time to upload a corrected version today. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience! You also mentioned noise at the beginning of some of the loops (OGG tracks). You're right but sadly I don't think there is anything I can do about it now. This was a compromise I had to do so the tracks loop seamlessly. The noise you hear is the reverb tail of the track. It's noticeable when a track starts quietly and smoothly, and ends loudly and abruptly. There are other solutions of course, but as far as I know it would also involve changes in the material and there would have been compromises too at some point. A better solution would have been to split the track, physically or virtually (with tags or markers), into an "intro" section and a "loop" section. But I don't know if DOOM would technically support this solution? Thank you very much for your feedback! Here are my thoughts : - I also like how drums benefit from the OPL3. However, I'm still not very happy of my toms patches. They lack some "meat" and "oomph", especially when the mix is crowded. If someone would have asked me what I hated the most in this remaster, it would be probably this ! - about E1M8, you're right I removed the drums part. For many tracks the drums parts were the last things I tweaked. And sometimes I really liked the way it sounded without the drums. For this one in particular I prefered to keep it that way. - In a general sense I didn't want necessarly making things to sound as close as possible as reality (except for the drums). That's why you're probably right with the E1M1 guitar parts, I know what you mean. But I think I still prefer it that way too ;) That being said, I just started my journey into FM synth, and there is still room for improvment ! Thanks again for your feedback.

So I should listen to Hexen's music first, it has been a while since I played this game ;)

Thank you!! I shouldn't be able to work on it before next september but I'm thinking about doing the same with DOOM II ;)

Thank you very much Alex ! It means a lot to me ! There was a LOT of work involved... But it was worth it (I hope so ;) )