quake/articles/1996/art-862

Path: mantis!not-for-mail

From: mike@hightec.saarlink.de (Michael Schumacher)

Newsgroups: rec.games.computer.quake.misc,rec.games.computer.quake.announce

Subject: lxQuakeCDmusic 1.1 - CD audio support for Linux Quake

Followup-To: rec.games.computer.quake.misc

Date: 17 Dec 1996 18:57:26 -0000

Organization: ?

Lines: 54

Sender: tony@jobstream.co.uk

Approved: quake@mantis.co.uk

Message-ID: <850828052.954665@htc01.hightec.saarlink.de>

Hello "Linux-Quakers",

in case you're not familiar with it: lxQuakeCDmusic is a set of scripts

and binaries which adds level-specific music to the Linux port (done by

Dave D. Taylor and Linus Torvalds) of id Software's popular game Quake.

Just as with the original DOS version, you can now assign arbitrary CD

audio tracks to certain levels. While playing a level, the appropriate

track is auto-repeated, and hitting the "Pause" key stops/resumes both,

the game and the music server. You can have as many files containing

track-to-level assignments as you wish, and easily activate them prior

to starting (or even while playing) x[f86]quake. You can also adjust

the volume of the audio channels (master/sound/CD).

While it was developed and tested on Linux/x86 (ELF), chances are that it

also works for the Linux/Alpha port; see the file lxbin/README for details.

This file also contains comprehensive installation and copyright notes, so

it's really a good idea to have a look at it... ;) lxQuakeCDmusic works

with both, x[f86]quake 1.01 and 1.06.

Here's what's new in version 1.1 (compared to 1.0):

- the three demos can now be assigned their own CD tracks

- you can specify a track which is played at the end of each level

- you can assign a track to "The End" level (Shub-Niggurath's Pit)

- the "cd" console commands are supported (except for "cd remap")

- audio mixer support (volume adjustment; somewhat restricted, though)

- you can now change the CD and/or assignments during game play

- you can execute arbitrary shell commands from Quake's console

- fixed the bug which caused a crash when no CD was inserted *blush*

- suppression of xquake's output is still default, but optional now

- more verbose error reporting in case something goes haywire

- updated documentation ("where can I find xquake 1.06?" :-)

If you already wrote your own track-to-level assignment file(s), you'll

have to add the new maps as described in lxbin/{README,CDs/NineInchNails}.

With the new features of this release, the audio portion of Linux Quake

should be fairly complete. However, the "CD Music Volume" scale widget

in the "Options" menu is still pretty useless. If x[f86]quake would

report the values of the bgmvolume/volume variables whenever they're

changed, then this could also be easily handled by lxQuakeCDmusic. But

I'm afraid Linus is currently too busy "patching the Linus 2.0 series"

to work on anything else... ;)

I've uploaded the package (220 KB) to sunsite's Incoming directory, (i.e.

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming/lxQuakeCDmusic-1.1.{lsm,tgz}),

but it will eventually be moved to its final location, which is

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/games/quake/lxQuakeCDmusic-1.1.{lsm,tgz}.

Happy Quaking & Merry Xmas,

mike