Commander Keen Thingy "Ep.5 The Armageddon Machine"
0"Commander Keen Thingy" (Computer Wrist) is a batch proggie to start the Commander Keen games. It evolved from my batch programs to playback the games music (in this case my midi conversions of the original adlib music). But instead to only playback the score as midi it offers some extras like a description of the game and description of the enemies (commander-keen.com) and items you find in the game (games internal computer wrist), all level maps (commander-keen.com) and cheats (commander-keen.com, shikadi.net).
You can download the batch wrapper from my cloud but it won't include the game and it won't include the MT-32 rom images since i'm not sure if it's legal to spread them together with DOSBox ECE. DOSBox ECE itself will be included in a way it can be re-used for all my MIDI music batch programs and "wrappers" which i already made or which will come one by one. "Game / Music Wrapper" and DOSBox will be separated for this. The installation is setup in a way that you can simply drag (extract) the whole stuff in any directory of your choice as long as you keep the directory structure of "DOSGames" in which DOSBox and the (your?) DOS games will reside.
The "DOSBox ECE" release will include everything you need to run the wrapper except like i said the game itself and the MT-32 rom images.
The DOS programs you need to run the wrapper are all freeware or public domain With exclusion of the Gravis Ultrasound folder which is (as far as i know) abandonware. Of course i will include hyperlinks to download the game and the MT-32 rom images. The game should start as long as the executable you drop in it's folder matches "keen5".
What you see is version 00000100 (4), but it already has been "updated" (some last minute edits) to v00000101 (5).
Also will be included in the "DOSBox" directory the latest release of the "Fatboy" soundfont which is imho by far the best soundfont for DOS games and it has been updated right last month to have fatter drums.
Sure it would be more as just great to have the MIDI score in the game (no not as miserable .ogg only the MIDI is fully satisfying because only the MIDI loops perfect and you can't reach the saturation of an MT-32 even if it's just the Munt emulation with a thin .ogg or .mp3 you need the "real thing" for this). "Fatboy" will unfortunately blow up the DOSBox directory by roundabout 350MB, but it's worth every Byte in it (unlike the 1.6GB "crisis" which yet can't compete with the 100MB of FluidR3, it isn't worth the time for downloading it, it's not really bad but somewhat unbalanced and just blown in size, countless stereo samples in stupid +48kHz make no difference at all to a 22kHz GUS soundfont in the end).
Just like my previous uploads this is also to see as advertisement for "DOSBox ECE" and "Fatboy". "DOSBox ECE" has the "Munt" project implemented thus you can easy emulate a MT-32 without having to install "Munt" at all, you need only the ROM images. "DOSBox ECE" has also "Fluidsynth" implemented which allows you to replace the thin MSWS even without having to install "Flidsynth" itself or another external "Virtual Synthesizer", it all runs from within DOSBox. Sure one could like "Fluidsynth", "Virtual Synth" or/and "Fatboy" for another Windows MIDI player....
BUT
You can't reach the sound especially when it comes to games MIDI files. The included MegaMID is already a fine MIDI player, but also MegaMID will disregard some specialities which "PX" (a Miles Sound Sytem "XP" derivate) handles easy because it's a dedicated player to playback "XMI" files by use of the "Miles Sounddrivers" which was used for most games in the early to mid '90. No other player can make the GUS sound so good as the Miles Sounddrivers and the GUS Ultramid. No other player can control the MT-32 so well. It leaks of a graphical interface or any output to display except a short status report which was my intentional reason to create such "wrappers" or sound preview and selection batch programs at all. As you can see and for comparison "MegaMID" drives the GUS via "MegaEm" which runs fine in DOSBox once you figured out how with exclusion of the SoundBlaster emulation but this we won't need in DOSBox. I discarded the GUS MidiPlayer because it sounds exactly the same as "MegaEm" it uses the same configuration file, while Ultramid uses a specific one which can be optimized to have maximum quality for a specific game (or in case for DOSBox all patches are always enabled). Simplyfied said GUS "Playmidi" and "MegaEm" have the same quite thinner sound as "Ultramid" with "PX" (you can't tell Playmidi or MegaEm to load only 16bit patches in 44kHz, both programs will decide self what is best).
But well you are now able to check this out for yourself.
Other Videos By Gernot Schrader
| 2020-11-15 | 16 E2M6 Sinister (Fatboy & Munt) |
| 2020-11-15 | 17 E2M7 Waltz of the Demons (Fatboy & Munt) |
| 2020-11-15 | 18 E2M8 Nobody Told Me About id (Fatboy & Munt) |
| 2020-11-15 | 19 E2M9 Untitled (Fatboy & Munt) |
| 2020-11-15 | 20 E3M2 Donna to the Rescue (Fatboy & Munt) |
| 2020-11-15 | 21 E3M3 Deep Into the Code (Fatboy & Munt) |
| 2020-11-15 | 22 E3M8 Facing the Spider (Fatboy & Munt) |
| 2020-11-15 | 23 VICTOR The End of DOOM (Fatboy & Munt) |
| 2020-10-07 | Rumkurven (Pioneer Space Sim "Phoenix") |
| 2020-05-20 | Rap ala Scarlatti |
| 2020-02-25 | Commander Keen Thingy "Ep.5 The Armageddon Machine" |
| 2020-02-06 | Buzz Aldrin's Race into Space (BARIS) MT-32 MIDI |
| 2020-01-03 | Blues Story (Die Entstehung des Blues) |
| 2019-12-12 | DOS en gabba |
| 2019-12-02 | DOOM II MIDI, GM/GS using various soundfonts |
| 2019-12-02 | DOOM II MIDI, SBP2FM |
| 2019-12-02 | DOOM II MIDI, Munt (MT-32 emulation) |
| 2019-12-02 | DOOM II MIDI, GUS Ultramid |
| 2019-11-11 | "Lords of the Realm" soundtrack |
| 2019-11-11 | "Dune" game soundtrack (as MT32 @ DOSBox ECE) |
| 2019-11-11 | "Dune II" general midi score |