STAR WARS: Dark Forces – Get Much Better MIDI Music

Get Much Better MIDI Music with Real Instruments During Gameplay

Сrеdit gоеs to eaglez|*Hunter !

When downloaded, the game will offer incredibly bad music quality. This can massively be improved by selecting another MIDI device from the game’s IMUSE sound setup program.

1. Navigate to the game’s root folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dark Forces) and open the dosbox.conf file with an editor (Windows Notepad or Notepad++).
2. Comment out the last two line’s commands (dark.exe and exit) with a “#” so the game won’t launch automatically when starting DOSbox.
3. Don’t forget to save the edited text file.
4. Start DF from Steam. Do not start it by launching the dosbox.exe file. When launched, even if you commented out the dark.exe command, the game may start. If so, exit it again by hitting “DOS” button from the main menu.
5. You should now be presented with the DOS command prompt window (which otherwise would have been closed if the “exit” command was still active).
6. Now type “imuse” and hit Enter in order to launch the sound setup tool from the game’s root directory.
7. Select “M” for “Manual Config”.
8. Select to show the extended configuration menu instead of the standard configuration menu.
9. At the right, for the MIDI device, select either “General MIDI” at Port 330 or “Roland” at Port 330.
10. Select “Test music” in order to play a short test sample.
11. You should hear music that now should sound much more like real instruments than before with the 4-OP FM setting.
12. Select “Quit” and acknowledge to save the settings.
13. Type “exit” in the DOS prompt and hit Enter to close the DOS session.
14. Re-open the dosbox.conf file and re-enable the commands “dark.exe” as well as “exit”).
15. Launch the game and enjoy good quality MIDI music.

Background:

At the former times, nearly all games were configured using a sound setup tool that came with the game. Cheap sound cards did not offer real MIDI instruments, rather did they try to approach the instrument’s sound by a simple FM synthesis.

That’s what the default setting for the Steam game image is. I do not know why they set this as default, it may be related to compatibility issues. However since Windows XP already every windows version comes with a built in software MIDI synth “Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth” which doesn’t sound too bad compared to expensive real MIDI hardware from former times, and it sounds massively better than any OPL FM synthesis.

Also it comes free included with Windows and may be accessed through the “General MIDI” port that DOSbox emulates for the game, so why bother using it. If you want to optimize MIDI sound for your DOSbox games a little bit further, you should check out the freeware VirtualMIDI Synth from the web, which enables you to use custom downloadable MIDI sound banks that sound even better.