Progress on Doom WAD Reader / Extractor #4
I have been fixing up a bunch of stuff in the Doom WAD Reader utility, such as making sure the program knows where to stick the huge amount of random files that aren’t bound by x_START and x_END flags, sound files, and so on.
I’ve also added the ability to play the digital sound files as well as save them out as a wave file.
I’ve also added a rather exciting (and somewhat nostalgia inducing) feature which allows the PC Speaker sounds to be played and saved out as wave files, and I must say, from what I recall, it does sound quite accurate! :)
The information for this feature was found at the Doom Wikia[1] which led me on to information on Andrew Apted and Simon "Fraggle" Howard’s work on reverse engineering the file format[2]. Good work guys!
Here are a few samples as saved out by the Doom PC Speaker Effect to Wave feature:
Edit: Checking the original Doom under DosBox, it doesn’t sound quite as accurate as I had thought. I had initially thought about continuity issues of the wave between the notes as I don’t really do anything about that, meaning it’ll sound quite rough.
I’m not entirely convinced this is the only issue, but it’s only minor stuff to fix really, but I’ll just try and do a better job at emulating the old PIT (Programmable Interval Timer) PC speaker setup[3] and see how it goes.
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