Blade of Destiny missing CD Music

[Zaxth]

Hello
Sorry that my first thread here is a call for help, but this really is the best resource for this kind of thing on the internet

I've read some of the other threads around the forum, but unfortunately nothing has helped.
I'm mounting blade of destiny in dosbox like so

[sblaster]
sbtype=sbpro2
oplmode=opl3

[gus]
gus=true

[speaker]
pcspeaker=false
tandy=off

[autoexec]
keyb gr
imgmount D "H:\bladeofdestiny.cue" -t iso
C:
cd \BLADE
call BLADE.BAT
exit

The cue file looks like this

FILE "BLADEOFDESTINY.iso" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2048
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Track02.ogg" MP3
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 00:47:65
FILE "Track03.ogg" MP3
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 03:00:42
FILE "Track04.ogg" MP3
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 09:37:47
FILE "Track05.ogg" MP3
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 13:09:62
FILE "Track06.ogg" MP3
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 16:14:63
FILE "Track07.ogg" MP3
TRACK 07 AUDIO
INDEX 01 20:01:52
FILE "Track08.ogg" MP3
TRACK 08 AUDIO
INDEX 01 23:46:27
FILE "Track09.ogg" MP3
TRACK 09 AUDIO
INDEX 01 27:23:16
FILE "Track10.ogg" MP3
TRACK 10 AUDIO
INDEX 01 30:59:46
FILE "Track11.ogg" MP3
TRACK 11 AUDIO
INDEX 01 34:27:71
FILE "Track12.ogg" MP3
TRACK 12 AUDIO
INDEX 01 36:58:28
FILE "Track13.ogg" MP3
TRACK 13 AUDIO
INDEX 01 39:53:67
FILE "Track14.ogg" MP3
TRACK 14 AUDIO
INDEX 01 42:23:69
FILE "Track15.ogg" MP3
TRACK 15 AUDIO
INDEX 01 45:20:68

I've tried selecting Soundblaster, Soundblaster Pro, Soundblaster Pro2, but nothing seems to give cd-audio. I've even tried deleting the sound.cfg file.
Thanks for any help you can offer.

[Zaxth]

I've tried Die Schicksalsklinge and I've had no issue getting cd music working there, so it would appear that cd-audio was never enabled for the international version - eventhough it's included on the disc. I wonder if it's possible to edit it back in

[Rabenaas]

High Zaxth ,

there has always been a floppy and a cd version, probably internationally as well. Getting the floppy version to play digital sound is not feasible imo. (For the other way round there is a patch.) With StarTrail that is no problem since GUS emulation lets midi sound just as good as digital. The international floppy version was patched, so there is a chance you can have GUS in blade as well. Try that if possible.

Afair GOG could only get the license for midi music in the first two parts. So that might explain the problem.
(Could somebody with Blade from GOG confirm this, please?)

Of course you could try to swap blade.dat. While that will probably crash the program, it might result in a funny hybrid version with digital sound.

[Zaxth]

What I have is the international CD version, not GoG and not floppy. It just does not play the music, while the german version does with the same config.

[Rabenaas]

That's odd. Maybe some conversion error, did you try playing the OGGs in a media player?

To be clear about this, you don't hear any kind of music, only sound effects. Right?

[Zaxth]

Yep I made an image of the cd, and when I mount it it's automatically detected as an audio cd by VLC and it wants to play it. Also theres the data track on it, it's bin/cue same as the german version. I've tried playing the music and it works fine in VLC. In game however theres just midi music and effects.
I've also made the image as described above with converted oggs - I saw that recommended elsewhere on the forum, but that don't work either.

[Rabenaas]

I see. Then your reasoning that digital music just is deliberately disabled seems sound. In the German cd version you usually don't get a midi option. Unless you patch the executable that is. I'll PM Henne who wrote that patch in case he doesn't read this. Maybe he has an idea.

[Zaxth]

Yep, I took the german exe put it in the folder and renamed the dat to correspond with the exe, started up, and with cd-music. Of course the version number is now 3.02 and not 3.09. But atleast the music works this way. I tried the same approach with Star Trail but that did not work. It's limited to midi only - atleast theres support for gravis ultrasound and the music is immensely better than Blade of Destiny.

[HenneNWH]

Hi Zaxth,

welcome to this forum.

I took a look into BLADEM.EXE V3.09.

Size: 553696 Bytes
MD5SUM: 4f3ba3d5e5dfcd1a9161baf005b52bd7

There is no Audio-CD support built into the file I examine atm, so if you check the MD5sum and tell us,
we can figure if there's help you you.

I guess these EXE-Files don't differ.

Greets Henne.

[Zaxth]

Hello thanks a lot for the warm welcome I like this forum and while I can read german I won't insult anyone by writing in german, as my grammer tends to be 'off'.
My file is identical to yours, same md5sum. So I don't suppose theres much to be done for the international release, it would appear that only shadows over riva actually came with cd audio.

[HenneNWH]

There is a gleam of hope for you.
I'm working on a reverse engineered version of "Blade of Destiny" called "BrightEyes".
This will be similiar to GemRB or ScummVM (new binary, old datafiles), when ready.

At the moment I've reversed ~34% of the original functions.
When the 100% are reached, we will be able to play the german CD-Version,
which is very close to the international release of BOD.

I think we'll add a feature to play own music files (mp3, ogg, flac,...) for each track in the game.
This way you can come to the pleasure of CD-Audio music.
But thats future music.

This state we will have reached maybe in two years.

[Zaxth]

Sounds great! will it eventually be open source as well?

[Obi-Wahn]

It is already open source: https://github.com/Henne/Bright-Eyes - Here you will find the latest windows version.

[Zaxth]

Very cool, I'll check it out.