MegaTracker Player for DOS v0.8
-------------------------------

MegaTracker Player (MTP) is a program which enables you to play most
SoundSmith and MegaTracker songs from the Apple IIgs on an appropriately
equipped PC-compatible computer, often with higher quality than the real IIgs
due to the GS's low (26 kHz) mix rate compared with the 44.1 kHz CD-quality
possible on the PC.

System Requirements
-------------------

- 386, 486, Pentium, or Pentium Pro PC compatible computer

- Gravis UltraSound, UltraSound MAX, UltraSound ACE, UltraSound Plug n' Play,
  or other GF1 or InterWave sound card (such as the Reveal WavExtreme 32 and
  the on-board sound in some Compaq Presarios).

- The GUS or equivalent sound card must have at least 256K of RAM on board
  the card.

- MS-DOS 5.0 or later, or Microsoft Windows '95


How To Use It
-------------

Unpack MTP and the example song (UNITA2) to any directory.  To play the
example song, simply type 'mtp unita2' and press Enter.  You should then
hear the classic FUN.MUSIC.4 song "UNITA2".

To play songs in Graphic Player mode with VU meters and other fun stuff,
use the "-g" flag.  For example, 'mtp -g unita2' will play UNITA2 with
all the graphical trimmings.

Known Problems To Be Fixed
--------------------------

- The famous "UltraClicks" are in full evidence here.

- The player slows down if you are running it in a Windows 95 DOS box and it
  is not the frontmost window.

- Not all of the MegaTracker effects commands are implemented yet, so some
  MT-specific songs may not sound exactly correct.

- As a DOS extender app, MTP is currently limited to using
  8.3 filenames, which is bad for ASIF loading.

- If you use graphic player mode, you currently must have a copy of
  the MTSCREEN.GS file in the current directory.

Planned Features
----------------

- More soundcard support

- Moving to a Win32 character-mode application so long filenames
  could be used.


Special Thanks
--------------

Thomas Pytel (Tran/Renaissance) and Charles Scheffold (Daredevil/Renaissance)
for their excellent PMODE/W DOS extender, which enables MTP to be a much
smaller EXE than if I'd used DOS/4GW.


Contact Me
----------

If you have any problems, comments, or suggestions for MTP, let me
know at:

E-mail: irsman@iag.net


Legal
-----

MTP is copyright (c) 1996-1997 Ian Schmidt.  All Rights Reserved.  MTP is 
supplied 'as-is', and while bugs or other errors may exist in the program,
the user assumes all liability for it's use.  If anything evil happens as
a result of use of MTP, Ian Schmidt cannot be held liable.  If anything
cool happens, well, we'll see ;-)

MTP is freeware.  This means you can download MTP and give it to all your
friends and owe me nothing.  No features are disabled, and no Apple IIgses
were harmed during the making of this program.
