Howdy,

Ok, this is a direct-x based 'Brian's Soundmon' replayer for
windhoos 95/98 (and maybe even windhoos 00, eh .. 2000).

It's a very very beta version, since I've not tested it very
much (will be done, as soon as I've got a little more time).
Currently it supports Direct-X 3 and up (it seems to have
some problems with the DirectSound implementation of NT
however).

All synthesis effects of the V2/V3a and V3b replayers are
supported. However, since its based on Direct-X 3, which
doesn't have the 'IID_DirectSoundNotify' interface, repeating
samples are not played entirely correct. Normally a sample
has an attack part and a repeating part. This is ofcourse not
supported by micro$choft, so you'll have to generate
'DirectSoundNotify' events and reposition the the play
cursor yourself. But the 'IID_DirectSoundNotify' interface
is only supported from Direct-X 5 and up, so its not in
here right now (will be added soon however). Currently
samples with a repeating part will only(!) play the
repeating part. The 'attack' part is skipped. Luckily synth
sounds are not affected by this.

Furthermore, I noticed that some windhoos machines have
problems when showing the 'synthesis waveforms'. My 'loose 98'
machine crashed on several occassions, where my (N)ice (T)ry
PC has no problems whatsoever. I dunno what the exact problem
is since I'm only drawing in a device context, but apparently
this can crash the entiry NOS ('Not Operating' system, luckily
Micro$choft has given us Direct-X, which, even if it does not
much else, stimulates our mind, by supplying an API that is
not 'easy to use', nor understandable).

A funny thing is, when you start writing a new replayer (the
original one is more than 10 years old), you just start
writing a replayer for the module structure as it is. On
my first test runs however I found out that I have to look
much closer at the original assembler code, since sounds
are heavily dependend on the order in which synthesis effects
are performed. After writing the first version, you've got
to spend a lot of time getting all the FX right.

Well so far for the technical stuff.... Just let me know if
you detect any errors of any kind....

Brian

P.S. I still have plans for porting the editor too, depends a
bit on the free time I have to spare.

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b.postma@hetnet.nl - http://www.homepages.hetnet.nl/~brianpostma
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Non Dutch readers:

a 'schoft' is a bastard.
a 'windhoos' is a tornado (destroying everything in its way). I
once got this suggestion from the 'Word' spelling checker,
instead of 'windows'. Somehow it seemed appropriate.
