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# Frequently Asked Questions

this chapter was initially written by Mom/Cubic.

What is OPENCP?
OPENCP is a music player which plays a variety of sound formats on several sound cards.

What sound cards are supported ?
Gravis UltraSound / MAX / DaughterBoard / PnP
SoundBlaster 1.x / 2.x / Pro / 16 / SB 32 / PnP / AWE / 64
WSS compatible cards
Pro Audio Spectrum series
ESS AudioDrive 688
Terratec EWS64L/XL
Disk Writer, writes .WAV output on disk.
MP3 Writer
Quiet Player

What music formats are supported?
MOD/NST/WOW, XM, S3M, DMF, MTM, ULT, 669, OKT, PTM, AMS, MDL, IT, MIDI, SID, and MPEG 1 audio layer 1/2/3

Which is the last version of OPENCP?
The last OPENCP version is the 2.6pre6 Version.

Can not find `dos4gw.exe`?
download it: dos4gw.exe

Where has `cplaunch.exe` gone?
It was killed, as it sucked. It caused severe timing errors with Wave table cards, as `pmode/w` seems to have some problems with Interrupts. Anyway, if you are in SUCH a need of it, you'll surely find someone who stil has it

Does OPENCP run with Windows 3.11?
not perfect! If you try it, your system might crash !

The sound stops/hangs when I try to switch OPENCP to background in Win9x - how can I avoid it?
If you have a GUS or Interwave and use Hardware mixing, try to enable the soundcard's timer (RTFM please) - if you use software mixing, note that background playing is only available at the main player screen for some technical reasons. If it doesn't work THEN - well, go complain to your soundcard's driver programmer.

Always when I'm in "X" mode (132 columns) and I try to switch back to a window, OPENCP crashes! Why?
It's not OPENCP which crashes, it's Windows. Sadly, most graphic card drivers get confused when you try to switch a 132 column mode to a window - and hang the whole system. There's nothing that can be done about it, except that you don't try this again. Sorry.

I have an SB16 and use OPENCP under windows - why does the playing stop whenever I shell to DOS and try to get back?
Actually, we have no idea. It seems that the SB16 Windows drivers modifies some of the card's registers in this moment which confuses either the playing or the DOS shell port monitoring routines of OPENCP.

Now, how does that MIDI player thing work?
OPENCP's MIDI player does not, like other programs, use the MIDI capabilities of your sound card / Korg Trinity or whatever, but uses the patch files of the famous Gravis Ultrasound to synthesize the MIDI output itself (just like Timidity or kmidi under KDE) via it's normal wavetable system. So the only thing you need are the GUS patch files which are available at our site. Simply open a new subdir called "MIDI" in OPENCP's directory, copy all patch files `.PAT` into it and there you go.

Users of a Gravis Ultrasound only have to make sure their `ultradir` environment variable is set correctly or state the patch file and `ultrasnd.ini` location in `cp.ini`.

Does that mean I can listen to MIDI files even with my old SBPro?
Of course - if your soundcard works with the rest of OPENCP, you will be able to play MIDI files, too - as long you as got the GUS Patch files as written above.

Hey, I have a module which OPENCP plays wrong! You SUCK!
Well, it's in fact YOU who sucks, as you didn't send that module together with a bug report to doj@cubic.org. How the hell can we fix bugs if we don't know them?

OPENCP plays my `.it` files much too soft, IT's internal mixer sounds a lot better, why don't you just fix it?
Because this is a religious question. OPENCP's mixing routines are designed for maximum sound quality which also includes things like declicking and quadratic interpolation, IT's mixing routines are just optimized for speed without really caring about sound quality (speaking of the non-MMX routines). So OPENCP's sound differs a bit, if you are not pleased with it, feel free to use IT again ;)

Can you give me the source or a part of the source from OPENCP?
The complete source code can be found on the official OPENCP sites, covered under the GNU GPL.

I have a problem finding a small routine that will play mod files. I wanted to know if you can help finding a routine, lib or something like this.
Try our Tiny XM Player, a free XM Player inc. source.

Why don't you implement Nibbles, or similar game, in Cubic? Like FT2-nibbles? Or just plain Snake...
Get ahold of a coder, give him the source and force him to implement it, if it's a GOOD nibbles version, we might include it into the "official" release ;)

I have a AWE32 and a GUS in my computer. Will both cards be supported simultaneously in the nearby future?
Right now, only 2 GUSs' are supported simultaneously.

What does ''Würfel Mode'' actually do?
''Würfel'' is german word for cube/dice. The mode plays an animation.

Can I make my own ''Würfel Mode'' animation?
Of course you can. On our site you'll find the program WAP (WürfelAnimator Professional) which can convert `.pcx` frames to a Würfel Mode animation.

How can I put a picture to the background on OPENCP?
Convert your Picture to a TGA-file, these pics have to be 640x384x208 TGAs, the first or the last 48 colors must not be used. You can also save your image as a 640x384x208 gif87 picture. Either the first or the last 48 colors of the palette have to be black.

Up to version 2.0alpha++, OPENCP ran fine on my 486, now it creeps and can only mix a hand full of channels. Can I fix this somehow?
RTFM ;) No, as we're living in the age of Pentium computers now, we set the Floating Point Mixer as default. Just change this.

I have an AWE or GUS card and the displays are not correctly synced to the music.
If you have an AWE or GUS OPENCPwill probably use the hardware mixing drivers. The display system of OPENCPis designed to work correctly with software mixing, as it always calculates with a certain buffer delay, caused be the software mixers. Now the hardware mixing cards don't use this buffer and therefore the display is delayed by a certain amount of time. Perhaps some day a mighty coder might fix this.

Subsections

- Windows Vapc driver specific

Next: Windows Vapc driver specific Up: Users Manual Previous: Support Contents