Progress is being made quickly and consistently, as usual.
DaVince wrote on the TDC forums:
"Is it just my PC that does this? I can't remember it happening on my old ones... Anyone any ideas? "
In the olden days, MIDI was done by a special MIDI chip on the sound card. The instruments were stored on that chip and thus, they were loaded fast and MIDIs would be able to start fast.
Now, we have software synth. No more chips on the sound card, but instead, Windows loads the instrument from a 3 MB file called "GM.DLS". Now finding the file and loading it from hard disk every time a MIDI starts makes that stupid lag appear.
Solution: none. You can't replace GM.DLS with a smaller sound bank, because it's a protected file and restores itself as soon as it's saved. I tried.
Btw, this being fixed in MMF2 is probably a trick by Clickteam by instead of restarting the MIDI, it switches back to the beginning of the song before it ends. Not sure, but it'd do the trick.
Looks like I finally know the cause of this. I see that I have two options now: first, I could update to MMF2. This would critically decrease productivity because I hate how MMF works and it takes a long time to get anything done with it; however it provides many weird functions that I might have a use for later on.
Second, I could switch to a new music format through the use of extensions. This is by far less painful for me if I can find a good extension (the extensions available for TGF are quite limited), but I worry about file size. It would obviously leap if I included MP3s or something similar. Also, I have no idea what music I should use - any help with locating some new ones would be greatly appreciated.
In other news, regarding the sound crash that some have experienced:
Pixelthief wrote on the TDC forums:
I've found, for TGF at least, that if you take the compiled .exe and go to its properties, and set it to "Windows 95 Compatability Mode", it will reduce the crashing by 90%. This is of course, only if you use windows XP or so.
I'm also thinking about reworking the main menu to make it completely navigable using only the keyboard, but it turned out to be more difficult than expected. I also have a few ideas I'm not comfortable with revealing yet, because I'm not sure what I'm truly capable of - and if I decide to do them, I want them to be a surprise.
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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”
