The Dink Network

I have this problem with Dink games and my sound card. Actually, two problems. The simpler and less irritating problem is that sometimes the game stops playing music. Period. Sound, yes, music, no more. I have to save, then restart the game, to get it back. Truly an obnoxious bug, and I've had it consistently for several years, only on Dink and its DMODs, even through several C: reformats.

The worst problem is that the music gradually "evolves" into the most noxiously atonal stuff possible - where the melody line is in one key signature and the harmony line in another. If you understand what that means, you know that it turns fine music into pure torment. In addition, something keeps changing the sliders on my volume controls for wave and midi sounds (the little speaker icon on taskbar). This may, or may not, have anything to do with the sound quality devolution, but is unrelated to the sound going off completely. Those changes occur, apparently at random, and are different almost each time. Wierd. The slider changes also happen with other games, though, whereas the two particular problems I mentioned are singular to the Dink games.

I cannot think of any other applications that use .mid files where I have had this problem, so perhaps it is something in the Dink engine. But a major contributing factor has to be my sound card, because the second problem only arose when I got a new motherboard with a terrible card - so terrible that I asked my expert to get me a true Sound Blaster. My old board had an SB16, which gave marvellous sound, even to the newest applications. This new SB isn't a true SB. It is an old Ensoniq "legacy" device, but is being sold by Creative with the official Sound Blaster label, when it is anything BUT. It uses a synthesizer, which is sometimes just fine, but for older stuff, it's patently inadequate. It's a Creative Labs CT4750 Sound Blaster PCI512 Digital Card. The Via Technologies card on my motherboard is the only thing that is worse. The way it puts the melody and harmony lines into two different key signatures, however, is something the card only does with Dink stuff.

Here's what doesn't help with the atonal music problem:

Quitting the game and restarting it.

Quitting the game and clicking my shortcut to restart Windows only. When I go back to the saved game, the atonal quality is still there, and in the same form it had been before. The atonal-ism has a variety of forms, some worse than others.

Here's what sometimes does help:

A complete reboot.

My non-expert guesses:

This tells me that something, perhaps in BIOS, is getting changed as the music is "devolving," and only a reboot can clear it up. But even if it's in BIOS, something in either the sound card's program or the Dink program (or DMOD)is causing the "devolution" to occur in BIOS, while I'm still playing the game. The best I can do, though, is guess about the cause.

I've scanned - it's not being caused by a virus.

But the problem comes back, even after rebooting fixes it. As for the sound going off, that happened sometimes even with my old SB16, and is probably a bug somewhere connected with the Dink Game engine. If anyone knows of a patch or a way to keep the sound from disappearing, I'd love to hear that, too.

Holly B.

Try killing every single task before starting the game... (taskbar, and Ctrl-Alt-Del if your feeling lucky.)

Thanks, but I do that most of the time anyway. The only tray thing I don't kill is Zone Alarm Pro, becuse it keeps my DSL from accessing the Internet when I'm not using the Internet. Otherwise, I try to keep my computer as unloaded as possible, especially for games. The only things in the msconfig startup menu are a statement to automatically log me into Windows and Zone Alarm. Otherwise, it's just the standard: Load power profile, scan registry and system tray. I use Win98SE.

Even if I had more stuff loaded, that's no reason for the music to just quit, or to start deteriorating to something truly putrid. These have never been a problem with any other application - just Dink ones. Both motherboards and sound cards gave consistent performance with .mid files. Except on Dink stuff. The old SB16 let the music just stop after a while. This new card does that, plus lets the music become so rotten it hurts your ears. But only on Dink programs, none other.

There has to be something in the Dink engine that is at least contributing to these problems. If that weren't so, I'd have the problems with other applications that use .mid files.

Doesn't anyone else have these problems? I find it hard to believe I'm the only one, especially with the problem of the music turning off spontanously. It doesn't happen during a tune; only between tunes, so sometimes I don't notice it right away. The degradation of music sound that I'm getting with the new sound card, though, is hard to miss. Lousy as this new sound card is, though, I never have music deteriorate in any other applications. It's either good or not, and stays that way. Except for Dink games. That's why I'm inquring here instead of some forum where there are lots of PC experts of all kinds. Here, there are experts on the Dink engine, as well as knowing about PCs in general.

Thanks again,
Holly B.

Yeah, when I play Dink games the sound sometimes goes off too. If it's just the music that goes off it's something errornous in the dmod. If the entire sound goes off, sfx and music, then it's your pc. My computer does this a lot and it is fairly modern. Just hit caps lock until it comes back on. Sounds crazy, but it works for me.

1. Dink can loose soun if you Alt-Tab out and back to the game. Usually the next midi just does not begin.
2. If you exit the game using Alt+F4 (to close the window), it can stay in memory and still use the soundcard. So you restart the game - and oops: no sound.

I found a possible source of the problem with my .mid sounds going off, but I'm still in the dark about how and why I have this problem at all.

Here's how it happened. I was playing a game. Because I'm usually frustrated by the slow walking speed, I use a cheat to give Dink herbal boots. Later, I hit Alt-Tab to look at my desktop, and when I returned to the game, the upper left corner was displaying programming commands, and all the interactive objects had color squares beneath them. I decided to bear with it before saving and restarting the game. Then I stopped getting sound, and the left corner said:

Dink:MidiError: MMSYSTEM275 (MMSYSTEM34) cannot find the specified file. Make sure the path and file name are correct.

So I searched my system for all files named mmsystem, and got only mmsystem.dll, in my System folder. So I got the bright idea to make a copy of it and rename it mmsystem275.dll, and put that also into the System folder.

Then I continued playing, and got another message about MMSYSTEM304 - no such file. So I did the same thing, made another copy of mmsystem.dll and renamed it as 304.

Then it occurred to me to check my debug files to see what OTHER mmsystem misnomers were shown in them. I searched all debug files in my Dink folder for "mmsystem," and got a bunch. I then began looking through them, searching for "mmsystem" in the text of each one. These were the only two I encountered before I quit. I had to quit, because some debug files were so huge that I had to make copies of the files and rename them as debug.doc. Even then, Word could not load the full files easily. My largest one came to about 21000 pages. Doing this once - okay. Doing it 6-7 times - no way.

As far as I know, it is when my system calls for one of these two nonexistent .dll files that my midi sound stops. It keeps calling for the midi files to play through this improperly named system file. Now that I have added two new such files with the "proper" names, I'm hoping to have no further problems. Ahem. It'll be hard to know when my Dink games stop doing this, because all I'll notice is that the music never turns off any more, and that'd take a fair amount of time.

So my question, then, is now this: Why does MY experience give me these problems, while I've not heard of anyone else having them? Why is MY system calling for nonexistent mmsystem.dlls? I have had these problems before I ever began using any of the cheats, so they're not at fault for it. The .mid music going off has been a problem for several years now. I only discovered cheats a year ago.

The calls must be coming from the Dink engine itself or from the programming of the DMODs I'm using. Either way, it's happening in many of the Dink adventures, not just one or two, which tends to lean me toward the original engine as the source of the problem. And NO other program that I've ever had on my PC which uses .mid files has had this problem of the music turning off spontaneously. This is exclusively a Dink game problem. So where are these calls for mmsystem275 and 304 coming from? I suspected they may have been typos in the DMOD, and that the number was a reference to the .mid file being called. Wrong. The game I was playing had no 275.mid or 304.mid at all.

I'd like extremely much to be able to stop the Dink game from calling for these files from now on, rather than hoping the "fix" I concocted will work.

Any insightful or scathingly brilliant thoughts?

Thanks,
Holly B.

Well, if your feeling lucky, seach the net, or even KAZAA for the true system files... Not really the best way to get around to go do something, but it works. The KaZaA trick is a little old mind you, and most people have wised up and unshared their entire hard drives.