Reply to Re: Music problems on all Dink games-new info to puzzle da pros
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April 24th 2005, 07:00 PM
faster
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.
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.
