What is new in GMPlay release 1.3 ?

• Having more than one tone and drum set is possible now. (TONES, DRUMS options). Tone and Drum map files now reside in GMDIR/MapFiles
• Added optional MONO mode for faster mixing and replay. 14bit.driver also supports faster mono replay.
• Fixed 14bit.driver to better accept graphic boards. You must activate a Productivity or any other HiScan screen for about two seconds when starting GMPlay so that it can be recognized by the driver.
• Added GMDIR environment variable. This specifies the player's base directory. If this variable does not exist, the default will be "GM:". If "GM:" does not exist, the program will fall back to PROGDIR:
• A DIRECTORY option can now be given in the tone and drum map files to change the directory and group the samples together. This makes mapfiles shorter.
• Improved output of playtime, measure and percentage, synchronized to the audio stream.
• Gained some speed in the mixing routine.
• Improved the loading routine for MIDI files. It should never crash and checks for corrupted data and exits immediately on every intolerable error.
• The sounddrivers will now also be looked for in DEVS:SoundDrivers if not found in GMDIR/SoundDrivers.
• Tones and Drums can have relative volumes now. This allows to sample each instrument at full 8 bit level and obtain maximum signal-to-noise ratio.
• Multiple drumkits have been implemented (DRUMKIT command in the mapfiles).
• An excellent drum kit sampled from my Yamaha DB50XG board is provided. One kit for GM/GS mode, another kit for Yamaha-XG mode. Some samples however are still missing (would require envelopes to work)
• The program now recognizes Yamaha XG MIDI files and enables special features of the XG MIDI standard (any channel can be changed into a drum channel etc.)
• Global defaults can now be specified in an environment variable
• Local defaults can be specified in the file comment of any MIDI file.
• CTRL-C is now checked for during every time consuming action (loading MIDI file, mapfiles and samples).
• Implemented selection of linear, quadratic or exponential mapping of MIDI volumes and velocities.
• An optional lowpass filter improves audio quality when using low output sampling rates. Slows down loading the samples however.
• The speed control and timing of the MIDI files is now much more exact than before.
• GMPlay now informs you about what it is currently doing/loading (status reports).
• Fixed problems with the Sustain Pedal (hanging notes) and added some MIDI commands.
• Added a random play option that will play all songs specified as filename or DOS patterns in random order.
• Implemented memory pooling that works under both Kick2.0 and Kick3.x. Reduces memory fragmentation and speeds up the memory allocation process.

Planned features of future GMPlay releases (1.4 and higher)

• The coolest invention will probably be the ADSR envelopes that finally allow the program to fade in and to decay the instruments softly. I am just working on this. The memory usage will increase. Only by sacrificing some memory sace it is possible to keep the additional computing time low.
• A new, high quality instrument kit will hopefully make you cheer!
• Karaoke support is done as follows: GMPlay sends commands to an ARexx port to control text output. An external program can then display the text. Programmers can replace or change this program and adapt it to their needs.
• the narrator device in conjunction with the latest translator.library will be able to sing Karaoke texts - and this in different languages! What a fun!
• an AHI driver
• Support of 16 Bit sample formats (WAVE, MAUD, etc)
• Support GUS (Gravis UltraSound) instrumentes, so called "patches"
• the possibility to load soundfont banks (see AWE32 sound cards for PCs)
• a GUI for GMPlay and an editor for the instrument banks
• localisation of the program
• A workbench interface (e.g. AppIcon, Filerequester etc.)
• A delitracker interface, e.g. as a "player genie"
• Ability to save the computed audio streams
• toccata and maestro soundcard drivers as alternative to AHI