AGISB version 0.3, Copyright Anders M Olsson, 1998
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This program can be freely distributed and shared as long
as no money is involved. Shareware libraries may charge
reasonable media and/or handling costs.

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Revision history:
=================
Version 0.1, March 1, 1998 - Initial release.

Version 0.3, March 15, 1998 - Fixed a problem with King's
Quest II. There are some bugs in the sound resources of KQ2
that confused the player and made it mix up the tracks.
Thanks to Eric Torgersen for pointing this out.

The program should now work with all interpreter versions
2.911 or above, including all version 3 interpreters!

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This is an experimental patch for Sierra's old AGI games,
to make them play three voice music and sound effects via
a Soundblaster or AdLib card.

After the patch has been applied, the game will *require*
a music card to run. Speaker support is removed to make
room for Soundblaster support. So don't try to run a
patched game on a computer without proper hardware. There
is no check that a card is in place. Absent sound hardware
may cause the computer to hang, or other strange behaviour
may occur.

You need a Sierra game with an interpreter version
2.911 or above. NOTHING OLDER WILL WORK! To check the
version number of your Sierra interpreters, use Jeremy
W. Hayes program "AGIVER" available from

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ptrkelly/agi/utils.html

(If your game does not qualify as version 2.911 or above,
please read on.)

To apply the patch, simply run the program AGISB.EXE from your
game directory. By default, the file AGI will be patched, and no
backup is made. IT IS YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE A BACKUP
COPY OF THE FILE AGI BEFORE PROCEEDING! I will not accept any
responsibility for any damage caused by using this program, even
if it erases your hard disk. (Not very likely, though!)

If you wish to use other file names than the default, give
them as arguments on the command line. Like this:

AGISB [infile] [outfile]

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If your game has an unsupported interpreter version:
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You can extract a version 2.9xx interpreter from another
game! When you apply the patch, a small fix is also applied
to disable the detection of game IDs. So a patched
version 2.9xx interpreter should happily play any version 2
game without complaining. But please don't try to use a
version 2 interpreter with a version 3 game or vice versa!
All version 3 games should probably work directly, without
substituting the interpreter.

To move the interpreter from one game to another, copy the
files:

- SIERRA.COM **
- AGI
- All files ending with .OVL
- optionally HGC_FONT

** The loader - SIERRA.COM - is sometimes renamed to reflect the
name of the game, for example KQ1.COM.

If you don't own any games at all with the correct
interpreter versions, you can download any of the files
DEMOPACK1.ZIP, DEMOPACK2.ZIP or DEMOPACK3.ZIP from

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ptrkelly/agi/games/demos.html

and extract the mentioned files from there.

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Enjoy! And please let me know if this utility worked for you!

Anders M Olsson
Jaktstigen 37
SE-226 52 Lund
SWEDEN

E-mail: anders.m.olsson@abc.se

To do:
======
Yes, there is room for improvement. But I wanted this
program out of the door now. I have been working on it for
some two months, and I figured it was time to share
what I had. Here are some of my thoughts for what is
planned:

- I'm not completely happy with the way it sounds. I would
like to get rid of those clicks and pops when notes are
released. Particularly annoying in the Space Quest I theme,
I think. Anybody know how? Mail me!

- Perhaps it would be possible to allocate different
instruments to the different voices.

- There is actually a fourth voice, rhythm or noise, to try
to take care of in some intelligent fashion.

- A MIDI version that outputs data to whatever synth you
have connected.
