Difference between revisions of "ADL (Westwood)"

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| 1992-12-??
 
| 1992-12-??
 
| [[Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (DOS)]]
 
| [[Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (DOS)]]
| {{Song-Box|01 - Dune 2 - DOS - Introduction.ogg}}
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| {{Song-Box|301 - Dune II - DOS - Introduction.ogg}}
 
|-
 
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| 1993-??-??
 
| 1993-??-??

Revision as of 17:38, 24 June 2016

Westwood Studios AdLib
File:ADL.png
Developer: Westwood Studios
Header: Custom
Content: Unknown
Instruments: Internal
Target Output
Output - Digital Audio - No.png Output - MIDI - No.png Output - FM Synthesis.png Output - PSG - No.png
Released: 1990-??-??
First Game: Eye of the Beholder (DOS)
Extensions
  • *.adl

Westwood Studios created this format for storing music that is sent to sound cards equipped with an OPL2 chip (like AdLib and Sound Blaster). It was used in several of their game in the early 1990s.

The music was originally made as ROL files in AdLib Visual Composer, and was then converted to the ADL format. Unlike Visual Composer, ADL stores audio and instrument definitions in the same file, whereas Visual Composer uses the BNK format.

Players

(Category)

Converters

(Category)

ADL to ?

? to ADL

Games

(Category)
Released Title Sample
1990-??-?? Eye of the Beholder (DOS)
1991-12-?? Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon (DOS)
1992-05-?? The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One (DOS)
1992-12-?? Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (DOS)
-
1993-??-?? Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (DOS)

Technical

The format structure has differences between games. First version of the format was introduced in Eye of the Beholder. Then in the Eye of the Beholder II it has undergone minor changes such as the size of the pointer array for tracks which is 300 bytes instead of 500. In the next games (The Legend of Kyrandia and Dune II) the format was also changed.

Here is also SND (Westwood) format which has very similar structure.

In some Westwood games like Eye of the Beholder II, the music can be hacked into playing at different parts of the game by editing the offsets. For example, in Intro.adl, byte 000C 0C is the introduction music. However, you can set the previous bytes (0000 - 000B) to FF to turn off the sound effects in the introduction. Alternatively, you can set all the previous bytes to 0C so with each sound effect that plays in the intro, the introduction music will replay.

In Eye of the Beholder II, the music and sound bytes begin at 0078 in the .ADL files. The amount of sound ID's can be determined by looking at how many bytes there are until many bytes are 00. For example, in Intro.adl, the music and sound bytes start from 0078 and go up to 00B9 until the addresses are 00.

00B9 (185) - 0078 (120) + 1 = 66. 66/2 = 33, so there would be 33 sound ID's in Intro.adl.

In Intro.adl, the bytes 026C to 02C5 contain the instrument data.

Links