                          ########========------+
                          | tfmx-play/SDL 1.1.7 |
                          +-------========#######

      --== writing to a file is possible again, on Linux as well ==--

written by Jonathan H. Pickard <marxmarv@antigates.com>
(the domain seems to have gone offline)
maintained by Neochrome <neko@netcologne.de>
oversampling code by Peter Schlaile <udbz@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
bugfix by Stefan Ohlsson <stefan@starship.pp.se>
NetBSD patches by Thomas Klausner <wiz@danbala.tuwien.ac.at>
bugreports by Michael Schwendt <mschwendt@yahoo.com>
original MacOS-X port (PortAudio) by Ben Shanfelder <unity4u2@yahoo.com>
TFMX format detection code from UADE contributed by Michael Doering
	<mldoering@gmx.net>
even more help and bugreports also by Michael Doering <mldoering@gmx.net>
bugreports and -fixes by Sven Janssen <sven@stalkingwolf.de>
bug report/feature-request by Raik Lieske <raik.lieske@gmx.net>
rewritten sound buffer handling by Ralf Hoffmann <ralf@boomerangsworld.de>

USE
---
Rule "ichiban" (#1) is that -h shows the usage.  All the info about the cool
features is in here (though you won't need to know if you just want to use
this as backend for Sakuraplayer/TFMXcess/kTFXshell...)

COPYRIGHT
---------
tfmx-play is (C) 1996/2000 by Jonathan H. Pickard and David Banz.
It is free software, released under the GPL (see file "COPYING").

KNOWN BUGS
----------
Currently not all TFMX files are played correctly.

One (possibly packed) version of the Z-Out theme sounds weird and 
used to segfault the SDL-version on MacOSX (it now just enters an endless
loop), the PortAudio-version does not crash, but it sounds
weird as well, on Linux-x86 it works fine.
Looks like a byteorder-bug or (evil, evil!) alignment-bug which is triggered
there...
The Z-Out theme available from http://exotica.fix.no does work fine.

Performance is worse than the old non-portable OSS implementation for Linux,
but almost all machines today should be able handle it.
If you come up with a way to optimize performance, any hints and patches
are welcome! :)

########## the following section is mostly taken from jhp's original readme ###

This version includes stereo "blend" to make better sound for headphone
wearers.  Degrees of blend run from 2 (full stereo) to 0 (full mono).  Note
that this is changed from prior versions which had blend!  I decided to have
one level of blend that I considered comfortable to keep from slowing things
too severely.

This version also includes a simple low-pass filter with four settings: off,
high, medium, and low (describing the cutoff frequencies).  Don't ask me to
give you exact ratios of the cutoff frequencies; I don't know or understand
the math behind weighted-sum filters.  Approximately, though, the time
constants of the filter are: high=1.2, medium=1.5, low=2.4, referenced to
the playback frequency.  This sounds reasonable-ish.  If anyone has the real
numbers, please send 'em.

This player should play _most_ stuff.  I know for a fact that it plays all
_my_ stuff rather well =:^) , and I did use some twisted TFMX constructs in
places.  Otherwise known to play are MasterBlazer, Apidya (mostly), Turrican
II and III, and JimPower.  Most TFMX-1.5 stuff (Turrican, et al) sound
broken in some places, and admittedly, it's not my highest priority to fix
it.
NOTE: Turrican III title tune could use a little patch if you don't hear any
lead lines in song 1.  History behind this was, the module as ripped crashed
most TFMX players.  I modified the thing with a hex editor (converting the
offending commands to wait's) and passed the version around.  Unfortunately,
the wait paralyzed the whole soundmacro for 5 seconds before it would give
us audio.  Anyway, I have the (un?)fixed MDAT available.  Email me if you
need it and you can't find elsewhere.

#################################################### jph section ends here ###

Here are some more tunes I have tested:

MUDS (OK, check it out - it's brilliant!)
R-Type Theme (mostly OK, a short part is broken)
Z-Out (OK, except for one (packed?) version of the title tune, which causes
      a segfault and sounds pretty wrong otherwise on MacOSX)
The Oath (OK)
Curse of Ra (seems to be OK, but I'm not entirely sure)
Der Patrizier (OK)
Logical (OK)
Oops-Up (OK...unless you have an unsupported rip)
Factor-5 Turrican 1 Musicdisk (OK)
The Secret of Monkey Island (mostly OK)
GemX Theme (broken, JHP was working on this one, but never finished it - the
hack should automatically be activated, it can be forced with "-G")
GemX Ingame (OK)
Danger Freak Theme (OK, command-line switch "-D" should no longer be needed)
BC Kid (OK, except for the Factor 5 tune, which does not play at all)
Battle Isle (OK)
Carl Lewis Challenge (OK)
Grand Monster Slam (OK)
Hard'n'Heavy (seems OK, but not 100% sure)

WANT TO HELP ?
--------------
If you want to contribute to this project, just contact me
(neko@netcologne.de), help is always apprectiated.

UPDATES, ETC.
-------------
Look for the latest TFMX tools for Linux here:
http://darkstar.tabu.stw-bonn.de/~neo/audio.html

For more cool stuff go here:
http://darkstar.tabu.stw-bonn.de/~neo/
