Playing GMID files...

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Playing GMID files...

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AngeI
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Post by AngeI » Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:14 am

So I'm trying to access the original TIE Fighter music library, specifically all the inflight stuff. I can only get as far as extracting all the files in the LFD file they're contained in, which are in a format called .GMID

There's little info on the XWAUP forums about this after some searching, except that it is apparently a MIDI file but no player I have will open this filetype and I can't find any info on Google about how to play or convert this file either. I successfully used TIEMUSIC.exe to extract all the other music into a playable format which is contained in TIEMUSIC.LFD but the inflight stuff is in _ADLIB.LFD and that program doesn't work on this file.

So can anyone help on this? Many thanks :)

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Q
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Post by Q » Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:28 pm

There are other Lucasarts games that use the .GMID music format like Dark Forces and X-Wing. What I know, it looks like the music files are a standard MIDI format. I've read you may have to delete the first four bytes of the file to read them in a typical MIDI player. I used a program called "GOBREAD" to extract "TIEMUS2.LFD" and "TIEMUSIC.LFD" without any issues but on "ADLIB.LFD" it gave some errors. Here is where I got GOBREAD from (Xentax forums require free registration to see the download link): https://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?t=3081
I then used an old program called "Conman" (Dark Forces Container Manager v0.91z) to extract the .LFD files and it successfully extracts everything as-is from the archives without any conversion. http://www.jkhub.net/library/index.php? ... )%20v0.91z

Once all the files were extraced I renamed the .GMID file extention to .MID and I could play them in WinAmp/Windows Media Player with no problems.
"I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."

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AngeI
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Post by AngeI » Mon Jun 29, 2020 6:20 am

You sir, are a genius. Took a bit more googling to find what the correct header information was but got there in the end, I used a HEX editor to delete the first few bytes and as you predicted, and once renamed to a .MID, the file now plays properly. Thank you! :)

Vortexyz
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Post by Vortexyz » Wed Nov 04, 2020 6:38 pm

I just wanted to thank you both profusely for posting this thread. Ever since Tie Fighter Collector's Cd was released back in 1995, I have been on-and-off searching the internet for clues as to how to access those beautifully composed inflight music clips and get them playable in MIDI format. You have quite literally solved a puzzle that has been bugging me for the last 25 years (I'm not even exaggerating). God I love the internet. THANK YOU AGAIN.

Also, in the remote chance someone else comes hunting for the same information, here's my little contribution to help assist with the instructions above -- the number of bytes I found I needed to delete from the .GMID file using a hex editor was the first 30 bytes. That's more than what was hinted at above (which was only 4 bytes), but that's what worked for me at least.

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