6 Freqently Asked Questions

This chapter was initially written by Mom/Cubic.

1. What is OCP?

   OCP is a music player which plays a variety of sound formats on several sound cards.

2. What sound cards are supported?

   OSS, Open Sound System

   ALSA, via OSS legacy interface

   SDL, giving support for virtually any sound system

   Disk Writer, writes .WAV output on disk.

   Quiet Player

3. What music formats are supported?

   MOD/NST/WOW, XM, S3M, DMF, MTM, ULT, 669, OKT, PTM, AMS, MDL, IT, MIDI, SID, OGG and MPEG 1 audio layer 1/2/3, MIDI

4. Which is the last version of OCP for Unix?

   The last OCP version is the 3.0.1 Version.

5. Are you going to release new versions?

   Windows/DOS: Perhaps not. The Cubic team are busy doing other things.

   UNIX: Yes

6. Now, how does that MIDI player thing work?

   OCP's MIDI player does not, like other programs, use the MIDI capabilities of your sound card. The MIDI file is rendered to an audio stream using the Timidity+ rendering engine to perform this (special rendered version, since Timidity+ is designed to be a standalone application)

7. Does that mean I can listen to MIDI files even with my old SBPro?

   Of course - if your soundcard works with the rest of OCP, you will be able to play MIDI files, too - as long you as got a Timidity+ sound font installed.

8. Hey, I have a module which OCP plays wrong! You SUCK!

   Well, it's in fact YOU who sucks, as you didn't send that module together with a bug report to mailto:doj@cubic.org or mailto:stian.skjelstad@gmail.com. How the hell can we fix bugs if we don't know them?

9. OCP plays my “.it” files much too soft, IT's internal mixer sounds a lot better, why don't you just fix it?

   Because this is a religious question. OCP's mixing routines are designed for maximum sound quality which also includes things like declicking and quadratic interpolation, IT's mixing routines are just optimized for speed without really caring about sound quality (speaking of the non-MMX routines). So OCP's sound differs a bit, if you are not pleased with it, feel free to use IT again ;)

10. Can you give me the source or a part of the source from OCP?

    The complete source code can be found on the official OCP sites, covered under the GNU GPL.

11. I have a problem finding a small routine that will play mod files. I wanted to know if you can help finding a routine, lib or something like this.

    Try our Tiny XM Player, a free XM Player inc. source.

12. Why don't you implement Nibbles, or similar game, in Cubic? Like FT2-nibbles? Or just plain Snake...

    Get ahold of a coder, give him the source and force him to implement it, if it's a GOOD nibbles version, we might include it into the "official" release ;)

13. What does "Wurfel Mode" actually do?

    "Wurfel" is german word for cube/dice. The mode plays an animation.

14. Can I make my own "Wurfel Mode" animation?

    Of course you can. On our site you'll find the program WAP (WurfelAnimator Professional) which can convert “.pcx” frames to a Wurfel Mode animation.

15. How can I put a picture to the background on OCP?

    Convert your Picture to a TGA-file, these pics have to be 640x384x208 TGAs, the first or the last 48 colors must not be used. You can also save your image as a 640x384x208 gif87 picture. Either the first or the last 48 colors of the palette have to be black.