Later that year, Three Mile Island was released as a nuclear simulation game for the Apple II. It too suffered from its own kind of tragic accident: fatal crashes when trying to save your progress.
This bug wasn’t present in the first version of the game Muse Software shipped, back when DOS 3.1 was the standard. But when the game was unofficially transcribed to DOS 3.3, incompatibilities between the operating systems introduced this fatal flaw.
She’s gonna blow!!
Jorj Bauer didn’t know that, though; all he knew was that this game had been broken for 37 years. Deciding that this bug has existed for 37 years too long, he set out to sleuth the problem and provide a fix. His three-part journal detailing his investigation makes for fascinating reading, akin to a good 4am crack.
You don’t need to be a detective to enjoy the fruits of Jorj’s labor: the fixed version of the game can be played in the Internet Archive, courtesy Jason Scott.
Filed under History, People; Comments Off on The music of Silas Warner, part deux
Three years ago, I published music by the late Silas Warner, creator of MUSE Software’s Castle Wolfenstein. By taking obscure NoteWorthy files and converting them to the more accessible MP3 format, I hoped to not only preserve Warner’s legacy, but expose a side of him that hadn’t gained him fame, but of which he was doubtless proud.
Since then, blog reader Andrew Monti generously volunteered to contribute to that effort. He emailed me to say:
Wonderful site! I didn’t realize that [Silas Warner] was a musician as well. I knew you did what you could to extract the audio from NoteWorthy, but the built-in sound on the NoteWorthy player is painful! I managed to convert the original NoteWorthy file to Logic, where I used the Steinway Grand Hall piano sample kit. I also cleaned-up the tempo and applied a few other changes, and voila – a new, better-sounding stereo mix of this lovely piece.
Monti’s modifications raise some philosophical issues: how did Warner intend for his music to be heard? If NoteWorthy’s inbuilt sound is awful, is that how he heard it when he wrote it? If so, does adapting it to other formats or sample kits distort the artist’s intention? This is the same question at the root of how emulators play sound. Few emulators manifest the original software’s audio as it was intended to be heard, instead settling for a best approximation. Do Monti’s improvements similarly reinterpret the past — or is using today’s tools to enable Warner to overcome the limitations of his era? Are these edits any different from my previous release of the songs in MP3, a format that didn’t exist in Warner’s time?
Such questions are not for me to answer, and in this case where the original files are still available, any answer isn’t likely to be particularly weighty. Monti’s MP3s do not replace the ones I previously published, so I offer the updated ones at the bottom of this post, which Monti produced via these steps:
Find someone with a ‘real’ copy of NoteWorthy. In this case, my PC-based producer friend Keith fit the bill.
From within NoteWorthy, export the file as MIDI.
In Logic, import the MIDI file.
Unfortunately, not all MIDI parameters made the trip; I had to manually set the tempo and time signatures at the appropriate parts in the score based on the original NoteWorthy file. There were also a few obvious ‘spurious’ notes that had to be reigned in after the conversion. These were mostly between the tempo transitions.
I applied a stereo mix to the track based on Logic’s Steinway Grand software keyboard based on what the performer would hear (high frequencies in the right ear, etc.).
Lastly, I exported the track as a WAV file and compressed it though a high-quality Steinberg MP3 encoder.
The result is a new rendition of "Variations on Sonata in A by Mozart (K.331)", by Silas Warner:
and "The Heavens are Telling, from The Creation":
For that latter piece, Monti acknowledges that "string sections are tough without either special software or inordinate amounts of time in Logic to map the instruments to legato, pizzicato, bowing direction and speed, etc. when required… Personally, I don’t think it’s much better than the built-in MIDI sounds in NoteWorthy, but I may just be picky."
I’ll let listeners decide how these songs should be heard.
Filed under History, People; Comments Off on The music of Silas Warner
Apple II users are, almost by definition, a talented lot. We take rudimentary materials and turn them into tools of wonderful self-expression, producing works of art that are beautiful technically, visually, and aurally. This artistic value often carries over into other media as well, though we rarely have the opportunity to share that side of our lives with other Apple II users — save the rare scenario where Stan Marks pulls out his guitar at KansasFest to sing about growing up on the Mississippi delta, or the Shepherds happen to be in Boston the same weekend I’m performing in Kiss Me, Kate.
It was with some surprise that I recently stumbled across historical evidence of a renowned Apple II user’s musical talent. The late Silas Warner, best known as the creator of the classic Apple II game Castle Wolfenstein, was also "a published author and talented musician and composer in the classical European style", says Wikipedia. No links to his published writings are provided, but a pair of his musical works is available for download: the original composition "Variations on Sonata in A by Mozart (K.331)"; and Warner’s arrangement of "The Heavens are Telling, from The Creation".
Although I was eager to experience this side of the programmer, I was stymied by the files being available only in NWC format, used by the musical composition software NoteWorthy. I had neither the commercial product nor a Windows environment in which to try its free player, and my quest for alternatives or converters proved fruitless.
Finally, classifying this as an Apple II project, I turned to my fellow techies for help. Kelvin Sherlock was the first to respond: "I found this python script which can convert [NoteWorthy files] to lilypond format (lilypond is used for generating music scores but it can also generate MIDI files). Sadly, lilypond complains about a handful of errors in the converted file."
Andy Molloy then spoke up with a less technical but more effective workflow which he has generously outlined here:
Run the Viewer, click File > Open and select the NWC file. Don’t press play until you have Audacity ready to go.
Download and install the free Audacity 1.3.13 beta for Windows.
Download the LAME MP3 encoder plugin for Audacity and follow the instructions for installation. This will let you export an Audacity recording as an MP3.
On the Audacity Device ToolBar, I set the Output Device drop down box to ‘Digital Output’ and the Input Device box to ‘Stereo Mix’.
Push the record button in Audacity, and switch back to Noteworthy Composer Viewer and push the play button.
As the piece plays, you should see Audacity start to record the track.
When Noteworthy finishes playing, press the stop button in Audacity.
Save the MP3 in Audacity by clicking File > Export and change the ‘Save As Type’ to MP3.
Andy has provided the output of his efforts for embedding here. Published in a widely accessible format for perhaps the first time ever, it is an honor to present Silas Warner’s "Variations on Sonata in A by Mozart (K.331)":
