ExoticA Forum

Hello

I'm absolutely new here.

I have a Macintosh and ModPlayer 2.16, it plays back MOD, MADx, OKTA, MED, MTM, S3M, XM, IT and 669

HOWEVER, all files on Exotica is in a format called ".lha" which it won't read... no player I've seen supports this format!

How do I convert the .lha files into MOD or something the player supports? It seems unlikely that Exotica would choose a format that none of the 15 Mac players can read?

Oh, and I just discovered that ModPlayer 2.16 won't playback anything at all. Shitty program.

My problem above is still true though

Hello,

HL wrote: HOWEVER, all files on Exotica is in a format called ".lha" which it won't read... no player I've seen supports this format!

How do I convert the .lha files into MOD or something the player supports? It seems unlikely that Exotica would choose a format that none of the 15 Mac players can read?

They're LhA archives. Unpack them with MacLha, Stuffit Expander or any other de-archiving program which supports LhA.

You'll still find quite a lot of modules won't play, becuase most tunes on Exotica are not plain MOD files, which is all that foreign music players ever seem to play.

Some exotica tunes can be converted to plain MOD files by using Amiga software like Pro-Wizard, or PC software like ProWizardOnPC, but most can never become MOD files. You don't say if you're using classic MacOS or MacOS X. If you are using MacOS X, I would petition the authors of "UADE" (UNIX Amiga Delitracker Emulator) to make a conversion to MacOS X, as it is quite possible and this will give you (in conjunction with using the MacOS X conversion of "XMMS") superior Amiga music playing capabilities, equal to or better than Deliplayer for the PC and Delitracker on real Amigas.

Thank you for your answer. I realize will not be able to use the .lha files then. Too bad.

I have downloaded some MOD files in either MOD or XM format from other sites.

None of these files work either with any of the 5 players I've tried.

What am I doing wrong since these files also do not work? Do you know a Mac player that does work? ModPlayer would only play its own demo file (in MOD format) but none of the other MOD files...(!)

I am using OS 9.2.2

... (in conjunction with using the MacOS X conversion of "XMMS") superior Amiga music playing capabilities, equal to or better than Deliplayer for the PC and Delitracker on real Amigas.

Thanks, Kyz! trying our best...

I am using OS 9.2.2

seems there is really demand for a replayer like this on MAC. It's not the first request...

But as Heikki already wrote in another thread uade should be quite portable and OS X is BSDish and also supports posix 1 so it should be fairly possible to do a port by someone who knows Mac OS X.
Theoretical sound output could already be realized via the use of libSDL or via the OS X xmms, ported by guys from "Fink".

So anyone needing help feel to write, we would try to help as far we can, since neither one of us has a Mac with OS X. (http://ee.tut.fi/~heikki/uade.html)


OS 9.2.2 complicates matters a bit...
Is there a UAE port for OS 9? If there is chances to do a port of uade are there.
However it's the same as with the OS X port, some coders with some experience on the platform will be helpful like piru who's done the porting to MorphOS.

For other Modplayers: Wasn't there recently an announcement on vorc.org about a modplayer for MAC goin freeware?

And maybe not a really helpful hint for you but if you like to experiment, you could try to run a Linux/ppc on your Mac and compile uade for it... AFAIK it's known to work without problems.

What am I doing wrong since these files also do not work? Do you know a Mac player that does work? ModPlayer would only play its own demo file (in MOD format) but none of the other MOD files...(!)

maybe it's the amiga prefixes? try renaming MOD.* to *.MOD that does the trick sometimes...
Or those files are packed with ZIP (MDZ) . some of PC players support that.


regards,

mld
---
uade team

mld/uade team wrote:

... (in conjunction with using the MacOS X conversion of "XMMS") superior Amiga music playing capabilities, equal to or better than Deliplayer for the PC and Delitracker on real Amigas.

Thanks, Kyz! trying our best...

forgot to say... a big part of the compliment has of course to go to people like Don Adan, Andi Silva, Sun Beam and all the other people who implemented eagleplayers, and/or contributed other code like depacking routines and such... ))

mld/uade team

mld wrote: forgot to say... a big part of the compliment has of course to go to people like Don Adan, Andi Silva, Sun Beam and all the other people who implemented eagleplayers, and/or contributed other code like depacking routines and such... ;)))

Yes. uade has very strong co-operative background. Our project would not have been possible without huge contributions from other parties.Here's a list in my personal order of importance (first being the most important):

- uae team (years of work for the emulation system)
- player plugin authors
( - us (me, mld, and some others) )

In my not so humble opinion uade is a good show of strength of co-operation (both open source and non open source components).

As soon as we get our hands on macosx hardware, or some developer contacts us willing to a little work (not much needed) we'll have uade command line tool running in no time. The gui for player should be part of some existing player like xmms on *NIX.

I hear there's a group who might be writing a gui for morphos at the moment. Hopefully they will keep us informed if they exist.

shd / uade team

HL wrote:Thank you for your answer. I realize will not be able to use the .lha files then. Too bad.

No, it is still quite possible to use the LhA archives, the only thing you have to worry about is the contents of those archives.

Here, tell you what -- I've done a pictorial guide. It's MacOS 7.5.5 on my Amiga mac emulator, but the results you get shouldn't be too different.

Picture 1: I have installed ModPlayer, Stuffit Expander and DropStuff w/ Expander Enhancer (the enhancer is needed to access LhA files, or you could use MacLHa as I also suggested). I have downloaded the music for Project-X from UnExoticA and placed the .lha file on my desktop.



Picture 2: I have clicked on Project-X.lha and dragged it onto the Stuffit Expander icon in the top left corner. Stuffit Expander has launched and is extracting the contents of the LhA archive for me. As you can see, it has a small problem with the filename.



Picture 3: I have opened the Project-X folder, where all the files were extracted to. As I cannot play BP. (Brian Postma) files with ModPlayer, I'm getting rid of them. You don't have to do that if you don't want to.



Picture 4: I have put the BP files in the trash. As I don't like the extra filename parts, I rename each file and delete the trash characters.



Picture 5: Having renamed all the files, I go into ModPlayer, then pick File -> Open from the menu. I go to my Project-X folder and turn on the Show All Files button. I can now see all the mods.



Picture 6: Having picked mod.px.bladswede remix! to play, I click Open on the file requester and it loads into the playlist. I can now click on the play button in ModPlayer.



Picture 7: As the option on the Misc tab of preferences to set the filetype is ticked (it's ticked by default), whenever I successfully load a MOD in ModPlayer, it will change the file type creator of that file to itself, allowing me to double-click on the file rather than use the requester. I have re-opened the Project-X folder to update it, and you can see the filetype of the bladswede remix mod has changed.



Perhaps this is helpful to you.

Thank you Kyz.

I have gotten some success with playing some files.

I can expand some .lha using drag & drop on Stuffit Expander. Some still refuse though.

Using "show all files" and then correcting creator ressources etc, I can play back some songs in PlayerPRO 5.9.4. Too bad the interface is a quite a bit messy I think. It seems to work a lot better than other progs in the same category though.

Too bad it has to be so difficult all in all.

I wish there was just a no fuzz way of doing this. Well, life ain't supposed to be easy...

I mean SIDPlayer for Mac 9.2.2

Start program. Press add file and select file. Pres play to hear the tune. Oh well