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I can't explain what is going on but I have discovered how to get a new self-made installation of MoO to function with sound WITHOUT buying it through GOG.com! And no, before you ask it is not because of my amazing coding skills. It is a three step process but does not require anything technical.
Step 1: download MoO from the internet. Search for "Master of Orion abandonware" and choose the first result, which should be from myabandonware.com. This is version 1.1 of the game, or the original version released in 1993. I know that because I started two games using that install, and the first one had Altair 6 parsecs from my homeworld and the second had 0 habitable planets in range of my starting colony ship. Things were different back then! This version has functioning sound. I have installed it on both Mac and PC machines, in different versions of Windows on the PC side and the sound worked for all of them. The download is clean as far as I can tell...
Step 2: upgrade the game to Version 1.3. Search for "master of orion 1.3 download" and get the patch files. I got them from the archive.org result (result 4 on Google) because it purports to be an archive of the Microprose download. The download is clean as far as I can tell.
Step 3: Upgrade to Version 1.4 from the thread in this forum. Note that you must upgrade to 1.3 before applying the 1.4 patch because 1.4 requires additional files which did not exist in the base game (V11.lbx among others). Now you too have 1.4 with sound! Yay!
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I remember how much I enjoyed having the music and sound effects when I bought a new computer with a SoundBlaster, after years of playing in silence. The sound always worked in DosBox for me. Of course, I still have my original set of 3.5 inch floppy disks for the installation.
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...or you could spend the paltry $5 asking price and purchase the game legally, which will allow you to download copies onto any new computer DRM-free forever. I usually don't make a big fuss over this kind of thing, but the cost of acquiring Master of Orion via GoG is trivial at this point.
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MoO wirh sound? I don't know...after so many years, that might be just too strange. 
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I'm just amazed that the v1.1 files have functioning sound whereas the 1.3 files I've been porting from computer to computer for more than a decade have NEVER had working sound. I wish I knew why!
As for paying for the game, does GOG own the rights to the game or are they simply selling an all-in-one package for convenience? They certainly don't own DOSBox which is part of their package, which makes me think that they don't. I'm not trying to advocate piracy here, so if I'm out of line I appologize. My point is simply that it isn't necessary to pay for the game to get it with sound as I've always thought. We discussed this some time back and no one could figure out how GOG did it.
July 19th, 2017, 04:15
(This post was last modified: July 19th, 2017, 04:18 by RFS-81.)
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As far as I know, GOG has acquired the rights for all the games they're offering. I don't have a link, but they said that for some classic games, figuring out who holds the copyright is actually pretty hard, but they still do it before selling a game. That's why they don't have No One Lives Forever, for example. I don't think, being as well known as they are now, they could get away with anything else.
As for DosBox, that is free/open-source software licensed under the GPL, so anyone can legally distribute it, as long as they also give you a copy of the source code upon request.
Regarding the sound: I have the GOG version, and there is no music for most of the game. (Exceptions are, e.g., the title screen and the diplo screen.) Was there any more music in the original? Well, anyway, I usually play in silent mode and put on some music instead. There's also another reason to like the GOG version: They've patched out the copy protection. You can just click on any ship name, and continue playing. It took me forever to discover that, because they also supplied a reference sheet for the copy protection. 
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Wow good for them! Then definitely DON'T download the "pirated" versions available online and DO get the game legally!
I have to say that I miss the copy protection! Even though kyrub disabled it in 1.4 the same as GOG I still like the adventure of trying to save my game from being swallowed by the abyss, or just opening shiplist.jpg if the game was really worth it. How many times have I seen "With the destruction of the last Psilon colony Emperor Ianus was slain and the Psilon empire was completely obliterated" report from GNN? More times than you young punks have seen the title screen!
*Ahem*
Excuse me, I don't know what came over me there! What was I saying again? Oh yeah, buy the game legally. And RFS-81 there is actually a lot of music: combat, colonization, basically any event has an accompanying score. It's just the base game screens that don't have any music associated with them, which I quite like as that is where the player spends most of the game and thus the music remains fresh.
Full disclosure: I have the game soundtrack in my MP3 library (it's available online) and it always makes me happy when a track comes up on shuffle. Have I mentioned how much I love this game?
July 19th, 2017, 10:45
(This post was last modified: July 19th, 2017, 10:49 by RFS-81.)
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(July 19th, 2017, 09:54)Ianus Wrote: I have to say that I miss the copy protection! Even though kyrub disabled it in 1.4 the same as GOG I still like the adventure of trying to save my game from being swallowed by the abyss, or just opening shiplist.jpg if the game was really worth it.
Hmm...maybe I was wrong about that. I only realized I could skip the copy protection after installing the patch. And since that patch overwrites the main game binary, that tells me exactly nothing about the GOG version.
It's been a while since I last played MOO with music on, but I don't remember liking the music much. Maybe I should try again. I do love the music of MOO2, though. It's been forever since I last played it, but I still listen to the mp3s sometimes. Especially the Meklar theme!
August 6th, 2017, 09:22
(This post was last modified: August 6th, 2017, 09:26 by RFS-81.)
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Okay, so I tried the music again, and didn't enjoy it very much. But I remembered something about MIDIs sounding very different on different systems, and I thought maybe the problem is somewhere on my end. So I searched Youtube to find out what it could sound like...
...and now I've installed a software synthesizer (I picked fluidsynth) and tried some soundfonts ( Arachno and GeneralUser GS), and switched MOO to use the ROLAND MT-32 option for music.
And it's glorious!
Maybe I'm the only one here who didn't play MOO when it was new, but in case I'm not: If you're using the default sound options from the GOG version, you're missing out! And now I have to check out Master of Magic again: Another game where I switched off the music almost immediately.
There's just one weird bug (both in 1.3 and kyrub's version) I encountered in my last game. When I switch to one of the MIDI or ROLAND option in MOO's configuration, in the outro video after winning the game, I'm called "High Master 3" and shown as a human even though I was playing Meklars. When I switch to SoundBlaster, the video is as usual. I only tested this with one save so far, maybe it's just a fluke?
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Regarding the cut-scene bug: It also plays the victory cut-scene after losing the game (again with a human leader called "3").
Has anyone else tried any sound-options besides sound-blaster?
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