              _      #-                             -#     _
                /| ~ #==--=- | P l a y   I T | -=--==# ~ o 
               | o~  #-       _______________       -#  ~| o     
               o                                          \|
                  /           for  Windows 95
               /                                        \
                 /                 _____                   \
                                                         \

                               version 0.03a
                              _______________
                             
                        :                            :
                        : Copyright   Aumage Olivier :
                        :                            :
                        :          (c) 1998          :
                        :                            :

_____________________________________________________________________________

  Intro
_________


        For those who never used Play IT before, Play It is program that

        can play music from Impulse Tracker module files. It is released

        under the GNU General Public License (with the exception of some

        parts of the source code that are not mine) that you should find

        in the Play IT archive.

        The first main goal of the program is to play music with a

        reasonably good quality and a reasonably CPU requirement. The

        second one is to provide an example (hopefully not to bad)

        of the way one can program a module player, and it is why a most part

        of the source code is distributed with the player. Take a look at

        the GNU GPL License if you want to know exactly what you are

        allowed to do with this code (in fact you'll see that you can do

        almost everything). I strongly hopes that it will be usefull for

        at least one person in the world !

        Thank you to download Play IT. I hopes you'll enjoy using it.



            Olivier


                        ____________________________

________________

  What's new ?
________________


        Well, a long time passed since the 0.02 release, almost one year !

     But Play IT is back, with a lot of good things in it ! Let's start by

     looking at the majors improvements :

     - a new sound engine rewritten from scratch in, with Visual C++ 5.0,

       -> more than 10000 lines of C++ code :-)

     - a Graphical User Interface (GUI) ... not really wonderful, but I did

       not work a lot on it

     - full realtime floating point calculations (no precalculated tables)

       for maximum precision and sound quality

     - linear/cubic interpolation mixing routines:

       * put -linear on the command line to select linear interpolation

       *  "  -cubic        "        "        "     cubic       "

     - almost full IT effects support (note/pattern delays and pattern loops

       still aren't handled tough)

     - basic support for wav file playback direct from disk

     - playback of up to 4 modules/wav files at the same time

     - support for sample mode modules

     - support for IT2.14 compressed modules

     - faster mixing routines

     - latency reduced (with smaller buffers)

     - intensive volume ramps use:

       * sample beginning

       * note cut

       * volume/panning change

     - and of course a lot of bugs have been fixed

                        ____________________________

__________________

  Other features
__________________


     - full NNA/DCT/DCA support

     - full volume/panning/pitch envelopes support

     - up to 64 main channels

     - up to 256 virtual channels

     - unlimited sample size

     - almost full source code included
     
                        ____________________________

_______________________

  System requirements
_______________________


        Here is what you'll need `at least' if you want to be able to listen

     to music with Play IT :

     - computer : PC

     - cpu      : Pentium 150 (Pentium 200 for cubic interpolation)

                  the MMX instruction set is not used and hence not needed

                  for now

     - os       : Windows 95/NT 4 (maybe Windows 3.1 + Win32s too, but I did

                  not test this configuration)

     - ram      : 32M (64 M with cubic interpolation), maybe more with NT 4

     - snd card : Play IT does not depend on a specific sound card to play

                  music and it does not use any hardware mixing facility,

                  so the best choice is a good old Sound Blaster 16

                        ____________________________

  Greetings and thanks go to :

    - Jeffrey Lim for his wonderful Impulse Tracker, for the tips, for
      all the answers to my questions, for the help, and for allowing me
      to add support for IT2.14 compressed samples.

    - Edyx (author of RealTracker II), for the volume ramps tip, and for
      constructive dialogs on IRC. I started RealTracker support, but
      it's not ready yet, sorry :-(

    - Vladimir, for finding and correcting some bugs. Well, Play IT is
      still only a player and I doubt it will ever change itself into
      a tracker as you'd like it to do, because I really haven't enough
      time (and I'm a bit afraid too :-) to start such a big project :-(
    
    - My B-testers : Jerome, Thomas and Samy. They have accepted to hear
      horrible sounds and to crash their computers only for this program.

    - These wonderful composers : Purple Motion, Chris Jarvis ...

    - All of the other composers I forget (but I don't forget your songs).


    - And  You , of course ;-)

                        ____________________________

___________

  Contact
___________


    Every feedback, comment, question, tip, remark, bug report or anything
    else related to  Play IT  is welcome. This would greatly help me to
    continue to work on this program. Thank you in advance.


       Address : Olivier AUMAGE
                 46, rue d'Arsonval
                 Batiment i
                 69800 Saint-Priest
                 France
                 ------

        E-mail : Olivier.Aumage@ens-lyon.fr

        Homepg : http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~oaumage/        

           IRC : OliWan on #pizza, #coders, #trax,  . . .

                 ==========================================

                        ____________________________

______________

  Disclaimer
______________


     PLAY_ITW.EXE v0.03a : Player for Impulse Tracker modules files
     Copyright (C) 1998  Olivier AUMAGE
     E-mail : Olivier.Aumage@ens-lyon.fr
     Web : http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~oaumage/

     This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
     it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
     the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
     any later version.

     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
     GNU General Public License for more details.

     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
     along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
     Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

                    
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