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 T F M X c e s s 
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 !readme rev18!
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Mina-san, konnichi wa! ^_^

First of all, this is a bugfix release for version 2.7.
If 2.7 was unable to detect the tfmx-play binary, use this version,
it skips the detection process and just relies upon tfmx-play actually
being in the current $PATH.
To make things easier, the default installation-path of the included tfmx-play
version is now $(KDEDIR)/bin (e.g. /opt/kde/bin).

Please note that tfmx-play seems to be unable to work with the Linux kernel
drivers es1371/es1370 (for Soundblaster PCI 64/128 cards).
A fix would be very welcome!

TFMXcess (formerly known as kTFXshell) and tfmx-play are now
distributed together, so we have the TFMX-player distributed along with
the frontend!
(To cut a long story short: this package is all you need to play TFMX
files under Linux - with or without a nice GUI.)

Q: What the heck is TFMX?
A: The Final Musicsystem Extended, a game music format developed by
	Chris Hülsbeck way back on the Amiga. Lots of cool game music
	exists in this format, for example Turrican 1/2/3 and R-Type.
	TFMX files always come in pairs: one song file (mdat.mysong) containing
	one or more subsongs and one sample file (smpl.mysong).
	Both files need to be in the same directory.

Q: Who the heck is Chris Hülsbeck?
A: Where have you been the last, say, 13 years or so?
	He is one of the most famous and best musicians in the computer game
	scene. His credit list is *very* long, but let's pick just a few:
	- R-Type
	- M.U.D.S. (my all-time favourite)
	- Turrican I/II/III, Super Turrican, Mega Turrican, etc.
	- Katakis
	- Apidya
	- Tunnel B1
	- Extreme Assault
	- Thornado (current work-in-progress for Factor-5)
	So far he has released 8 CDs, and IMHO *he* should be the one to
	compose the soundtrack for the new Lord of the Rings movies...
	If you need more info, you will	find it on http://www.huelsbeck.com.
	BTW, he has released a few songs on MP3.com for free download,
	and there is a piece of awesome MP3 music from Thornado disguised as
	a WAV file on http://www.factor5.com (choose "projects", then
	click on the Thornado logo, then click on the second Thornado logo).

Q: What's with all the japanese stuff? Are you an anime fan?
A: Hai! (that means: "Yes!")

Anyway, the only more or less working Linux player for the TFMX format is
tfmx-play, originally written by Johnathan H.Pickard
(marxmarv@antigates.com) and now maintained by myself.
It is just a console program, so I thought a X11-based front-end
would be a nice idea.

And here it is: introducing TFMXcess, the enhanced KDE port of TFX Shell!
Granted, it's not a great piece of coding but it works, and it's constantly
being improved.

### IMPORTANT NOTE ###
This is a stable release, made for all people who did not
like the idea that some previous versions of this program could,
in an unlikely scenario, accidently kill another process.
To eliminate this possibility, this new release has been created.
It has a few drawbacks, however, as far as convenience is concerned.
#######################

SOURCE INSTALLATION
-------------------
Installation is simple: "./configure;make;make install" should do the trick.
Obviously, you need KDE (1.1+, 1.0 is untested but may also work) and Qt
(1.44) to compile and run this program.

If you don't have KDE, you can use TFX Shell, the Qt based predecessor of
this program, but I don't recommend it - TFMXcess is much better.

Since version 2.5, the TFMX-player program tfmx-play is also included
(in the subdir "player"), so you won't have to get it separately.
Just enter that directory and enter "make;make install" to
install the binary in /usr/local/bin.
(You can see all options by entering "tfmx-play", if you want to use it
without TFMXcess.)

Unsupported settings (if you need some of them, contact me and maybe
I'll add them):
- output to file
- module info (sometimes incorrect anyway)
- low-pass filter frequency
- number of loops

And you should also know this:
Only one instance of TFMXcess can be run on the same machine at the same
time.

Known bugs:
TFMXcess does not like it if you press any buttons that stop and restart
the player, very fast several times in a row.
If you do this, the player may be stopped without restarting again.
But this is no major problem, since it should not occur anyway if you use
the program with a little bit of common sense, and if it should happen,
just press the play button again to continue.

Have fun, I hope you like this program!
Take a look inside the HTML docs for more info (sorry, no SGML for now).

Ja mata,

neo@san
http://www.sakura-audio.cx

http://anime.at/neochrome/

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Special thanks to:
- Chris Hülsbeck for TFMX and lots of wonderful tunes to listen to during
the development of this program
- Jonathan H.Pickard for tfmx-play
- TrollTech for Qt
- the kdevelop development team (arigatou gozaimasu!)
- Jeff Harris and Klaus Ebner for Qt Architect
- all other KDE developers
- everyone who sent suggestions and bug reports
- nic.cx for the free domain
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