Pidgeot: That *particular* issue is because the MIDI synthesizer that Windows uses has a crazy long startup time when using the high-level MIDI API in modern Windows versions. ([url=https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd742875(v=vs.85).aspx]There are 3 such APIs[/url]; in my experience, only the highest-level API, MCI, is affected).

One option is therefore to tell Windows to use a different MIDI synth by default - but googling suggests this has been removed in Windows 8, and even so, it would have to be up to each user to do so.

The other, more reliable option, is to switch MIDI APIs, to e.g. the [url=https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd798691(v=vs.85).aspx]stream-based API[/url], which does not exhibit this issue. This, however, requires modifying the source code, and unfortunately, the source code included here is not complete; it refers to some libraries which are not included, so it is not really possible to make a custom build.

It is theoretically possible to hack the executable to replace the existing code - the source code helps to understand the structure of the code, so it is easier to reverse engineer things - but that is still going to require a fair amount of effort :) It also seems like part of the music code might be in one of those missing libraries, but I haven't checked if it actually makes use of it...

PoTskii: Would have loved to get the library files for AT so we can get this game working. Don't know why they release the source without the custom library files. :S seems strange.

Pidgeot: It's not ideal for fixing the MIDI issue I was talking about earlier (since that's still in one of the libraries, SSE.lib), but it does at least provide additional information that might be useful to reimplement it (still requires some reverse engineering, of course).