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[fireside]

Midi would be nice.  I was going to use a small midi file, but couldn't, so I had to transfer it to ogg where it took up 1 meg and that was only for one minute because that's all the trial software would let me do.  At least it wasn't listed in the help files.  I didn't actually try it.

[Catacomber]

I agree that midi would be nice.  Sound files can take up an awesome amount of space and then that slows down the game, at least in my experience.  Wavs are not bad for small sound bits but for a big chunk of sound midis are nice.

[Spellbreaker]

Midi is not useable for sound / music. If you want to save just diskspace, use ogg or mp3.

The problem with midi sound files is, they are no soundfiles. They are just datafiles, when to play which instrument. And on every soundcard the instruments can sound different. On normal soundcards they are crap. So, you should really stick to ogg / mp3 There are tools available which can record wav or mp3 files from Midi files.

[fireside]

Well, other engines use midi files.  It might not matter to some people but I write smaller games, in the 10 meg range.  A midi file that lasts over a minute takes 26 k, an ogg takes over a meg.  Midis are very common and sound the same now days and a lot better than they used to sound.  I just have a built in sound card and they sound very good.

[sychron]

Well, demoscene tools are not highly appreciated in adventure creaters circles, but it may be an idea to check out the Farb-Rausch V2 Synthesizer system.

http://www.1337haxorz.de/products.html

The Synthesizer itself is a very mighty virtual analog synth, which is inspired by the access virus. It even includes a speech synthesizer.
It comes in two flavors: as a lib to link into Projects (read: the engine), which handles all the replay stuff on its own, and a VST version to create content in most of your favorite music applications. The application must be able to route several midi channels to ONE instrument, so ONE copy of V2 handles all the midi traffic. This way, the v2 can "record" the complete song and save it in its own storage format playable by the lib.
That's right, the drawback is that you cannot use other instruments than the V2 in your productions. But hey, we're talking about midi, and to some extent, this is better than general midi.

The synth is small, does not take a huge amount of processor load (hey, it's intendet for intense 3D real time applications, so it should be suitable here ;-)) and handles all the playback by itself.

From the license:

This program is freeware. This means you can use it as you wish, and
distribute it as long as all the contents of the archive including this
text file and the directory structure remain unmodified. You are not
allowed to charge any fee for redistributing this archive; of course this
excludes the usual copying costs.

This archive and all the contained programs are (C) 2004 Tammo "kb" Hinrichs,
all rights reserved. For any questions contact me at kb@1337haxorz.de

How this translates to using v2 in commercial games is to be investigated.

To see(hear) it in action, have a look at this videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkEsP9H2HGM (Rendered by a 64 kb executable with no external data)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGk_pF67gc (Rendered by a 64 kb executable with no external data)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Nh0PdknIM (Rendered by a 64 kb executable with no external data)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0Eg3dBnsHk (Rendered by a 179 kb executable with no external data)