New Music for More Factions

[smitty]

As the title says, I want the newer music that was added in by PB to be heard by more factions. *most* of the music adds great depths of immersion to the game for me, but I only hear it when I play a Northwestern European faction. What do I edit so that this same music pack is played for the Iberian factions, Italian Factions, and Byzantines? Thanks!

[bɑne]

Might be helpful...
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...46#post6559546

[smitty]

Hey at least I can delete the horrible songs from the compilation now. However, I need to know how to edit the playlist for each faction. As I mentioned above, only the northwestern factions play the new songs, the southern factions do not Any other advice?

Edit:

So, I figured out how to change the playlist, however to do so involves deleting two files that need to be rebuilt. Doing so causes all of the campaign map sound effects to be deleted. Some threads are pretty helpful in how to preserve the proper sound text files while still making changes, but methinks its beyond my comprehension considering the changes PB has added to his own sound files Perhaps for another day, unless somebody figures this out in a relatively easy process

[Phosphoricus]

Unfortunately, until we can somehow prevent that sound effect problem, the only option is to 'sacrifice' tracks used for the other factions. I suppose that if there any you don't care for or just do not consider special you could replace those with renamed copies of the tracks you wanted to import from Northern Europe.

[smitty]

I'm more than willing to trash or sacrifice all the songs currently used by the Southern European factions in exchange for the Northern ones. However, re-naming songs after using the idx extractor requires a re-package for it to apply, does it not? And it is the re-packaging that kills sound effects.

[bɑne]

however to do so involves deleting two files

Hm... the description I linked to mentioned only deleting music.dat. It wasnt my intention to link you a way to delete those songs but to give you a "bruteforce" way to include your changes on a file level. Have you deleted music.dat and event.dat in your tries?

The text file method doesn't work because the list and organization of tracks is contained within the events.dat file (though not the actual music files). If you delete this, the automatic rebuild will lack sound effects

I'll quote the rest for a better discussion and so that others more familiar with the topic can jump in

First, I assume that you want to make changes to the mod's set of music, so you will first want to extract these files and place in the music folder. Get the IDX extractor http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...?do=file&id=32. Extract the files and copy xidx.exe and extract_sounds.bat to your C:\...\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data\sounds\. Run the extract_sounds.bat file. This will extract the sounds to folders in a new 'data' folder (oddly I could not get this to work at a higher level folder, even though it would make sense); the extracted music, then, will be located at C:\...\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data\sounds\data\sounds\music\. Copy the files in this folder over the contents of the actual folder C:\...\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data\sounds\music\.

Now, say you want to replace a certain track... oh, let's say (Campaign_Map)_Erin_04.mp3 (the pseudo-Middle Eastern pop song screaming 'carry me across the sea'). Find a track you want to replace it (if you want to remove it, create an mp3 of just a few seconds of silence), and copy the desired track to some middle ground (your Desktop, for example). Rename it (Campaign_Map)_Erin_04.mp3 , then copy the renamed track into the music folder, replacing the original (Campaign_Map)_Erin_04.mp3 . Now, go to the sounds folder, and delete just Music.dat (I don't think it is necessary to delete the IDX folder in these circumstances). The next time that you start the game, it will rebuild Music.dat automatically and you will hear the changes.

[Phosphoricus]

Simply deleting music.dat should not kill the sound effects. It is deletion of events.dat that causes this problem. To use the 'playlist' method, you need to delete both of these for a fully customized rebuild, but the sound effects are not available for rebuild, so they do not appear; hence the 'playlist' method is faulty. The track replacement method, however, affects only the content of the mp3 files that indexed in the 'playlist' (which is located in a txt file and also, unfortunately, in the events.dat file that we cannot touch) when rebuilding music.dat, so you just give other mp3s the same names as those already in use, and overwrite the mp3s in C:\...\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data\sounds\music . Then, delete music.dat (only), and it will rebuild.

In short, don't delete events.dat, just replace the mp3 files with same-names and then delete music.dat. To customize Southern Europe, look at the 'playlist' to figure out which tracks you need to replace... there should be a Southern Europe section therein.

On a side note, Broken Crescent doesn't appear to have this problem, or even have its own music.dat . It would be nice if SS could be set up so that music is just played out of an extracted folder according to the playlist file.

[retep219]

Some of the Southern European songs are actually vanilla songs and are found in the M2TW/data/sounds directory. So you'll have to unpack the files in that directory and then change the songs there by substituting the used songs with your choices with the same names in the same way that you edit, say, Northern European music--but you're editing vanilla files instead.

[Point Blank]

Edit descr_sounds_music.

[smitty]

Ok, I did as you guys instructed and copied songs from northern section to the southern section, renaming them to match the current southen playlist. However, to find them I had to make edits in the vanilla folder as that is where all the (Mediterranean.yadayada).mp3 files were. I deleted music.dat in SS data, reloaded game, and had no soundtrack (all sfx were fine still) though.

I thought maybe I had to reconstruct the vanilla music.dat, so I deleted that one too and upon re-playing vanilla I had no soundtrack either. I'm noticing that vanilla is re-constructing it's music.dat with a 1kb file in both instances, launching either vanilla or SS. When I re-built the SS .dat it came back at about 150,000 kb, before I deleted it it was about 600,000 kb or so. Something isn't registering soundtrack lists at all now, as in vanilla and SS, NO factions have a soundtrack. Again, sfx are still properly played.

Advice?

Am I rebuilding the files wrong? All I'm doing is deleting music.dat initially, making changes, then re-launching game to recreate it.

Also, PB, simply editing the descr_sounds_music I tried a few days ago. It required a delete of music.dat and events.idx for it to take place, which it did, but it also eliminated all sound effects so it wasn't too helpful.

[Phosphoricus]

Hmm... I didn't realize that some were compiled directly from the vanilla for the southern european music (never edited them myself). Instead of altering the files within the vanilla folder, what happens if you copy files by the same names (as those in the vanilla folder) into the SS music folder, do whatever replacements you desire, and then rebuild? I haven't tried this, but if the list gives gives precedence to files in the SS music folder mp3s, perhaps no unusual steps will need to be taken and it will function just as it has for simple replacements.

BTW, did anybody have success using this replacement in a more usual way (such as removing that 'carry me across the sea' track)? It sure works for me, but it would be bad if my method doesn't actually work for anyone else.

Also, PB, do you know the whereabouts of all of the sound effects and the method of their rebuild? Preferably, we could get the events.dat rebuild to work properly so that changing the music would, indeed, be a simple matter of changing descr_sounds_music.txt , without losing sound effects.

[smitty]

Instead of altering the files within the vanilla folder, what happens if you copy files by the same names (as those in the vanilla folder) into the SS music folder, do whatever replacements you desire, and then rebuild? I haven't tried this, but if the list gives gives precedence to files in the SS music folder mp3s, perhaps no unusual steps will need to be taken and it will function just as it has for simple replacements.

I'll give this a try, but the current problem is that no soundtracks are being properly built at the moment, including northern factions. Deleting that music.dat from vanilla was probably a disastrous pursuit

Note, however, that the soundtracks for SS weren't rebuilding BEFORE I deleted vanilla music.dat, so the problem was elsewhere. That doesn't change the fact that my vanilla music.dat refuses to rebuild though, always creating itself at 1 kb with either vanilla or SS being launched.

[Phosphoricus]

I think that you're best off restoring the original dats by reinstallation-like measures.

[smitty]

I have met success!!!

Ok, so apparently I had been forgetting a VERY huge step. After extracting with idx, I was forgetting to move the new data/sounds/music folder to the original sounds folder, from where the music.dat is built from. DUH! Hence the 1 kb file errors I was getting with vanilla, and the partial mostly-missing files in SS.

SO, I tried your method of putting my renamed songs into the SS folder, to see if that had priority. That didn't do it for me. Then I tried doing the same changes in the vanilla folder and voila, mediterranean factions now use the selected songs I chose from the new music compilation. This process was FAR easier than I first expected, but now becoming familiar with it all I see it's quite simple. Hopefully this thread will be of some use to fellow RR/RC and SS fans!

None of this could have been done without your guy's help, especially Phosphoricus, thank you!

[Grouchio]

EDIT: I tried doing this and it didn't work.

[smitty]

I'll break down the steps for you as easy as I can.

Put the idx extractor files into your mods/SS/data/sounds folder

Run the extractor.

Now you'll have a 'music' folder created and a 'data' folder created within the sounds folder.

The 'music' folder contains the music the music.dat will be created from, while the 'data' folder contains the music the game used when you extracted the files initially.

To put custom music in the game, find the song titles of the songs you want replaced (use the data folder as your reference for titles). Rename the songs you want to be used as those same song titles. EXACTLY the same names, the descr_sounds_music file needs you to use the precise names or it won't work.

Now you have your renamed songs. Place these songs in the sounds/music folder, and accept the overwrite of the old files. Delete only the music.dat in the sounds folder, no other files need to be deleted.

Re-launch the game, it'll be slightly slower this first time because it's rebuilding the music.dat, and load/start a game and the music should work.

[Grouchio]

Well, I don't see the Mediterranean roster of music in SS/Sounds/Music! How would I be able to replace those?

[smitty]

Well, I don't see the Mediterranean roster of music in SS/Sounds/Music! How would I be able to replace those?

Ah, yet another hiccup I tried to address earlier in the thread. I'll break it down step by step here for clarity.

The Mediterranean roster of music is all located in vanilla, so you need to head over to the vanilla data/sounds folder for the rest of this. Put the two idx extracting files into the vanilla sounds folder and run them.

You'll now have a data folder with all of the vanilla music. Open that data folder, copy the music folder inside and paste it in the vanilla sounds folder. Open up that music folder you just pasted into sounds.

The following files are the campaign map songs related to all southern european factions:

Euro_Strat_Summer_1.wav
Euro_Strat_Summer_2.wav
(Mediterranean_Strat_Map_1)_Olivia_01.mp3
(Mediterranean_Strat_Map_1)_Olivia_02.mp3
(Mediterranean_Strat_Map_2)_Vineyard_01.mp3
(Mediterranean_Strat_Map_2)_Vineyard_02.mp3
(Mediterranean_Strat_Map_3)_Whispers_In_The_Grove_01.mp3
(Mediterranean_Strat_Map_3)_Whispers_In_The_Grove_02.mp3

These are the song titles you will use when renaming your desired music. Place your renamed music into the vanilla/data/sounds/music folder, delete the music.dat in vanilla sounds folder, then start a new game and your music should apply.

*Note: Something I've been finding is that any songs over 256 bitrate can cause horrible static attacks during the campaign, which occasionally leads to a CTD. If your songs are higher quality than that, use Audio Converter Studio (freeware) to convert them to 256. 256 is the standard bitrate all of the vanilla songs use.

Also, if you want to change southern european battlemap songs etc, just open up the descr_sounds_music, find all of the music under the "Southern European" section, and those are the song titles you need to use for renaming. It's an easy to read document, you'll be able to tell which songs pertain to battle map, which for campaign map, etc.

Hope this helps!

[Grouchio]

IT WORKED!!!

[Overlord.ru]

Is there any way to add new tracks to the game?