How To Add In Your Own Music To M2TW

[Trajan]

You can make it extract specific files in the sounds folder. Now it's been awhile since I used that tool to extract specific files so I'm not exactly sure. After you put the extract_sounds.bat and xidx.exe files in your sounds folder, right click extract_sounds.bat and click on edit. A text file will come up with this in it:

.\xidx.exe -x music voice1 voice2 voice3 sfx
pause

Delete everything to the right of music. So it should look like this afterwards:

.\xidx.exe -x music
pause

Save the text file and run extract_sounds.bat. Again, it's been awhile so I'm not sure.

[Enduran]

trying now

EDIT- no error this time, good news. Yet no file has shown up, an extra data/sounds file, there should be one correct?

[Trajan]

Yes, there will be an extra data/sounds folder. Inside will be the music folder with all the tracks in the game. Move the music folder to the main sounds folder and delete the extra data/sounds folder. Just follow the rest of tutorial and hope everything goes well.

[Enduran]

humm... thats the problem, no file showed up. I may try installing xp on one of my extra HD's and get the files that way.

EDIT- ill work on it more later, up early for work tommorow. Thanks for your help Trajan

[ZKnight]

Awesome tutorial I got my mix going now of Kingdom of Heaven, King Arthur, 300, Gladiator, Troy and Braveheart music

anyone try separating northern_european and eastern_european in the file to have different music for those two? Mine doesn't work yet but since it involves a lot of file modding might be my file is messed up.

[Enduran]

Think its vista, i'm going back to XP for the time being because its less buggy.

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

I'm using Vista x86, and I've had no issues using the music unpacker.

Anyway--I've a question. Can battle speeches and campaign speaking be replaced in a similar fashion?

I've got it in mind to replace as much of the Byzantine "Mediterranean" stuff with the Roman voices from RTW, but I wouldn't know where to begin.

[Zkickin]

I have a problem, the extractor only gets me the voice file, and not the music.

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

Well... I've tried to adapt the instructions to voice files as much as possible. I've renamed all the Roman_* files to Mediterranean_* files and converted the files to mp3. That way, they're just replacements.

The thing is though, when I load the game, the game isn't rebuilding the voice.dat files. They're just originals--they aren't packing in my new files. I have the sound text files in the data folder and everything, and my shortcuts all have filefirst on them. Grr.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[Hans Kloss]

if you have deleted events dat and idx, game should rebuilt them when is started.

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

Yeah, I did that and now the stratmap sounds work. The speeches and inbattle sounds might be more difficult to do because there are just so many of them, and the speeches aren't even labeled. Grr.

[Miraj]

How will this work for mods? Do you have to extract the existing sounds? Can't you just place the new ones into the data/sounds or does it need all the sounds?

[Ralendil]

Well... I've tried to adapt the instructions to voice files as much as possible. I've renamed all the Roman_* files to Mediterranean_* files and converted the files to mp3. That way, they're just replacements.

The thing is though, when I load the game, the game isn't rebuilding the voice.dat files. They're just originals--they aren't packing in my new files. I have the sound text files in the data folder and everything, and my shortcuts all have filefirst on them. Grr.

Does anyone have any ideas?

If you want to repack the voices and even the SFX (what I did) there are several things you must know:

- first one, that is surely not common... if you had introduced sounds to a new mount that you have added, put your descr_mount.txt file in your main data folder (or you will get a crash before the files are generated)
- Second tip, use a bat file with the command "medieval2.exe --io.file_first". adding the command to the cfg file is not really effective (the game delete the line before launching the game)
- To generate again the sounds files you would need to delete several files (after saved them). It depends what you want to add:

• want to add voices? delete the voices files (Voice1.dat, Voice2.dat, Voice3.dat, Voice1.idx, Voice2.idx, Voice3.idx)

• want to add sounds? delete the SFX files (SFX.idx, SFX.dat)

Don't forget also to delete events.dat and events.idx... or you will get the old sounds... or a crash.

- 4th tip: if you want to change a lot of things in the sounds (like voices + music + SFX), put all the sound files in your main data folder, delete all the sounds files (don't forget to save them... or if you have problems you will have to reinstall^^) and generate all of them at the same time by launching the game with the io file first command.

[misfitsfiend138]

wat do u use to open DAT files?

[Trajan]

I have a problem, the extractor only gets me the voice file, and not the music.

That's strange. The idx extractor is programmed to automatically extract all the sound files. You must be using Vista because the other guys were reporting the same problem.

How will this work for mods? Do you have to extract the existing sounds? Can't you just place the new ones into the data/sounds or does it need all the sounds?

Not sure if you can make it work for mods right now. As far as I know, you can't because it has to be done through the main data/sounds folder. I heard that the 1.2 patch will allow us to do so, along with texture changes and so forth.

You need to extract all the existing M2 music tracks (music folder), add your tracks to the music folder, and have the game compress it.

[hesford]

Has anyone had any luck putting MTW original music in? All I got was some crackling, then I lost all music.

[Spartan II]

I believe I've found the problem. The same thing happened when I tried to unpack using the 1.1 unpacker (no files showed up), and I remembered that the entire C:/Program Files is Read Only. I'm currently changing that, so I'll see if it works.

EDIT: For those of you that don't read previous posts, or simply don't remember (and don't want to look back), I run Vista, so things are different (along with Enduran, who has the same problem).

EDIT 2: It still doesn't work. I'm bummed.

EDIT 3: Well, apparently whenever I tell something not to be Read Only in C:/Program Files, nothing happens. It just sets itself back. I'm going to try to install outside of that folder, and try everything again. *groan*

EDIT 4: It worked! Hooray. Apparently, you'll need to install M2 out of the program files on Vista if you want to mod. I just closed the .bat file once it got done with the music, though, so I haven't tried for all the voice files yet. I'll try that tomorrow.

[Trajan]

Fantastic man, I'm really glad you got it working. Tomorrow, I'll put up your instructions for Vista in the first post.

[Spartan II]

I've found a better way. Right click on the Medieval II - Total War folder (usually in C:/Program Files/SEGA) and go to properties, then the security tab, and click the big "edit" button. Then go to Administrators and check "full control." Then it will work. However, there will be a problem when you try to extract voice3.idx. It will say there was a problem with xidx.exe, and it will close. It says in the actual command prompt that it paused, or something. I still don't know why that happens with Vista, but for now, the music's fine.

[Trajan]

Thanks Spartan, first post was just updated with your instructions.