Adding Custom Music

[Speedy 0]

This is more a question rather than the intend to do so, but..

 

well, I've read that Nyerguds changed a certain track at some point, replacing it with an official fixed version.

 

My question is.. is it possible to add custom tracks.. WITHOUT disturbing the original soundtrack?

 

You see, I would like to add some of the later tracks (a la RA, TS and RA2) but I also want to keep what's already there.

 

More music, not replacing the old ones.

 

However, as a complete newbie in modding the original C&C, I have just about no idea how to pull this off. (I could probably find out how to do this in Generals, given time, but meh.)

[Nyerguds 102]

Absolutely. All you need to do is extract themes.ini from updatec.mix, add a new entry to the end of the list of themes at the top of the file, and then make a new header below it with your new track information. Did you take a look at the ini file? It's really pretty straightforward. The system is based on the TS modding system.

 

This post in the development topic shows a full example.

[pichorra 4]

- All music settings are now read from an ini file, which easily allows adding new tracks

- People can now change the music of special scenes (score/map/menu screens) in rules.ini

 

i'm not in my computer now, but i think it is in Rules.ini or in something like Music.ini inside the the Update.mix or in UpdateC.mix

 

if i'm wrong, fix me. Also, i think it is good to know, because i'm thinking in put the "Dune for Megadrive" musics in C&C95.

 

[edit]

Nyer is right. i posted it because look at the time of the posts, 1min of diference.

Edited December 22, 2010 by pichorra

[Speedy 0]

That seems pretty easy to do..

 

But I still have two related questions then.

 

-What file extensions can I actually use?

Just .aud or can I add .wav, .mp3, .mid?

 

-Is it possible to add tracks WITHOUT digging into an existing .mix file?

Like, putting the new tracks in a NEW .mix file, to actually not disturb the older music?

 

..oh, and that brings me to the question of where the music actually goes, but since I'm unable to just check it out myself at the current moment, I dont know if it's actually really obvious.. if it is, ignore this last comment.

[Nyerguds 102]

Music needs to be Westwood's own AUD format. You use a tool like RAD video tools to convert the track you got to 22050hz 16-bit mono WAV, and then convert that to Westwood AUD format using XCC's Copy As AUD function.

 

Music doesn't require any mixfiles. Just drop the new .AUD file into the game folder, add the extracted & edited themes.ini, and it all works. You CAN put it in a mixfile of course though. The standard pattern for addon mixfiles is "sc*.mix". Note that C&C uses the old DOS 8.3 filename format, so the part before the extension for both the mixfile and aud file can't exceed 8 characters.

 

Also note that if you make a mixfile with the XCC tools, you DON'T use XCC Mixer, but use XCC Mix Editor instead. XCC Mixer can't produce C&C1 mixfiles. Also, when making mixfiles with XCC Mix Editor, make sure you FIRST set the mixfile type to Tiberian Dawn, and only THEN add files into it; otherwise it'll use the wrong name ID algorythm for inserting the files.

 

 

Still though, for 2 files, hardly worth making a mixfile imo. Unless you're planning on making an entire music addon pack.

 

 

As for not disturbing the older music, all you need to do for that is, don't delete anything from the themes.ini file

[Speedy 0]

Now that's a reply I can do something with.

 

Nah, I'm gonna check out a few tracks first, and depending on how it goes it may or may not make a whole addon.

 

The point was that I wanted to make it easy to share with friends, but I guess I have to add ONE song first to try, haha.

[Nyerguds 102]

Note that rules.ini contains the controls for all special scene music (score screens, map screens, main menu), so you can fully customize all music-related stuff in the game.

[Speedy 0]

Alrighty, thanks Nyer. I'll give it a shot.