From what I understand putting together Combat Music Requires 2 files a main and an ending.
What I don’t know is what format to put the files in or where they should be stored.
I’m going to review the current version of CMP to pick out good tracks that should be for combat. I'll list the tracks I will edit before I do the work.
If anyone wants to do some of their own editing tell us. Its really easy if you have XP.
All you need to do is edit in Windows Movie Maker and save, then change he file format into Mp3
There are other simpler music editing programs I am sure, but I am cheap.
Combat Music
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Tiberius_Morguhn
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:47 am
All I saw when I looked at the battle music was one file that was preceded by mus_bat_ versus mus_ for day/night ambient music.
I ran into a pitfall of doing quick conversions in mp3 format because you can really munge the header up and the Bioware engine will not recognize it any more.
The way I did conversions was to take the .bmu or .mp3 file then run it thru WinLAME to convert it to a lossless wav format (http://winlame.sourceforge.net/) then I would covert en masse back to MP3 using WinLAME (I will have to post a pic of the custom settings that are needed in regards to quality, bitrate, etc.). From there, use the MP3toBMU utility to fix the header and you're done. Working the file and doing conversions in pure MP3 format can screw up the quality since you are munging with a lossy format.
Just some thoughts.....
Oh, and WinLAME is free.
I ran into a pitfall of doing quick conversions in mp3 format because you can really munge the header up and the Bioware engine will not recognize it any more.
The way I did conversions was to take the .bmu or .mp3 file then run it thru WinLAME to convert it to a lossless wav format (http://winlame.sourceforge.net/) then I would covert en masse back to MP3 using WinLAME (I will have to post a pic of the custom settings that are needed in regards to quality, bitrate, etc.). From there, use the MP3toBMU utility to fix the header and you're done. Working the file and doing conversions in pure MP3 format can screw up the quality since you are munging with a lossy format.
Just some thoughts.....
Oh, and WinLAME is free.
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Guest
You know what I find really stupid about the whole NWN music system? The fact that there is at all a separation between battle music and ambient music. Back when I used to run my campaign, all the tracks in my music package had the mus_bat_ prefix. That way I could use every one of the tracks for either battle or ambient.
This might not be ideal for everyone though, just a personal preference. Besides, it's impracticable at this point since the first release is already out there with the ambient fixes. Naturally, not all music works well as battle music.. I suppose it has to have a certain rhythm (most of the time at least, my campaign was far from conventional so I didn't care much), in addition to sounding good in a loop...
But anyway, the whole point is.. you'll likely find a lot of music on the Vault that, while not specifically tagged as battle music, might work well as such.
... I'll end the rant now.
This might not be ideal for everyone though, just a personal preference. Besides, it's impracticable at this point since the first release is already out there with the ambient fixes. Naturally, not all music works well as battle music.. I suppose it has to have a certain rhythm (most of the time at least, my campaign was far from conventional so I didn't care much), in addition to sounding good in a loop...
But anyway, the whole point is.. you'll likely find a lot of music on the Vault that, while not specifically tagged as battle music, might work well as such.
... I'll end the rant now.
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Tiberius_Morguhn
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:47 am
One thing I was thinking of to address what Metzker brought up is to have no files with the mus_bat_ prefix but make all of the files by default be ambient music with the mus_ prefix only.
Since Windows has "shortcuts" and Linux has symbolic links, we could script the installer to make shortcuts/symbolic links such that mus_bat_bob would point to mus_bob without having to have two physical copies of the same file. I don't know if OSX/MacOS has a shortcut/link equivalent but I'm sure they probably do. I will test this tonight and see if the shortcut/link fools NWN at the filesystem level.
You will still have to have two entries in the 2da though, one for mus_bat_ and one for mus_.
Since Windows has "shortcuts" and Linux has symbolic links, we could script the installer to make shortcuts/symbolic links such that mus_bat_bob would point to mus_bob without having to have two physical copies of the same file. I don't know if OSX/MacOS has a shortcut/link equivalent but I'm sure they probably do. I will test this tonight and see if the shortcut/link fools NWN at the filesystem level.
You will still have to have two entries in the 2da though, one for mus_bat_ and one for mus_.
[QUOTE=Shioni;7344]From what I understand putting together Combat Music Requires 2 files a main and an ending.
What I don’t know is what format to put the files in or where they should be stored.[/QUOTE]
The combat music is an mp3 like every other. The ending track is a .wav file in music.bif. I just peeked at one of them, and my music player said it was 1411kbps 6 seconds long (I don't know if I'd believe the bit rate...).
One of my votes for combat music is the Witcher's "Golem", IIRC. It sounded like a combat track to me, at least.
What I don’t know is what format to put the files in or where they should be stored.[/QUOTE]
The combat music is an mp3 like every other. The ending track is a .wav file in music.bif. I just peeked at one of them, and my music player said it was 1411kbps 6 seconds long (I don't know if I'd believe the bit rate...).
One of my votes for combat music is the Witcher's "Golem", IIRC. It sounded like a combat track to me, at least.
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Guest
Categories
Has anyone noticed that Combat music files in NWN are about 10kb and are 9-10 min long?
If we do separate combat music I think we should break up the files into Categories. (Oriental, Combat, Ambient, Adventure, Classical, Game, Celtic)
If we do separate combat music I think we should break up the files into Categories. (Oriental, Combat, Ambient, Adventure, Classical, Game, Celtic)
[QUOTE=Shioni;7360]Has anyone noticed that Combat music files in NWN are about 10kb and are 9-10 min long?[/QUOTE]
My impression of the NWN combat files are they are 2-3 minute tracks looped several times to make them longer - presumably so that the combat music doesn't stop in the middle of a fight (depending on what the music delay setting in an area is). A number of our potential "combat" tracks could (should?) be padded out similarly.
My impression of the NWN combat files are they are 2-3 minute tracks looped several times to make them longer - presumably so that the combat music doesn't stop in the middle of a fight (depending on what the music delay setting in an area is). A number of our potential "combat" tracks could (should?) be padded out similarly.
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Guest
[QUOTE]My impression of the NWN combat files are they are 2-3 minute tracks looped several times to make them longer - presumably so that the combat music doesn't stop in the middle of a fight (depending on what the music delay setting in an area is). A number of our potential "combat" tracks could (should?) be padded out similarly.[/QUOTE]
As far as I can remember, the battle tracks aren't affectted by the music delay setting - that only counts between ambient music repeats and music changes.
However I've noticed that quite a few of the CMP tracks seem to have periods of silence at the end anyway, which should definitely removed if they're changed to combat tracks, especially since they already mess up area music delay settings.
Edit: Only AFTER posting did I realize just how hopeless late this post was. Ah well.
As far as I can remember, the battle tracks aren't affectted by the music delay setting - that only counts between ambient music repeats and music changes.
However I've noticed that quite a few of the CMP tracks seem to have periods of silence at the end anyway, which should definitely removed if they're changed to combat tracks, especially since they already mess up area music delay settings.
Edit: Only AFTER posting did I realize just how hopeless late this post was. Ah well.