New Music Tutorial

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New Music Tutorial

Post by Defilus » Wed Feb 11, 2004 9:35 pm

Hey everyone. Defilus here, some of you may know me as The Zerginator from my orcish ways mod. 99% of you probably dont though. :roll:

I decided to make a music "import" tutorial which uses the new Winamp 5.0 program. Ready?

First here's what you need:

Basic shortcut for Modded Diablo II (-direct -txt)
MPQView
A good piece of music
Winamp 5.0 (you can get it at www.winamp.com. its 100% free)
A bit of Hard drive space. (no more than 100 meg typically)

Here's how to do it.

Let's say you have a really cool mp3 file you want to put into diablo II. How do you go about doing it? First you need to find what music you want to replace. Lets say you want to replace the Act 1 town music. Load up MPQView and open d2music.mpq in your program files/diablo II/ directory.
type in ".wav" for a filter and watch MPQView filter everything out. Find the Act 1 town file (Act1/town1.wav) And jot down its location. For quick reference it's...

data\global\excel\music\act1\town1.wav

Now open up Winamp 5.0 and clear your playlist (if you have one loaded up.) Find the music file you want to put into the game and open it in Winamp. Dont play the song. Insead, go to the main window (Where it shows song length, volume, etc...) Right click, go to "Options" and select "Preferences." The shortcut to get here is by hitting ctrl-p.

Click on "Output" to go to the output window. If you have just downloaded Winamp 5.0 you should have three different outputs available to you. One of them should be "Nullsoft Disk Writer" or something like that. Double click on it.

What we have just told Winamp to do is this: Instead of audio output, winamp now "writes" the song to a certain directory. To choose where winamp writes these files, click on "output directory." Note that when you play songs in winamp now, there will be no sound and your songs "play" incredibly fast. This is because winamp is not playing the song, but is instead making a completely new output file based on the settings you give it! For this example, lets make the output directory "C:\mod\music" for simplicity's sake.

So, you have the output window still up? excellent! Click the "..." box below the output directory and a new window will pop up, asking you what quality the files should be written in. select "PCM" from the first drop-down menu, and select (i think) 22.050 khz 16 bit stereo from that menu. Dont touch anything else except "OK." hit "OK" one more time, and "close" the next time. You should be back in the main Winamp program now.

Now play your song. winamp will not audioly play the song!! it is now "writing" your song into .wav format. watch it closely until it finishes, then hit the stop button. Find where your output directory was (should be C:\mod\music\ if you are following this tutorial) and find the new .wav file you created. copy it for now.

Finally, go to your Diablo II directory and create a "data" folder. In that folder, create a "global" folder. In that folder, make a "music" folder. In your music folder create an "Act1" folder and open it. Now paste your song file in this folder. Now rename it to the song you want it to replace (in this example, town1.wav).

Run your -direct diablo II shortcut, load up a character, and head to act 1. You should be hearing your music play after a few seconds.

So there you go. A somewhat lengthy tutorial, but one that explains how to put custom music into d2 with just free software. The best part is, you can use ANY kind of music file (even other .wavs, or .nsf files for a good ol' nintento feel)!

If you want to actually listen to your music again, go back to the Output area in preferences in winap and select "DirectSound Output" or something similar.

-Defilus

Common Problems:
Q: Why does my music play so slowly or too quicky?
A: it is probably because of the format you wrote the .wav file in.

Q: Why doesn't my sound work now! You messed up my Winamp player! I'm Sueing!
A: Dont bother sueing me. Instead, open up winamp again, go back to the preferences menu and select output once more. Change "Nullsoft Disk Writer" back to "Directsound Output" or whatever makes winamp play songs again.

That should be all. Good luck and happy modding. :D

EDIT: changed the file quality to 22.050 16-bit Stereo
Last edited by Defilus on Wed Feb 11, 2004 10:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by sPoT » Sun Feb 29, 2004 12:45 pm

Hmm... So it will open winamp during the game, and play the music form your hard drive?
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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Joel » Sun Feb 29, 2004 1:08 pm

no you don't understand. It use winamp as music format converter.
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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by BenOwns » Sat Mar 06, 2004 2:04 am

i can't get it to work

is this right as the shortcut?

"C:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct \data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav


that look right?

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Eltear » Sat Mar 06, 2004 2:08 am

No, it should look like this:
"C:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct -txt

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Volf » Sat Mar 06, 2004 4:01 am

BenOwns";p="158798" wrote:i can't get it to work

is this right as the shortcut?

"C:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct \data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav


that look right?
data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav
This means that you should put town1.wav file in to the act1 folder located inside data-global-music folder

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by BenOwns » Sat Mar 06, 2004 4:54 am

i got it working but now the song goes very damn slow lol.

i changed the stuff up to 48,000 kHz 16bit stereo

but still slow what can i do?

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by kingpin » Sat Mar 06, 2004 5:17 am

The quality diablo uses is: 22.050 16-bit Stereo

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by BenOwns » Sat Mar 06, 2004 3:56 pm

still was to slow :\
guess i will try anotherr song

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by frankdave » Sat Mar 06, 2004 4:46 pm

what file should i open if i want to change the act 5 music files...right now , my d2music.mpq files contains only act1 to act4 files :cool:

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by onyx » Sat Mar 06, 2004 8:39 pm

Check in d2exp.mpq, it contains everything for the expansion ;)
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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Myhrginoc » Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:21 pm

Not quite everything. There are three other expansion mpqs: d2xmusic, d2xtalk and d2xvideo.
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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by frankdave » Sun Mar 07, 2004 5:35 pm

Myhrginoc";p="158905" wrote:Not quite everything. There are three other expansion mpqs: d2xmusic, d2xtalk and d2xvideo.
i have only d2xtalk of those 3 files...where can i get the others ??

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by frankdave » Sun Mar 07, 2004 5:40 pm

i followed the tutorial step by step and i am certain of having the right file quality output ( 22,050 hz 16-bit stereo ) and i made a town1.wav file of the new music i wanted to hear but when i load the game and get into town act 1 , i hear absolutelly nothing !!! ( except rain falling !!! )

what might i have done wrong ???

note : i noticed that when looking at the file properties , it wrote at file type : "winamp media file''

can it be something linked to that ??
is there another program other than winamp in which i can convert filetype to wav with the correct outputs ??

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Alkalund » Sun Mar 07, 2004 7:19 pm

frankdave, please do not post consecutive messages; edit your post next time, thanks.

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Myhrginoc » Sun Mar 07, 2004 7:59 pm

The other two mpqs are on your LoD CD. You can copy them over to your Diablo II directory and save yourself a few disk accesses (especially for d2xmusic.mpq, the other two aren't used during the game that much).

If you search the web, you'll find hundreds of converters out there. You might start at a reputable site such as ZDNet.
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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by frankdave » Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:24 am

thanks for the hint Myhrginoc !! I did find what i was looking for !!

now here is a funny situation...i was able to easily replace the intro music with a file i converted from mp3 to .wav but nothing works for town1.wav even if i used exactly the same method for town1.wav !!!

did this happen to anyone else ??
does somebody have an idea why this happens ??

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Myhrginoc » Mon Mar 08, 2004 8:15 am

Did you put it in data\global\music\Act1? Replacing town music is just like replacing any in-game music, it has to be put into its respective act. The intro isn't filed by act and might not be the best substitution example.
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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by frankdave » Mon Mar 08, 2004 7:02 pm

i verified and i did put it in the correct directory....hence , instead of playing the regular music when in town act 1 , it plays nothing at all !! :roll:

i'll continue to test things but as of now...i really dont understand whats going on !!

thanks in advance for any other hints on how to solve this !! :)

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Myhrginoc » Tue Mar 09, 2004 4:31 am

Note the file should appear in the mpq or in an external directory as data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav, no spaces anywhere. This works in other mods (e.g. Kato's Zy-El), so look for possible typos such as extra spaces. I don't know why it wouldn't work for you if you have it entered right, it works for other people.
Last edited by Myhrginoc on Tue Mar 09, 2004 4:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by frankdave » Tue Mar 09, 2004 6:18 pm

Myhrginoc";p="159471" wrote:I don't know why it wouldn't work for you if you have it entered right, it works for other people.
lolllllllllllll I must be that kinda guy to which all sorts of things happen...you know , the ''S*** happens'' kinda guy !!! lolllllll ;)

I'll do a double check on my dir path...who knows...you might be right !! ( or i might be crazy !! )

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by XoeoX » Fri Mar 26, 2004 4:29 am

Ok, im realy new to this. So any newb comments you have id like you to answer what I have asked as well.

I followed the tutorial, yet I still have the original act1 music playing. I have made the sub-folders like it say, and it is correct w/ no spaces.

I have reason to believe it is my shortcut.Here is what i did:

I opened notepad and entered:
"D:Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct -txt
( ^ I installed on the D: drive instead the C: )

Then i save it as...D2LoadUp.bat (onto the desktop of course)
But this doesnt work.

I have also tried:
"D:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct \data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav

"D:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct \data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav -txt

"D:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct "\data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav"

"D:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct -txt "\data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav"

and

"D:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct -txt \data\global\music\Act1\town1.wav

Yeah of course you probly know...they didnt help either.

So an exact statement of what i would need would help out alot, thankz.


Other questions...
------------------------------------
Do i need to do something else to compile the act1.wav back into the D2music.mpq or does it work in the folders?

If I wanted to change all of the games music, what would I put so the shortcut loads each one?
#%@* !#$@& !!!! Im lost again...

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Paul Siramy » Fri Mar 26, 2004 11:29 am

XoeoX";p="163174" wrote:"D:Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct -txt
( ^ I installed on the D: drive instead the C: )
Is it a typo in the forum that is not in your shortcut, or did you forget this \ after D: ?
"D:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w -direct -txt

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by XoeoX » Fri Mar 26, 2004 3:36 pm

No its a typo, I checked and it wouldnt be able to load otherwise if i had forgoten it. Diablo II loads in the window, but... I just cant get "my" version of act1 to play, instead, it ignores everythin after "-w" and plays the original music.

If i could get this to work i could go about me business of changing the rest of the songs, lol.

Um, also Im not too sure on what the -direct and -txt commands do and how it finds its way to \Data\Global\Music\Act1\act1.wav if i dont tell it otherwise.
Last edited by XoeoX on Fri Mar 26, 2004 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
#%@* !#$@& !!!! Im lost again...

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Re: New Music Tutorial

Post by Eltear » Fri Mar 26, 2004 3:38 pm

Why don't you try changing the order of the parameters to -direct -txt -w ?

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