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Post Info TOPIC: Tutorial - How to include custom music


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Tutorial - How to include custom music
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Hi,

I made this tutorial because I wanted to add my own music track that also include the right stingers. By using this method you'll be sure stingers are set right. Not that you can't make your own music file but by using a stock music arrangement as a base guarantees that stingers are all set up properly without having to worry about finding them after. The stingers are sounds that play when a player gets a mega-kill, multi-kill, capture a flag, etc.

1. Start the Editor, open a stock map that is using the same game type as your map (CTF, DM, VCTF, ect). They're located in ...\UT3\UTGame\CookedPC\Maps & ...\UT3\UTGame\CookedPC\Private\Maps. For my example, since I'm working on a DM map, I choose DM-Sanctuary as my template.

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2. In the main menus, go in View -> World Properties. Now expand the categories & locate the field MapMusicInfo (World Properties -> MyMapInfo -> UTMapInfo -> MapMusicInfo). We can see that DM-Sanctuary uses A_Music_RomAsia02_DM which is located in the A_Music_Arrangements package. Close the World Properties window.

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3. Now, close the stock map & open yours. Open the generic browser, locate the package A_Music_Arrangements.Tracks, right click & select 'Full load' in the contextual menu.

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To continue, we need to copy / paste the music asset. If you want to duplicate, rename or delete an asset (in the window at the right) by right clicking on it, you will see that all options in the contextual menu aren't available. Go now in the Log tab & locate the command line at the bottom. Now, you have to use the proper syntax or else, you will end up with a warning message in the log windows just above. The syntax to use is as follow :

obj savepackage file=[location & name of the temporary package] package=[Epic package to duplicate]

Take note that when you do the 'savepackage' you don't open the package that it save. The file that is saved is just a temporary stream, so it is best to point the 'file=' to a temporary folder and use a garbage file name such as C:\Temp\ToDelete.pkg since that is a meaningless file that you can delete later. The [Epic package to duplicate] is the package you want to duplicate. In our case, it's A_Music_Arrangements package since the music asset is in this package. So the correct syntax to type is as follow & press enter when finish :

obj savepackage file=C:\Temp\ToDelete.pkg package=A_Music_Arrangements

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4. Return to the Generic tab, select A_Music_RomAsia02_DM to the right & know by clicking with the right button of your mouse, in the contextual menu, the duplicate option should be available. The window that appear is the destination where you want to duplicate the asset. The 3 field are important & should be filled with the correct info. This is how it should be fill & click the OK button when everything is filled up :

Package = Select your map in the scrolling menu.
Group = Not essential but very practical. It is better that you create several groups in your map package. This will help you stay organize when you begin to have multiple assets included in your map. Since all my sounds stuff are in the same folder, I choose Sounds.
New name = The name of the new asset. Since it's my map music base, I choose MyMusic.

5. Go now in your map package. While your in your map package, click on File -> Import. Navigate to wherever you have your music and import it (mine is named MusicFile). A quick note about music. It needs to be in WAV format. No AAC, OGG, MP3 format. A little tip ; if you have access to a sound editor, you can convert the stereo track to mono instead of stereo unless your aiming to use some specials effects on the left-right channels. On the import window, make sure the Package is the name of your map, make sure the Name doesn't have any spaces or specials characters in it, leave it simple and also check bAutoCreateCue. Click the OK button when your ready.

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6. Now, this should add 2 new files to your map package ; a USound file (MusicFile) and a USound CUE file (MusicFileCue). Right click on the USound CUE file (mine is MusicFileCue), go to Sound Groups and select Music.

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7. Double click your UT Music file you created (mine is named MyMusic) and expand all the music parts. Select your USound CUE in the generic browser (mine is MusicFileCue), and assign it for every single option. Keep the stingers part of the UT Music file minimized, just leave those alone. Close this windows when finish.

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8. Make sure your UT Music file is still selected, go to your View -> World Properties, locate the field MapMusicInfo (step # 2) and assign the music line to your UT Music file by clicking the green arrow on the far right. If there is nothing under MapMusicInfo, you must create the structure. Click the blue down arrow on the far right, select UTMapInfo.

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9. Now, save your map & your done. If the music is too loud or too quiet, you can change the volume by right clicking on the CUE file and opening the Sound Cue Editor. Clicking on the speaker, you can affect the volume by changing the Volume Multiplier at the bottom. The default is 0.75. You must play your map to find the most adequate volume. In my case I did a bit of mixing after I import my WAV file. The Loop function will play the file indefinitely, the Mixer function will mix 2 sounds together & the Delay function will add a delay before playing the sound. Of course you must do a right click, add the functions, link them & set them for you needs.

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I'm aware that the PS3 tool is now available but since a lot of mappers are complaining because of severals issues, I just skip it for the moment.

Hope that help.


-- Edited by stevelois on Thursday 7th of January 2010 04:27:12 PM

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Unreal Old Friend

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Hello Steve, many thanks for this tutorial. I was getting crazy to get the music in the map. (was tearing out a lot of hairs lol)
Nevertheless it needed a lot of tries to import the music file, because I had many times this well known UT3.exe error (grrrr bleh ). I had also to change something in the order of your tutorial (I think I had to add the MyMusic file one step earlier to the Map Info, and .... I only could import the wav from my RamDisk (from harddisk it was always crashing...) erm...?!? evileye

However... finally it worked... phew...biggrin

Thanks

PS: I really cannot understand why they did not include a mp3 decoder in the game... mapsize uncooked now at 200 MB lol...

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I'm glad it can help you out buddy :)

I don't know why you got some error while importing. Must be an isolated issue because I never had any prob following those steps ?

I know, many would like to import from mp2/3/4, ogg, aac, wma, etc but don't worry, the cooked version of your map will be much smaller because the engine will compress the audio track in a proprietary builtin format that is as efficient as importing from a lossy audio track.

If you remember correctly which step of the tut was giving you some prob, don't hesitate to mention it clearly so I'll update the tut ;)

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Unreal Old Friend

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I think I did Step 8 between Step 4 and 5 and then: SAVE!!!

By this I could skip 1-5 everytime when my UT3.exe was crashing again...aww

Ah and good to know that the music file will be compressed too... I was afraid that I would have to downsample the music or something like that. The music is not license free stuff, so it's better not to modify it in any way...biggrin

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Ah, THX for your explanations :)

Something you can do is to convert the stereo file in a mono file. That operation will cut the song size by 50% ;)

Players don't really pay attention to music quality when they listening the music while playing so having only 1 audio channel instead of 2 will greatly reduce the file size. You have to remember that music is very important for the athmosphere but isn't crucial as ambient sounds.

A stereo file is good only if you want to keep the left - right effects which is something you loose in mono hence the file size reduction since the stereo source is combine in 1 channel so the sound coe from the middle.

I did that in Station 12 & also in Aly (day edition) in case you want an idea.

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Thx for your tips Steve, but you were right with the compression after cooking. The map size is something about 46 MB then, thats ok for me.  And I really do not want to lose the stereo sound, I think the music I have chosen will get more attention then normal, lol. Very heavy stuff.

By the way: As far I can remember, you have done the music for Station 12 yourself. I was impressed of that music, I really liked it. I'll have to get some more Soundpools and then again play a bit around with my Cubase VST 5.1 and my old Roland PC-200. But I think it needs much more talent to produce good music then to build a good map. And because I have absolutely no talent for creating music, I would need 10x of the time for the music which was needed for the map itself. That would be 3000 hours lol...evileyeashamed

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lol...i hope music dont cost steevie 10x mapping time too...hm...that will be round 10000 hours or more on nano:p...haha wink.gif

-- Edited by Bl!tz on Thursday 8th of April 2010 11:34:05 AM

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@rulaman

Well, just to clarify a little thing because I don't want to take credits for something I don't deserve.

I didn't made the audio track for Station 12 nor Aly. Those tracks had been edited, not made by me. I use Sound Forge for audio editing.

For Station 12, I use a trance mix of the song which I cut some part I don't like. I wanted a fast techno audio track to fit the theme & for Aly, I did the same thing by choosing an angelic type song only using half the song with fade in/out.

You can do the same. Choose a track that fit's instead of making it smile

@blitz

LOL

The audio part will be very quick to do. I can't say the same for the map itself... but I work on the map every day like I did with Nano wink

Hopefully, the results should be ok smile

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