Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Ransom on July 16, 2004, 11:45:22 am

Title: Music table
Post by: Ransom on July 16, 2004, 11:45:22 am

Er... how exactly do you add new soundtracks to the music table? I've got the music playing in-game, but at the beginning of each track there's a bit of... weirdness, stopping and starting a couple of times, but the rest of the track plays fine. I think it's something to do with the num_measures and/or samples_per_measure, or I just did something wrong with the .wav's. Any help?

Title: Music table
Post by: kasperl on July 16, 2004, 12:09:04 pm

[wiki] blah [/wiki]

Check the wiki link in the above bit of auto text, I'm pretty sure it's in there.

Title: Music table
Post by: Ransom on July 16, 2004, 12:28:41 pm

Already checked the wiki - couldn't find anything on it. The Music Table section remains completely untouched...

Title: Music table
Post by: Ransom on July 18, 2004, 09:05:20 am

*bump*

Anyone?

Title: Music table
Post by: Silent Warrior on July 18, 2004, 02:33:01 pm

It's a bit of hit or miss with the numbers as far as I can tell (know that I haven't researched this table much). I usually use the length of the track in seconds as the last of the two mystery-numbers. Works reasonably well... Not perfect (arrivals are dreadful), but it isn't horrible.

Title: Music table
Post by: WMCoolmon on July 18, 2004, 03:54:33 pm

Ok, here's my take on this...

Fact
When sound is digitized into something like a wave file, there is an x number of data pieces taken which hold the info about the sound at that very movent. This is called the frequency of a wave file, because the frequency number is the number of times each second that a data piece, called a sample is taken. For CD quality music, this is about 44100 hz (aka 44.1 khz). Freespace 2's sound files mostly use 22050 hz.

My guess, based on the code
Freespace 2 uses a sound system which fades in between different loaded music files when an event occurs. An enemy ship warps in, for example. To make this *sound* right, it needs to know when it can fade out the file rather than just fading it indiscriminately.

So, each song in Freespace 2 is divided up into measures. At the beginning or end of a measure, Freespace 2 will fade to a different song if it's needed.

This means that to set the two variables correctly, samples_per_measure must be set to the number of samples per section of music. num_measures is the total number of sections for the music file.

So say you had a simple drumbeat - abaab - that was 2 seconds long, recorded at 22050 hz, repeating over a 30 second music file. To find the number of samples per measure, you would use the equation (frequency * measure time) or in this case (22050 * 2). To find the number of measures, you would use the equation (music time / measure time) or (30 / 2)

Title: Music table
Post by: Silent Warrior on July 19, 2004, 09:41:53 am

That guess sounds a whole lot better than mine. I'll go with that. *Takes note*

Title: Music table
Post by: kasperl on July 19, 2004, 10:04:12 am

*points to the wiki's 'edit' button *

Title: Music table
Post by: ShadowWolf_IH on July 19, 2004, 10:31:55 am

Thanks WM, that should be most helpful .

Title: Music table
Post by: Goober5000 on July 19, 2004, 11:05:52 am

Search is A-1 SUPAR... :doubt:

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,14157.0.html

Pretty much what WMC said.