Music in zones
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Very, very easy to do.
All you do is add in this line in your zone
music = whatever nickname of the music you want here
That’s it
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If you want to add entirely new music (non copyright mind!) I’ve found this tutorial useful
Custom Music
Author:BBalaz’s
Adding custom music to freelancer. In the tutorial, we’ll add a custom ‘space’ music, the one which plays when you are freely exploring space, and there are no hostiles to be seen anywhere.
Freelancer stores the music in a 22kHz MP3 format. Note that the extension is .wav - however, the music is not in “wav format”. To be correct, there is no such thing as a wav format. Wav is merely a container. Generally, what you would call a “wav format” is actually called PCM. The music files of Freelancer are MP3 files, in a wav container, using a 22kHz sampling rate, and the Fraunhofer codec. Yes, you will notice, that if you use some other mp3 codec (like LAME, which is the default of, for example, Audacity), FL will not play the music correctly. Also, I’ve been fiddling around with different versions of the Fraunhofer codec, and they don’t seem to work correctly, either. Adding music to Freelancer, however, is not that complicated.
Let’s get down to a simple-to-understand, step-by-step tutorial.
1: Create your music file. It is generally a good idea to keep ‘space’ type music to about two minutes long, ‘bar’ type music to about one minute in length, and so on.
2: Save it as WAV (PCM). When you are satisfied with your file, export it (or save it) as wav. Sampling rate, so far, doesn’t matter, you can keep it as high as you wish.
3: Check the volume of the music. It is a good idea to go to FL’s music folder, and open a music file, say, music_li_space, or music_bar_li02. Then, open up your own WAV file and check if it is loud enough. If it isn’t loud enough, you’ll need to amplify it. Check the appendix at the end of the tutorial. If your music file is loud enough,
4: Open it in WINDOWS SOUND RECORDER. Yes, that simple, seemingly good-for-nothing application. Once your file is open, go to File ==> Properties, then click the “Conversion…” button.
5: Convert your file. Select MPEG Layer-3 as a format, Attributes should be 56 kbit/sec, 24 000 KHz, Stereo. That should work. Click OK and wait for the application to finish converting the file.
6: Save the file! It is generally a good idea to use ‘Save as…’ in case you might want to get back to the original PCM wav file. You will also notice, that the extension to your MP3 will now be WAV.At this point, we are done with the file itself. Let’s get it working. In the tutorial, let’s say our file will be saved as… tutorial_space.mp3 (Creative, isn’t it?)
1: Copy the file (tutorial_space.mp3) into Freelancer\Data\Audio\Music.
2: Make sure the file Freelancer\Data\Audio\Music.ini is not write-protected.
3: Open the file “Music.ini” in a text editor. Note that I assume you are using the SDK. If you aren’t, you will need binitools, or some other bini decoder/encoder application, but I won’t get into that now.
3: You will see blocks of ‘Sound’ entries. Do a search for music_li_space.
4: Copy and paste music_li_space’s block to the end of the file.
5: Now, change the entries:
nickname = music_tutorial_space (<== the nickname you will refer to in the system file)
type = music
file = audio\music\tutorial_space.wav (<== the name of your file!)
attenuation = -6 (<== this is meant to be some sort of volume adjustment, but I found little to no effect when modifying the value… Play around with it)
streamer = true (<== makes your music fade in and fade out)6: Save music.ini
7: Open up a system file. We will be using the New York system. Go to Freelancer\Data\Universe\Systems\Li01 and open up Li01.ini
8: Replace the music theme. Scroll down to the ‘Music’ entry (or do a search for it) and replace
space = music_li_space
with
space = music_tutorial_space (<== NOTE: This is the NICKNAME you defined. Not the filename.)
9: Save the file. That should do it.CK256
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I’ll use it in our mod. I want it specifically for the “Hypergate zone”, I mean when you fly near the hypergate to RKS it plays the Hypergate Scene music. Its used in the game in nebulas: When you enter a nebula it plays a special music made for the nebula type. In mods its mostly used like I use it: Changing the ambience creating tension, or just saying you are in safe or dangerouse area.
Do you understand now? -
He means attenuation.
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I have found the attenuation to be most probelmatic…
im a proper sound tech… so it should make it easy … but oh… no… FL want’s to have its own version of what -6db means based on the variable entered in the sound config…
Basically… use your ears… & be “light” on the thing… in the sound world we rarley go outside 3,6,9,12,24
-3 <- is -1/4 of your sound volume
-6 <- is -1/2 of your sound volume
-9 <- is 2/3… ect and the same for going upwell at least… sitting here in front of a sound-desk… that’s how it “should” work… i find i don’t get the same from FL… its “close” but not something id use as law… FL seems to like things like -1, -4, even -8… to me that makes 0 sense but i go with it. these days i leave it at 0 (code) and set the volume outside of FL way before the sound hits the game engine or mod.
