HW2 Music

[Viper114]

Anybody know how to get the music from HW2 into file formats for listening to on Windows music players? There are a couple of pieces that I'd like to listen outside of HW2.

[ZuiljiN]

if you get the last version of the big extractor music will be extracted in aifr format. Download the relic plugin for winamp 2.x then set the winamp output to diskwriter and set the format and quality you want then open and play every file you want :)

[Viper114]

Well, I've tried, but it won't work. The Big Viewer program says the big files of HW2 are not valid ones, and it's version 3. Homesong.exe can't work, for there aren't any WXD files to extract from. I got the Relic plugin, but now I need to know the link to get the right file on getting the music.

[ZuiljiN]

Vyper14 you need this bigextractor http://www.a-fluffy.demon.co.uk/homeworld2/

[Midarenkov]

Hate to be beating on a dead horse perhaps, but I have a question; are there any music players around which can play .aifr files? If so, is the music of a better quality?

[elorran]

Relic may have a custom designed program to play them, but in general the answer is no. We only have access to the plugin for winamp.

[Midarenkov]

Okies. Thanks anyway mate : )

:lurk: mode engaged.

[LightStar]

Hmm. :wtf: Why couldn't they just have made them a file format readable by Windows Media Player?

I have the music from Armada I, and Hegemonia: Legions of Iron set to play on my WMP (I think it's either 7.x or 8.0 as far as the version goes--it's the one that came with XP) and it's a blast. :D The good part was that the files were all of formats readable...it was just a matter of finding the filepath to get it to work.

I had Winamp 3 for a while, but it and my computer seem to always have disagreements--first time it went in, it kept locking things up. Second time it went in, MSBlaster found its way in about the same time.

I've noticed, however, that sound quality seems better on Media Player anyways...*headscratch* Uhhh, whatever. :D

[NightShadow]

sorry for bumping this post but does this plugin only work with winamp 2? i got the plugin and installed it for winamp 2.81 and it gives me an error message 'compressed aifc files other than 4-bit IMA ADPCM are not supported' wats wrong?? :(

[Zatch]

What exactly are you trying to play? Also, did you rename the files to *.aifr?

Another thing: you might want to upgrade (Winamp 5 is very nice, doesn't have any of Winamp 3's bugs.) The plugin works with Winamp 5 as well.

[Mazon Del]

Hey could someone just send me the music files converted. if not could you just send me the music files however they are after you get them out of the Big file. becuase every big extractor i have tried has failed an i have tried alot of them.

[adamstrange]

Isn't this a big pain in the butt :fight:

Why in hell didn't they just make the sound file format Mp3 and dumped to a folder when you install the game?

I have a lot of games that dump all the game's sounds to a folder in either wav,mp3 or ogg vorbis formats which can be read by most players and audio editing programs.

You need a program to extract the sounds then you need a program to convert the sounds and you need to know what is the EXACT command line to convert them into wav and then you need the EXACT command line to convert them back into aifr and then you have to go through another process [ which i don't know] to make them readable for the game :Slap:

Boy was i so very wrong.

I thought a BIG file was like any BIG file so i tried to extract them with FINALBIG for Generals and it was blank.

I just realized that i spent over 50 posts trying to do 2 things over a period of almost 2 weeks,trying to give a unit a different weapon and extract the sounds and i still have not been successful,and within 2 hours of buying General/Zero Hour i had already did both.

Give a fighter a new missile?
Copy a line of text...paste..DONE.

Extract the sounds?
Open the finalbig.
Extract the sounds [ no convertion needed,over 1000 of them and they are all wavs ]...DONE

Put them back in?
Select the folder.
Save as Big...DONE.

Why is it sooo hard to do something so simple in this game.

RedAlert 2/Yuri's Revenge weapons set up is just like HW2 ,seperate missile file and seperate weapon/warhead file...COOL , you can mix and match new weapons all day long but in HW2 its like a course in Advanced Nuclear Physics :smash:

I want to also remix the entire HW2 music which is a cakewalk for me in my studio but i can't because i can't convert the FDA format into simple wavs.

Its about to be 2005 and they are still playing with command lines...Hmmm...maybe we should all dump our cellphones and go back to telegraph and morse code :werd:

[Zatch]

Modding is not supposed to be n00b friendly. This is how the developers made the game (except they went into the deepest coding details) and thus, this is how you will mod the game.

That aside:

Giving ships new weapons is cake. Just copy one line =P.
Extracting the *.big files is extremely simple. It takes a whopping one line of input. See the RDN documents before making any more silly assumptions.
Converting the *.fda files into *.wav format and back is also extremely simple. Just go look at the thread devoted to it (titled "SOUND IMPORT HACKED") and be sure to follow the directions exactly. The process is foolproof and the encoders/decoders are bug-free, so anything that "doesn't work" is the result of an user error.


Less complaining, more reading.

[adamstrange]

ZaTcH,Then if its so simple,why is it that when i change the railgun fighters weapon from this:

StartShipWeaponConfig(NewShipType,"hgn_lightrail","Weapon_FrontGun","Fire")

To this

StartShipWeaponConfig(NewShipType,"Hgn_BigTorpedoLauncher","Weapon_FrontGun","Fire")
It won't fire anything.

If i change it to this:

StartShipWeaponConfig(NewShipType,"Hgn_BigTorpedoLauncher", "weapon_Torpedo,"Fire")

Or this:

StartShipWeaponConfig(NewShipType,"Hgn_BigTorpedoLauncher", "weapon_Torpedo,")

The game crashes.

I've tried for 2 weeks now and read the tutorials and i still can't get it to work.

And this is without changing anything at all,like you said Giving ships new weapons is cake. Just copy one line but its not ,its not working for this fighter.

[evillejedi]

you obviously aren't reading the wiki and haven't done any programming before,

when you put a line in that has an incorrect hardpoint, then it will crash, similarly if you leave out arguments to a function call like your last line

(eg weapon_torpedo)

now the reason the torpedo isn't firing is that weapon has a very limited fire arc and a fighter almost never points directly at its target, in most cases you need to change the fire arc of these weapons which is in the weapon file itself

also if you notice, hgn_bigtorpedolauncher is a special attack, try using the destroyers torpedo launcher

in most cases it is simply changing one entry in a line, but you happened to grab something that was setup for a special purpose (again reading the wiki and looking at what was in the hgn_bigtorpedolauncher wepn file should have made you realize that there was something different)


I admit that HW2 is harder to mod than other games, compared to UT, NWN or even generals it is a pain, but thats mainly because sierra crippled relic from supporting any modding. (we could be back in the day when you hex edit exe's, now that was fun) however what we do have is essentially what relic used, and because of the nature of lua in terms of inheritance and class structure, the majority of things make perfect sense from a programming standpoint (except sobgroups/UI grrr) they just aren't intuitive and require a programming mindset to understand. the aifr/fda if I'm not mistaken were designed to allow a sound processor to dynamically alter the wav data (echo, reverb, volume, fadeoff) so that many different sounds could be played efficiently while traversing the battlefield (unlike most games where you simply have to have the unit on the screen)

commandline >> GUI :p (at least if you know what you are doing)

[Death_Wish]

wouldn't it be easyer to just post the wav file i have the afi but i am haveing a hard time converting it, i want it this song bad and i can not get it no matter what i do.

[Zatch]

Alright, assuming you have the Winamp *.aifx plugin (it plays *.aifr, despite the "*.aifx" name,) the process is as follows:

Open Winamp (3 or 5 preferrably, I'm not even sure the plugin works with 2.)
Right click on the main window, click on "Options->Preferences..."
Navigate to the "Plugins_Output" submenu, and select the "Nullsoft Disk Writer Plugin"
Click on "Configure" (at the bottom of the window.)
Select an output directory, do not enable the "Convert to format:" checkbox -- this can cause problems if you have improperly installed codecs, and you may lose some sound quality if you don't know what you're doing.
Do not enable "Single file mode"
For "Output File Mode" select "Force WAV file" -- this isn't always a good idea, but it works fine with the *.aifr files and it's the format you want anyways.
Click "OK" and close the preferences window.
Add all of the HW2 *.aifr song files to your playlist, disable repeating, and then double click the first file in the list to begin dumping the data into *.wav files. When the playing has finished (it reaches the end of the last song) you should have all of the HW2 song files converted into the *.wav format in whatever directory you specified when we configured the Disk Writer Plugin. Be sure to go back into "Preferences-->Plugins_Output" and reselect "DirectSound Output" so Winamp will play song files normally again.
After all of that, you may choose to leave the files in *.wav format or convert them to *.mp3 files. If you choose to convert to MP3, I recommend using dbPowerAmp -- it's a free, fast music conversion program. I think you can find it at www.download.com

Hope that helps!

[Koshiir Ra_NB]

ztch have you converted ALL of the music into wav or mp3? If so, could you send them to me in a zip file please?
sloppytoad2@yahoo.com
toads.rule@gmail.com
ToadyToad.NB@gmail.com

[Zatch]

Alright when I get a T3 connection I'll start uploading.

It's much quicker to just convert the files. The process is quite simple, as long as you follow the directions carefully.

[Koshiir Ra_NB]

um it wont work, how do u disable repeating?

[Koshiir Ra_NB]

argh i followed the directions EXACTLY as they were put and it still doesnt work! Why cant someone just send me a zip file at sloppytoad2@yahoo.com? I am a noob when it comes to this stuff, please could ya help a brotha out?

[Aryanne]

Why dont someone just burn the soundtrack to dvd and sell it on EBAY sheesh 2 years later and still no soundtrack.Relic.....
Anyways i had an extractor last night extracted the
music into aifr files didnt find the aifr winamp file til today.Now i cant find that extractor again and im stuck working with lua and fda files.......... :mad:

Jeremy Soule doesnt even do this to his music-and everyone knows who he is.

[Zatch]

Why did you bump this thread?

[adamstrange]

Ok what i'm going to do is to take the music from HW2 and bring up all the levels so that when it plays on your systems,it will be nice and load without any distortion.

I'll convert it to WMA so that the files are smaller but i'm going to keep the quality high.

I'll upload it to FilePlanet.

[Locutus]

*Ponders locking the bumped thread*

[Zatch]

Adam, why not just turn up the music volume in the Options menu and turn down the other volume sliders, then crank up your speakers' volume control?

[adamstrange]

Adam, why not just turn up the music volume in the Options menu and turn down the other volume sliders, then crank up your speakers' volume control? When you have a track NORMALIZED you are able to bring up all the levels of the sound file but without introducing any distortion.

So if your level for the game's music was set on,lets say 7,after the track is normalized and without changing the game's level,the track will now sound much louder as if the level is set on 10 or more.

I want to make the music available for players like ToadyToad_NB who are having a hard time messing about trying to convert the file format [Relic please take note :stick: ,Wav or Mp3 sound files next time...thank you].

Actually i have a Winamp 5 playlist setup for the game called HOMEWORLD SPACE...5.79GB of ambient,trance and tekno WMA files set on Random Order.

Some of the tracks i mixed myself useing SoundForge.
I even have the soundtrack to The Last Samurai on it and its just beautiful to listen to in the middle of huge battles.

Maybe i should make some House versions of the HW2 soundtracks :3dcool:

[Mikali]

Updated the information at the wiki (http://hw2.tproc.org/wiki/TutorialMusic2MP3).

[Zatch]

You didn't say normalized, originally, so please excuse my misunderstanding. It doesn't change the fact, though, that cranking the game volume won't introduce any distortion unless your speakers suck (just try it.) Good, powered speakers have built-in amplifiers, which just increase the amplitude of the generated sound-waves without introducing distortion (so long as the hardware can handle it.) Normalizing the songs is a bit overkill because the data is already there and any decent set of speakers (which, I assume the listener must have or they wouldn't be fiddling with maxing out the game volume) will take care of the amplification for you.

[heliothis]

Can someone be cool and just host the music files for download? Or just send me a copy. They can't be that big. I can't seem to get the big extractor working. Thanks.

[heliothis]

bump

[Zatch]

http://hw2ss.no-ip.org/hw2/soundtrack

All files are in *.mp3 format.

There's a *.zip file at the bottom of the page containing all of the songs, in case you'd rather download everything at once.

[heliothis]

You are the MAN!!!! Thanks a lot dude. :)