[Suggestion] Customizable soundtrack

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

Okay, first off, my apologies if this has already been proposed - I did take a look around, but I didn't see anything related to the idea I had.

Second, the idea:

While the soundtrack for the game is very good, there are people out there who might not like it (or who might want to use their favorite music for the ingame soundtrack just as a change of pace). Thus, I was thinking that perhaps it might be possible to create a system for letting the players change the soundtrack of the game by themselves.

I was thinking of something fairly simple - a section of the Options menu (possibly a subsection of the Sound section) where you could set up a custom ingame soundtrack using music that's already on your computer, and assign different music to different events (e.g.: a fast-paced track for when your aircraft are dogfighting UFOs, a calmer track for when you're waiting for alien activity in Geoscape mode, a fairly low-key - but tense - track for when you're defending one of your bases from alien retaliation attacks, et cetera).

I dunno, it may not be feasible - but it would be cool.

[Destructavator]

This is almost exactly the same idea I proposed myself a while back, twice, being able to change the style/genre of music to suit the player.

I'm glad to see that someone else agrees on such a concept, I haven't seen many games do this and I think it would be a great idea.

We already have a variety of soundtracks we could start categorizing.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

I must have missed that in my search, Destructavator.

(But just to be clear, I'm not simply talking about using variant soundtracks that are installed with the game - though that was an angle I hadn't really considered. I was thinking more along the lines of taking music you already had - say, in the My Music folder on WinXP+ - and assigning that to in-game events. So, for example, one person might have Judas Priest's "You Got Another Thing Coming" as his base-defense music, while someone else might have b001e's "Thanks For Playing (With U.S.)", and a third might have Frank Klepacki's "Defend The Base".)

[Destructavator]

Right, I understand what you're suggesting, which is why I said "almost."  Both ideas actually sound good to me, now that I think about it, although implementing your version would mean the player would have to convert their music to either OGG or WAV files (the game currently doesn't play MP3).  There are free utilities that can convert sound files like that, and some players might not want to go through that effort but I still think its a nice idea.

If both ideas were implemented, that would be really nice, although it would require more coding work of course.

[Destructavator]

Actually, this can already be done (both versions) as a mod - anyone can un-zip the music pk3 file, replace the music files with OGGs of their own, re-zip it back up, and update the .ufo music script file.  It just means a little more work for the player and knowing how the game reads the data files (but doesn't require programming).

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

Well, I'll have to look into that (once I can figure out which section of the script to tweak, that is!)

Although, that does give me an idea - a program that'd make it fairly easy to mod the soundtrack, as sort of an auxiliary item for the project.

(Heh, what can I say? I'm full of crazy ideas!)

[joe davis]

Nice idea.  Is there anywhere I can find reference on the method of altering the above files, like where to find them, and how to update the .ufo music script file?  Also, is it necessary for any of the files to be in a .wav or .ogg format or well either do?  I guess I could replace .ogg with .ogg and .wav with .wav.  I would like to mention that I love the music, it is great, but I feel it is too action packed for a turn based game.  I know this is my opinion and my preference, but sounds like your idea is based on that understanding.

[Destructavator]

To open up the music pk3, just right-click if you have 7zip installed and open the archive.  If you don't have 7-zip you can rename the pk3 to have a .zip extension instead and open it with standard Windows XP or later built-in .zip manager.

To tell the game what filenames of soundtracks in the pk3 to look for and play at specific times in the game, open up the "0ufos.pk3" file (same procedure) and look for the music.ufo file.  That .ufo file can be opened with any text-editor, and it is in plain English, just type in the filenames of the new tracks and save it.

It's that easy.   

[Sarin]

Even easier way, do it like me.

Turn off ingame music and use Winamp.