Music modding

[ConjurerDragon]

In my current game I wanted to add some music files to my own game.

Following the instructions of the "For the Music!" mod I added several of my CD´s contents into the music folder and the names of the files to country tags or centuries.

Most worked just fine (e.g. Over the hills and far away play in both in 17-ENG.txt and 18-GBR.txt).

A few refuse to work. I added those to default.txt to test them one by one if they play and all of them stay silent.

My current default.txt contains

BenPodeSantaMaria --> solved by MichaelM
Kaiserhymne
Narrenschiff
02 - Tyskland --> FtG generally can´t play .m4a files


The last one, 02 - Tyskland is from a CD with national anthems and is a .m4a file instead of the usual .mp3 files so I guess FtG does not supprt the .m4a format?

The first 3 are all .mp3 files.

BenPodeSantaMaria is from Portals of Grace (Azam Ail) and strangely is the only from that CD that refuses to play in FtG.

 

[MichaelM]

Good news: I can reproduce your problem. None of these three tracks (excluding the .m4a which as you rightly guessed isn't supported) will play in FTG on my system, though other media players can play them fine.

Bad news: I don't know why. I have never had to mess with FTG's audio code before, so I don't understand it very well.

Slightly better news: I've done some debugging and found that loading any of these files fails with the VFW_E_NO_TRANSPORT error code, which is something to go on. Still debugging.

 

[MichaelM]

The problem is that the files have too much metadata for the FTG song-playing code to be able to skip it and find the audio. There is a way to patch the code to play these songs, but the API requires Windows Media components that I don't know if I can rely on all users having installed.

If the album cover images are removed from the metadata of those MP3 files, FTG can play all three with no trouble.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

The problem is that the files have too much metadata for the FTG song-playing code to be able to skip it and find the audio. There is a way to patch the code to play these songs, but the API requires Windows Media components that I don't know if I can rely on all users having installed.

If the album cover images are removed from the metadata of those MP3 files, FTG can play all three with no trouble.

Strange. Ben pode Santa Maria is half the size of the other songs from Portals of Grace that do work (5 to 10 MB).

How does one perform an autopsy on a .mp3 file to remove metadata? If that is possible for an amateur without expert tools.

 

[MichaelM]

Strange. Ben pode Santa Maria is half the size of the other songs from Portals of Grace that do work (5 to 10 MB).

How does one perform an autopsy on a .mp3 file to remove metadata? If that is possible for an amateur without expert tools.

It has nothing to do with the size of the song itself. The image is maybe a few hundred kilobytes, but it's enough for the game to choke on it.

I used MP3Tag to make the test edits.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

I just tried to remove all tags with that tool from the mp3 files that did not start - no change...
e.g. BenPodeSantaMaria still stays silent in FtG

 

[MichaelM]

I just tried to remove all tags with that tool from the mp3 files that did not start - no change...
e.g. BenPodeSantaMaria still stays silent in FtG

Does this one work? It works for me.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Does this one work? It works for me.

No. I unzipped it into the /Music subfolder and put it´s name in default.txt as the only song but FtG remained silent when started.

 

[MichaelM]

No. I unzipped it into the /Music subfolder and put it´s name in default.txt as the only song but FtG remained silent when started.

Did you copy the title exactly right? There's a space in the name that tripped me up the first time I tried it.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Did you copy the title exactly right? There's a space in the name that tripped me up the first time I tried it.

I´m just feeling a little dumb right now...

Yes, you are completely right. I forgot the space between Santa and Maria. Added the space in default.txt and the song plays perfectly. Thank you!