Now that I’m more or less comfortable with creating PC head hakpaks (thanks to the invaluable help of Malagant, as well as some old instructions by Lisa and advice by Proleric), the next step in customizing NWN to my personal preferences would be learning how to change or add to the voicesets and replace the default music.
Would anyone be willing to walk me through it or can you point me to a good tutorial?
Is there a limit to the number of voicesets NWN can display on character customization? Can you rename the buttons? E.g. would it be possible to have a button called “Imoen” there and then link the files from BG to it?
Do I actually have to replace the music files (in the C:\ game folder) or can they be overridden in-game by something I put in the Documents folder as well?
Are bmu files just renamed mp3s and are voicesets regular wav files, or do they need to adhere to some particular size limits, sample rates or similar?
Personally I’ve never done anything with music so others might have to chime in… but other than maybe some new file formats and I think music can now be in hak, little has changed there too…
Little trick for you. If you open an mp3 file with a plain text editor you can see all kinds of readable information. Now if you open a bmu file you will see that the only difference between classic bmu files and mp3s are the first 8 bytes of the bmu (IIRC “BMU V1.0” but don’t quote me). This was done to get around the patents on mp3 by Bioware. I do believe that for EE you can just use plain mp3s as long as you just change the extension to bmu (make a copy first before trying just in case). FWIW you can do a quick check for copywrite by opening BMUs/MP3s in a text editor too.
What I’m wondering is e.g. how to apply something like this. It seems in 1.69 you would have to make a backup copy of your game files stored in the installation folder and then overwrite the original files with the ones contained in the zip file (so not really an override, but a replacement). Since in EE all custom stuff is stored in the Documents folder and you are not meant to touch the installation folder, I wonder, if there is now some way to really override the default music, or whether you still have to go to the installation folder and replace the original files.
in nwn2 I had to change some of the opening music in the installation folder (couldn’t stand the blaring fanfare and replaced it with something super mellow /heh). If you do change something in installation, i suggest first renaming the original file and write a quick textfile with the same name that describes what ya did
Yeah, I replaced the SoZ fanfare too to the original theme. I’ve also replaced the main menu screen because I thought the SoZ one was ugly. Just as already mentioned, it’s just finding the correct music file you want and then renaming it to the one you wish to replace.
Just to clear a few things up. I believe @Olivier_Leroux was asking about voicesets. In NwN a voiceset is a set of things that are spoken as opposed to music which is a simpler proposition. BTW, not 100% sure but I seem to recall that there was a change for EE in that music files can now be stored in a hak instead of having to go in the Music folder. But then again maybe I’m wrong.
I asked about both. I guess I could have created two separate threads, but I thought both has to do with sound, so why not combine my questions. Sorry for the confusion!
Is that mainly for adding music to modules or also helpful for creating overrides?
Now that you and andgalf mentioned it, I remember I did that, too.
I replaced it with the Mask of Betrayer music, because it sounds a little bit like Mark Morgan’s Planescape: Torment soundtrack, which is much more to my liking. (I also changed the background to MotB).
Anyway, the reason why I was hoping you could create an override is because that way it would be easier to share with my friends when we play together, just like the other stuff I put together (portraits, heads, voicesets). Asking them to replace original files is much more complicated - and possibly offputting to them - then just sending them a zip file for the override folder. Then again, they haven’t played NWN yet, so who knows, maybe they wouldn’t even be bothered as much by the default music as I am.
I guess I could have created two separate threads, but I thought both has to do with sound, so why not combine my questions. Sorry for the confusion!
(I also changed the background to MotB).
