jimmycalhoun Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 (edited) Seems to be a lot of confusion on replacing/adding music in Skyrim using the creation kit. If there's a post out there already covering this, I apoligize. If not then... Good news, FORGET ABOUT THE .XWM FORMAT. You can add all your music to the game as wav files. In fact, the creation kit only allows you to add new music tracks in the .wav format. I didn't delve much into changing the music pre-CK but it seemed like it relied on naming files in a specific way to effectively override what was in the bsa. With the method I'm using, you can name your files whatever you want. For organizational purposes put the files in "data/music/". I go one step further and create my own plugin folder with folders for explore, battle, dungeon, etc... To get started you will want to convert all your desired audio files to the wav format. I use a windows program called dbpoweramp. Some people will complain about transcoding an mp3 to wav, but it's not a big deal for something like this. If you really feel strongly enough about the quality loss that your ears likely aren't able to discern than re-rip that album or redownload it in flac and start from there. I've been using the lord of the rings soundtracks and transcoding mp3 (v0) to wav and the quality is fine. Once you get all your files converted, fire up the buggy Creation Kit. I say buggy because it crashes on me frequently as I've seen it does for a lot of other people as well. So save often! You will want to know the basics of using the creation kit and navigating through the object window to be able to do this. I recommend you read through this tutorial first: http://www.creationkit.com/Category:Getting_Started. Once you've loaded your data in the creation kit and have saved to create your plugin, navigate to the Audio section in the Object Window. Expand Audio and notice Music Track and Music Type. For simple music additions/replacements you will only have to deal with these two areas. After expanding audio, click on Music Track. This is where single tracks, silent tracks, and pallete tracks are defined, and there's a ton of options here. To keep things simple I'm just going to focus on single tracks. Right click anywhere in the list of Music Tracks and click "New". This will open the edit Music Track dialogue. You will give your track a unique id. I use the naming convention modname_MUS followed by Explore, Dungeon, Etc, and then something to specify what the track actually is. For example I added the track, The Shire from the Fellowship soundtrack and named it AHS_MUSExploreTheShire. Next set the track type to single track and click the Choose File button to select your wav file. If you created the music folder in the correct location the path should already be set to that folder, so navigate to the file and click ok. I'm not going into detail on the other options, so if you want to know more then read this wiki article: http://www.creationkit.com/Music_Track So you now have a new track ready to be used in Skyrim. But how does the game know when you want this track to play. Next, click on the Music Type section and here you will see all of the currently defined "playlists" for tracks in the game. You might have asked yourself already, why in the hell did Todd Howard take away our ability to just drop in mp3 files willy nilly? Music Types are why. Music types allow you to setup simple or complicated playlists of tracks that are associated with locations in game. Some of these you can guess. MUSDungeon is probably a playlist that plays when you enter a dungeon. The explore music types seem to be specific to certain regions. I'll leave it you to play around and explore the other Music Types. For now, edit the music type "MUSExploreForestPine" and again if you want a full description of the fields in this dialogue check the wiki article: http://www.creationkit.com/Music_Type . Notice the list of music tracks. It looks as though these are in a specific order, as if someone orchestrated the music experience. I like to think that's exactly what Bethesda was doing and why its a far superior method than just dropping a butt load of mp3 files in a directory. You can control fade time, silence between tracks, randomization, or order tracks are to be played in. Right click anywhere in the list of tracks and click "New". Use the filter or scroll down to your newly added music track and click OK. BOOM you're new track is now in the queue for this particular music type. Save your work, enable your plugin, and you are now ready to hear your new track/s in Skyrim. Remember the music type is a playlist of tracks with simple or complicated logic. Some tracks have specific conditions as to when they play, so pay attention to these things. If you want to test out this method to make sure its working for you, go to the town test music type, remove all of the existing tracks, and only add yours. Make sure your track doesn't have any conditions associated with it. When in game just travel to the nearest town and you will hear your custom track. If you want to know what locations a music type is used in than right click on the music type and click "Use Info". The top list will give you the Id's for all the region's and cells that subscribe to this music type. I noticed most objects had their music set to Default, but I don't know where that's defined, so for myself i plan on just editing existing music types to get my music in the game, but I'll update this as I find out more. To me this really is a far superior music experience and offers a lot more options. The trade off obviously is the complexity, but if you want to screw around with converting files to xwm and naming them exactly right then be my guest. This has a bit of a learning curve but is the best practice in my opinion. Good luck! EDIT:It's been reported that many people trying this method are getting a CTD once the game tries to start playing their custom tracks. If you try this method please post whether or not it worked for you. Edited February 13, 2012 by jimmycalhoun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabbit1251 Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 This looks like a very helpful guide. For one I didn't know that you could edit music soundtracks in with the Creation Kit. I look forward to giving it a try sometime. Rabbit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alasdairhurst Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 As per another thread, i have been doing exactly this and yet get crashes when my wav plays. Just a thought as i'm typing this, my wav's may be too large so i will reduce them and see what happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmycalhoun Posted February 11, 2012 Author Share Posted February 11, 2012 As per another thread, i have been doing exactly this and yet get crashes when my wav plays. Just a thought as i'm typing this, my wav's may be too large so i will reduce them and see what happens. Yeah not sure on a file size limit. I haven't tried anything crazy yet. How big is your file? Probably an unnecessary question, but your audio files play fine in something like winamp right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velintien Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 I too am having this problem. The file plays fine in winamp, itunes, windows media player, and VLC. I've tried converting it with two different programs as well. I set it in several playlists, 1 playlist, etc. many different combinations and I just can't get it to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmycalhoun Posted February 12, 2012 Author Share Posted February 12, 2012 (edited) I too am having this problem. The file plays fine in winamp, itunes, windows media player, and VLC. I've tried converting it with two different programs as well. I set it in several playlists, 1 playlist, etc. many different combinations and I just can't get it to work. Can you post some screenshots of everything you changed in your plugin? The music track settings and the music type settings? Edited February 12, 2012 by jimmycalhoun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmycalhoun Posted February 12, 2012 Author Share Posted February 12, 2012 I too am having this problem. The file plays fine in winamp, itunes, windows media player, and VLC. I've tried converting it with two different programs as well. I set it in several playlists, 1 playlist, etc. many different combinations and I just can't get it to work. Also, are you experiencing the same behavior? Once it gets to your tracks CTD? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velintien Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 Once it gets to your tracks CTD?Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmycalhoun Posted February 12, 2012 Author Share Posted February 12, 2012 Ok then I am guessing its an issue with the files. Either something wrong with the conversion or trouble finding the files. Is there an windows event log for when the game crashes? If so can you paste the details? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velintien Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 (edited) no event log, it just closes. what are the 'cue points' used for? because I haven't set those. Edited February 12, 2012 by Velintien Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts