Mass Effect 2 Trying to change music in Afterlive...

[Kerandor]

Hi Folks,

 

i want to change the boring Afterlife-Musik with this track (for myself, becourse copyright law):

 

 

Maybe someone of your Modding-Pro´s are so kind to tell me, how to do this?

 

This track is in my view the best for the Afterlife...

 

Thanks very much for answers :thumbsup:

[ArJed]

I am curious about that too. After some research, I found out that editing music is quite complicated. Lets see what options we have:

Music and sound files are packed and stored in .pcc and .afc files. Almost all .pcc files contain audio files and all .afc are contain music and sound files.

AFC (Mass Effect Audio File Container) is an audio container format developed by Canadian video game development company BioWare for their Mass Effect science fiction video game series based on the Unreal 3 Engine.

Being a container format, an AFC file can contain one or multiple audio streams. The audio data stored in AFC files may represent either speech, background music and/or sound effects used in the game.

In its essence, an AFC file is just a regular OGG file with audio data encoded as RIFF WAVE via the WaveWorks Interactive Sound Engine (Wwise). The only thing that makes AFC files different from regular OGG files is the file header, which is slightly different.

AFC files usually have a sampling rate of about 32000Hz at a variable bit rate (VBR) ranging from 75 to about 105kbps. There are currently no desktop media players that provide AFC playback natively.

However, there is a good number of independently developed AFC conversion tools such as afc2ogg or the Gibbed Mass Effect 3 Audio Extractor, which allow users to easily convert AFC files to OGG and play them back in any OGG-compatible desktop media player.

PCC - File used by Mass Effect 2 and 3; may contain various game data, including models, textures, and rooms; commonly used to modify (or "mod") game content. PCC files are typically found in the BioGame\CookedPC directory within a Mass Effect 2 installation.

An example PCC file is BIOG_HMF_ARM_SHP_R.pcc, where "HMF" stands for a Human Female character. PCC files are similar to .UPK files.

https://fileinfo.com/extension/pcc

Pure tutorial:

[ME2]

UNPACK

Download afc2ogg extractor:

http://dotwhat.net/file/extension/afc/10913

(supports ME2 and ME3 .pcc and .afc files)

copy selected .pcc/.afc file from: Mass Effect 2\BioGame\CookedPC to any folder (as backup);

Open MassEffect3Extractor > select file type > select file to extract stuff from > select destination folder > UNPACK!

(.ogg files will be unpacked to folder with same name as source file)

note: if selected .pcc file dosen't contain audio files, then MassEffect3Extractor will be closed with error.

PACK

Unknown for this time. Most likely, .ogg files could be packed to .afc only by Wwise:

https://www.audiokinetic.com/downloads/

[ME3]

UNPACK/PACK (Replace)

Example: changing music for Purgatory bar:

ME3 Explorer > Soundplorer > File > Open pcc >

Mass Effect 3\BIOGame\CookedPCConsole > BioSnd_CitHub.pcc > mus_cithub_nightclub_lp_wav >

Transfer > Import from WAV > select mod music file > File > Save > Run Autotoc > Done!

Notes:

- Sounplorer doesn't support ME2 pcc files.

- After music file replacement, replaying it in Sounplorer will give you last played sound file in the game insted,

but replaced music will be played normally in game.

I assume, that music file that you want to replace, must have same length and bit rate as stock file.

Modders who succeeded in editing music files for ME3:

Better Cabin Music

https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect3/mods/206

ME1 and ME2 music in ME3 Purgatory Bar

https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect3/mods/319

OMEGA Afterlife bar music:

Wwise_OmgHub_Streaming.afc

Wwise_OmgHub_Streaming.002.ogg - Upper bar music (Saki Kaskas - Callista)

Wwise_OmgHub_Streaming.001.ogg - Lower bar music (Jesse James Allen - Lo Fi Epic)

Edited March 18, 2023 by ArJed