106 replies to this topic

[Erephine]

If you're anything like me, you think atmosphere is incredibly important to any good RPG, and music is incredibly important to atmosphere. If you add up these two facts you may reasonably find yourself incredibly annoyed that your atmosphere is marred by muddy 22.05kHz audio. Even more so if you happen to have the crystal clear soundtrack to said game on a CD nearby and it seems to be mocking you because you can either play or listen, but never comfortably both.

If you're anything like me, chances are you might decide one day to put your audio CD and game discs in a blender (of WeiDU make) and, flavoured with a pinch of frustration, push the button pondering the age old question. And chances are, you might enjoy the apple smoothie I have thus procured.



WHAT THIS IS:
This is a patch (along with content) to allow playback of higher quality, 44.1kHz music in Baldur's Gate II Shadows of Amn with Throne of Bhaal, Baldur's Gate I Tutu, Icewind Dale or Planescape: Torment (see below). The patch updates all .acm audio in the game. There are various other fixes, too! The current version of the mod supports properly patched installs of Baldur's Gate II Throne of Bhaal and Icewind Dale v1.4.2 and v.1.4.2, respectively. For Planescape:Torment, the patch was based on an English 4 disc copy with the PST fixes applied. Other versions are as-yet untested but might work (let me know). If the patch component fails, do not install the mod content. Doing so will cause improper playback of game music.

This is not the readme. That one is included with the downloads below. (the previous sentence was a hint)


WHY NOT IWDII:
If there's enough interest, a version for BG1/Tutu (likely) will follow shortly, a version for IWD maybe, and PST perhapppsssss


Download links:

Baldur's Gate II SoA/ToB
1pp_hq_music_II_130

Baldur's Gate Tutu/ToSC
1pp_hq_music_ToSC_110

Icewind Dale + HoW/TotLM
1pp_hq_music_IWD_100

Planescape: Torment
1pp_hq_music_PST_110


Please let me know any issues (crackly audio, bad looping, install issues, etc.) you may experience.



_{This is not the announcement.}

Edited by Erephine, 28 August 2012 - 02:18 AM.

[Daulmakan]

Another gem! Thank you, Erephine.

Count me as interested in having this for the other IE games, as well.

Good to see you back.


PS

_{This is not the announcement.}

Mystery ensues.

Edited by Daulmakan, 20 June 2011 - 12:09 AM.

[Eric P.]

Will this mod have any effect on AceAltMusic? I never run the game without that wonderful music mod

Thanks,
Eric

[Andrea C.]

Erephine, pure win is made of you!

[Erephine]

Will this mod have any effect on AceAltMusic? I never run the game without that wonderful music mod

Thanks,
Eric

Only on files that aren't replaced by that mod. (or is it a complete replacement?)

[Eric P.]

Will this mod have any effect on AceAltMusic? I never run the game without that wonderful music mod

Thanks,
Eric

Only on files that aren't replaced by that mod. (or is it a complete replacement?)

The ReadMe says "This mod will overwrite the music from major areas of SoA, including the Slums, Docks, Underdark, Brynnlaw, Temple of Helm, and more". So, order of installation for these two mods may be an issue.

- E

[Eric P.]

The issue I raised is moot, as this mod can't be installed on a Mac

[Edit] Well, you did say it is a patch, so maybe I should have taken that to mean that the mod patches the .exe file. I'll try to pay closer attention going forward. [/Edit]

- E

Edited by Eric P., 20 June 2011 - 07:23 AM.

[Erephine]

The ReadMe says "This mod will overwrite the music from major areas of SoA, including the Slums, Docks, Underdark, Brynnlaw, Temple of Helm, and more". So, order of installation for these two mods may be an issue.

- E

Suggested install order would then be:

• Install this mod first.
  
• Convert .acm files in the AceAltMusic install package (see readme for instructions on how to do this)
  
• Install AceAltMusic

[Zyraen]

Erephine, you are just AWESOME!

[Dakk]

Fantastic!
Would you consider it for BG1 too..?

[Erephine]

Okay, folks: We now have OS X support. An updated installer is linked in the first post (no change beyond added OS X support).

Thanks go to Eric P. for testing and providing feedback.

Fantastic!
Would you consider it for BG1 too..?

Not sure about BG1 by itself, but Tutu installs definitely.

[10th]

Not sure about BG1 by itself, but Tutu installs definitely.

BGT too?

10th

[Erephine]

I have never installed BGT, so I'm unfamiliar with how it works in terms of music.

If it uses BG1/BG2 music as-is, you should be able to use it with the downloads.

[Andrea C.]

_{This is not the announcement.}

I hadn't noticed this before! Erephine, if you keep throwing awesome at us, we'll be overwhelmed!

[Frein]

For some reason I get this odd drum beat during loading screens and when switching from inventory (etc) back to the game world screen. It's just one quick beat and I guess it could be an error sound of some kind but it really sounds like a drum to me. I can really notice the improvement in music quality, so good job on that.

As far as BGT goes, if you use the default settings, you'll only have BG2 music. I suspect the other settings (hybrid and BG1 only) might cause unexpected behaviour with this mod.

Edited by Frein, 29 June 2011 - 03:03 PM.

[Erephine]

Haven't noticed anything like that so I shall investigate

The main question is whether BGT reuses the same .mus files/folders. If it does, you should be able to replace them without any problems. I might make the area patching code optional to allow for situations like that (altered songlist reusing vanilla files/folders)

Edited by Erephine, 29 June 2011 - 03:57 PM.

[Frein]

Haven't noticed anything like that so I shall investigate

The main question is whether BGT reuses the same .mus files/folders. If it does, you should be able to replace them without any problems. I might make the area patching code optional to allow for situations like that (altered songlist reusing vanilla files/folders)

Now instead of a drum beat I get a quick trumpet blast. I'm now fairly sure it's trying to play town music but immediately interrupts the song. It may be an incompatibility issue with BGT or the BG1 NPC Project, which adds new banter music (this banter music was overwritten, at least).

I don't know how BGT implements music, so unfortunately I can't be of much help here.

Edited by Frein, 29 June 2011 - 04:16 PM.

[Erephine]

Okay, I can't seem to reproduce the issue or get any behaviour different from vanilla. It could be an issue with BGT but I can't think of anything that would cause an issue like you describe.

When loading a game, there is a split second of the game continuing the music currently playing after it stops (this happened with stock BGII as well) but definitely nothing when changing from inventory to the map or back.

Can anyone else reproduce this?

[Frein]

Okay, I can't seem to reproduce the issue or get any behaviour different from vanilla. It could be an issue with BGT but I can't think of anything that would cause an issue like you describe.

When loading a game, there is a split second of the game continuing the music currently playing after it stops (this happened with stock BGII as well) but definitely nothing when changing from inventory to the map or back.

Can anyone else reproduce this?

A closer look at my backup folder and the one copied from the download reveals some differences in file numbers. There are a bunch of new folders as well as two new .mus files. Is this intended?

The extra folders are: ATHN, BI, DR1 and OTHN.
The extra .mus files are: MX1602 and MX2202


Moving out the excess files seems to have fixed the drum beat at inventory screen but not the loading screen sound. Nevermind they're back. Something is wonky here.

Edited by Frein, 30 June 2011 - 07:24 AM.