adding new background music

[Mace]

I've searched for this topic here as surely it's been brought up, but found nothing...

I'd like to add some songs to the background music. It is NOT such a simple matter as adding an mp3 file to your "/assets/whatever the name of the background music dir is". I've already tried that, and it didn't work for me.

I think you need to modify an XML file. If it's fairly obvious, I'm sure I'll discover which one soon enough. Is that all there is to it?

[Calanor]

Well, there are two ways you could do this.

1. (Not recommended) Select a music folder in the Options/Audio window in-game. Note that you will have to enter the path manually or copy & paste it from the browser window. However, this will mess up your Options window (Audio and Others will become buggy) and as this change is saved to your profile, you won't be able to get rid of the bug, unless you restore the entire profile. Besides, this approach isn't that exciting even if it was working properly, as you'd have the same kind of music throughout the game, regardless of era.

2. (Much better) Check out "Assets\XML\Audio\AudioDefines.XML" - you'll find a number of entries there that define what tracks are to be played during different eras (and the opening menu etc). Create a mod using a modified version of this file and also create the folder "Assets\Sounds\Soundtrack\" (for instance) in that mod folder and drop your tracks into it - this will allow you to replace the music without messing with the standard folders. Note however that Civ does not like spaces in filenames, so make sure that your MP3s do not include any.

[Mace]

Originally posted by Calanor
2. (Much better) Check out "Assets\XML\Audio\AudioDefines.XML" - you'll find a number of entries there that define what tracks are to be played during different eras (and the opening menu etc). Create a mod using a modified version of this file and also create the folder "Assets\Sounds\Soundtrack\" (for instance) in that mod folder and drop your tracks into it - this will allow you to replace the music without messing with the standard folders.

This is the method that I was attempting to use, and that is the XML file I looked at.

Does the file have to be an MP3? Or can it be a .wma, for example?

[Calanor]

I tried it with an MP3 and that worked just fine - don't know whether or not a *.wma would work, but I kind of doubt it really.

[Mace]

I got it working last night...just edited AudioDefines.xml by putting some new tags in to point to my new .mp3's, and they played just fine. Thanks to Calanor of Uppsala, Sweden...that's a country I should visit some day.

[Calanor]

No problem, glad that I could be of help

[Kassiopeia]

I wanted to keep the old soundtrack but just augment it with new ones, so I dropped the new ones with names like HandelSarabande.mp3 into the approriate era folder and then made new entires for them in the AudioDefines.xml file. Yet now I can't hear anything in the Classical age and the new tracks will not play in any other age.

[Kassiopeia]

And apparently all the eras have been mixed up, Classical music plays in the Medieval, Medieval in the Renaissance, Renaissance in the Industrial, and Industrial in the Modern. I only added new tags for the songs, how did I manage to mess the whole thing up?