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Some people like to turn the
music volume down or listen to their own music while they play games. I myself love game
music however, and think especially if it is used properly can really make a difference in
the experiance you have with the game, and the overall mood and feel to it. Of course
since you have come to this tutorial yourself, I probably need not get into this
discussion. You want to add music to your level and I shall tell you how. Your first way to give your level music is quite easy. It involves a
little section in the Level Properties... From the top menu drop down to Level Properties
(or hit F6).
And very simply, all you have to do is open the Audio section
of Level Properties and this is where you give your level music. You enter the music file
that plays into the Song entry. But what do you enter? This is where you use the Music
section of the browser (right side of the editor unless you've moved it). You select a
song in the music browser, then in the song line of the level properties, click
"Use", and it will use the selected song.
Loading Music, Custom Music
In the music browser, use the Load button and you can load
UMX files, the files that Unreal songs are stored in. How do you use custom music? Hit the
Import button and load some MOD music. After you load a song you need to save it as a UMX
before you use it in your level to avoid problems. You don't have any MOD music? You, my
friend, need to read up about MOD music in the About MOD Music tutorial, which tells about what it is, where you can
find it, why it kicks ass, and more.
And now?
Whatever UMX file is specified in the Song field of Level
Properties will play when your level starts up, thats all there is to it. But what does
SongSection mean? MOD music is divided down into sections of notes, or patterns. If you
listen to a MOD in a player like Modplug player you can see what pattern the song is on,
and how many patterns it has. Whatever number you enter in this field is where the song
will start playing from, as 0 would be from the beginning. You could make a song start
halfway through if you wanted to. Another thing with MOD music is that multiple songs can
actually be saved in one file by using tricks of skipping patterns and looping back to
specific points (just know that MODs can have multi-songs). The pattern to start on
depends on how the MOD was made. The music that comes with Unreal for instance is set up
to where the first patterns all skip to their song, so the first song would be songsection
0, the second one would be songsection 1, etc... Other MODs, like the music for the 3D
Mark benchmark are done sequential, without skipping tricks.. Like the second song is
after the whole first song (First song = section 0, second song = section 9, third =
section 24). I might just be confusing you with this, just play the song in a MOD player
and see where you want to start (and most all files will not be multi-song, unless they
were made for such purposes as games).
CD Track
With that jibber jabber aside, there is also the CD Track
field. The only time you would use this would be if you had an addon with actual CD music
(which I would doubt you have). This is quite simple, it will play whatever CD track you
specify. It defaults to 255, a track which no CD would imaginably have, hence it won't
play anything. On a mischievous note, maybe you could make it play a random CD track to
piss anyone off who was listening to a CD instead of the MOD music you have for your level
:)
And that is all for the basic way of giving your level music.
Now on to the more advanced stuff, dynamic music :) |
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