Ask the Experts / Custom Music?!

Hey everyone,

So I'm in the process of creating my 2 custom songs that I want to insert into the game. And than I read a post by someone on another site that said you can actually record OVER some songs in RCT2 (one of which being the Pirates song) and replace it with a song that you want! Does anyone know how to do this? I have the tutorial for creating custom music right here:
http://rcttutorials....t.com/misc2.htm
But that doesn't tell you how to record OVER a song, but just how to create a NEW custom song. Does anyone know how to do this?

Also, is it true that there is no limit (essentially) to how long your custom song can be?

THANKS!

Even if it were possible, I don't recommend recording over a song. Messing with the default data in RCT folders often leads to error trappers or the game not starting.

It's been done, for example would be the custom carousel music that that replaces the default one:like this one.


Edit: From the site--"The following music selections were digitized in PCM format, at 22,050 Hz, 8 bit, mono, and have a slightly compressed quality to the tone. Recording in 8 bit reduced the file sizes by half and was a worthy compromise. While the original RollerCoaster Tycoon dat files were recorded in 16 bit, the overall tone quality of the new dats are, all things considered, superior."

So basically,they are just new files completely, but they have to be converted into Dat files in order to make it work.

Right, on the website the recommend saving the actual default music in case you mess up or it doesn't work, so you can just re-insert the original pirates music.

The problem I'm having is, where do you find the actual "data song files"? I'm looking in the data folder, and all i have is things like "css1", "css2", "css3", etc... And then there is "tut640", "tut640c", etc... Which one's are the songs? lol

Pirate is css44

Edit: now you have me wondering if it is all possible too. I'm going to try it out myself

lol sounds good! But do you know how to record over a song? The tutorial that I posted only shows how to create a NEW custom song, not record over a pre-existing one.

Also, how did you find out which one was the pirates song? lol

Here's my idea how to get it to work. Seeing as the posted link says it is a new file completely, I just need to find a converter to make a new WAV file into a data file. I doubt that will work. Or of course, you take the DAT file and take into a music editor and fix it that way.

Most of the dats in the Data folder can be changed. I changed the opening setting to windows Media player in order to find it.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean hah, you seem much more experienced lol.

Let me know how it turns out, maybe you can post a small tutorial afterwords! I'm going to work on just trying to get my first new custom song. Two more questions however..

-Is it true that there isn't any maximal length the custom song can have? (i.e. I heard they can be 40+ minute songs)
-When you put a new custom song in the game, does the game automatically loop it? Or does the date file itself have to actually loop?

1. I'm not sure about length, but I have converted 10 minute songs and they work fine as well. Although they are a pain to reduce in size, if you were to send it for others to use.
2. The game automatically loops the song for you

1) You need to reduce the size(not length) of the song just to send it to someone?? Weird
2) Awesome!

Did you figure it out?

I'm not saying you have to reduce the file size, but I recommend it to make download times faster.

Ah, got it.

Did you figure out how to do it?

Did anyone ever figure out how to convert a WAV file into a DAT file so that you can replace "pirates style"(css44) with a different custom song (allowing you 3 custom songs)?

Have you tried to Google it?

^ Fuck off if you can't contribute to a topic.

IceKnight, you might want to send Levis a personal message about this, he knows a lot of this because he experimented with it during the development of RCTModified.

Thanks Cena, I'll give it a shot

I found these two sites that say something about it:

1) http://forums.rctspa...opic=19422&st=0
2) http://micechat.com/...usic-files.html

Now the first site just suggests that you simply rename your custom audio file with the one you want to replace (for example, I want to replace css41 [organ music], so I simply take my audio file [Haunted Mansion Music] and name IT css41, and that should take care of it). However, this doesn't work. I've tried naming it the same, and the game doesn't pick it up. I've tried taking out the original css41, but of course the game wont load. Moreover, it seems too simplistic. All the css files are .dat files, while anything that you would replace it with are .wav files...

The second site suggests that you somehow "record over" the original css41(pirates song that I want to replace) with the custom music that you want, (just make sure they are the same length). But how would you go about that? Does anyone have any experience with this?

You are almost there. To convert a wav to dat just change the extension. So the filenames says css44.wav and you change it to css44.dat normally Windows doesnt show the extensions. Google to find out how to show them. The rest is just the same as a custom song.

Do you have any idea why you can't change some songs, Levis? This method works perfectly for some songs, like the Pirates one, but with other songs, like the western one, rct simply refuses to load. Is it because there's other essential data in those files? But then it seems weird that you can just open them as WAVs...

Edit: Apparently, you can change them, but they have to be exactly the same length or size. Maybe rct does some kind of integrity check and refuses to load if the size of some files isn't correct?

Awesome Levis, that did it. I replaced the 5:16 css41 organ music with a 5:16 clip of the Haunted Mansion music from D-land. What I was doing was changing the file name to read "css41.dat". File name ≠ file extension hah. Feel stupid, but it worked! If anyone wants the 5:16 clip for the Haunted Mansion let me know, took a couple hours to edit it so I got all the best parts of the song in there
Thanks again Levis!