Customising the sounds and music for Shogun

Customising the sounds and music for Shogun.

I wanted to customise the background music while playing Shogun.
All the sounds and music in Shogun are in wave file format.
Remember MP3's can become a fair size when converted to wave file format, 20 to 50 Meg is perfectly normal.

The other feature I wanted to customise was what the player hears when an order is given to a unit.
The important ones for me were 'retreats' and 'rallies'. While I was experimenting I also decided to change the 'charge' order.
I decided on Bugle calls (US army) for orders. If you have a quick search around the web you'll find plenty of sites that have bugle calls you can download.

Before you begin you'll need to select your music and sounds, and have a couple of small utilities handy.
Audio Converter for Windows 95/98/NT/2000 (http://www.freeturtles.com) (MP3 to wav)
Windows native sound recorder (sndrec32.exe) (editing wav's)
Windows Notepad - or equivalent.(editing table.cfg)

Music
I have an extensive collection of MP3's, but you can make your own using any of dozens of CD-audio to MP3 converters.
winfiles.com and softseek.com have large collections of freeware and shareware utilities.
Some of these utilities also convert to wave format, and some may also allow you to 'edit' the resulting wave files.

You'll need to convert your MP3's to wav files. (I used Audio Converter)
The music for Shogun is stored in Drive:\shogun\Sounds\Music

There is no table or config file for the music, so you'll have to rename your replacements to the names Shogun actually uses.
This means backing up the original tracks, just in case there is a problem, and renaming the tracks you've selected.
The length of the tracks you select seems to have no impact on Shogun. If the game decides it wants to begin playing a new track it will quite happily 'close' the current track and begin a new one.
Some of your selections may at first be too soft, I use Sound Recorder to boost or lower volume (the effects menu).

The music played during battles are the Battle, Tension, and Mobilise wave files.
Frontend.wav is the music you listen to while you are scrolling through the menus when you load Shogun.

I've changed my frontend music to a track from the Braveheart CD. (The Legend Spreads)
Most of my battle music I changed to various Scots and Irish Bagpipe music. Such as Amazing Grace.
(A web search will reveal an amazing variety of such music available for download)
Some of my battle music, especially the Tension tracks, are taken from my Braveheart CD.
The Battle of Falkirk is my favourite for Tension.

Battle Sound Events (Orders)
These are controlled by the table.cfg file, where all the sound events you hear during a battle are listed, the orders are located at the beginning of the file. If you want to try customising the actual battle sounds they're further down in the file.
All these sounds are in wave format.

The table.cfg file controls several other factors concerning the event sounds,
the only information i'm interested in is what sound is played for each event,
the physical location of that sound, and the volume level.
This file is easy to understand, simply open it in notepad.
Drive:\shogun\Sounds\Battle\table.cfg

Today we're going to look at editing some of the unit Orders.
Unit Orders:- Drive:\shogun\Sounds\Battle\Orders\ (Actual sound files)
The battlefield environment and combat sounds are in seperate folders.

I would recommend renaming your selected sound bite rather than editing the names in table.cfg, and as always backup the table.cfg file and the original sounds before you begin.

Generally there are several selections available to the computer under each heading, (ie:- 5 different sounds for rally),
I prefer to use the same sound bite for each.
(I'll have 5 copies of my selected rally event sound file and rename each, RALLY_1.wav, RALLY_2.wav...etc.)

Of course it is possible to put all your sound bites in a different folder which you create,
and edit the table.cfg file accordingly.
ie:-
Event ORDER_RALLY minDist 4 minPitch .8 maxPitch 1.2
folder sounds\battle\orders
RALLY_1 vol .5
To:-
Event ORDER_RALLY minDist 4 minPitch .8 maxPitch 1.2
folder sounds\battle\myorders
RALLY_1 vol .5
changing the location of the rally event sound from the orders subfolder to the myorders subfolder.
I keep custom folder names to 8 characters, I've not tested the impact of long folder names on Shogun.

If I think a sound is too soft, I will edit the volume of that sound in the table.cfg files.
ie:-
Event ORDER_RALLY minDist 4 minPitch .8 maxPitch 1.2
folder sounds\battle\orders
RALLY_1 vol .5
To:-
Event ORDER_RALLY minDist 4 minPitch .8 maxPitch 1.2
folder sounds\battle\orders
RALLY_1 vol .75
changing the volume of RALLY_1 from 50% to 75%. Where the vol value is omitted the sound is played at 100%

Should your sound files be too long, use Windows Native Sound Recorder (sndrec32.exe) to 'cut' the file down to size.
ie:- a file that is too long, where the 'piece' you want is at the beginning.
Simply open the file, play it until your selection has been heard,
pause the recorder and from the edit menu select 'delete after current position'. Then save it.

I haven't experimented with the minDist, probability, minPitch and maxPitch values, so I can't tell you what effects editing these values may have. Also I haven't edited the names of the sounds themselves within the table.cfg file.

Remember, backup everything, the table.cfg file, the original music and sounds,
and your own selected music sounds you are going to be editing or converting.

Most important of all:- Have Fun
Barocca.

While you're here go to Drive:\shogun\Sounds\Battle\Troops\
and listen to Dirty Harry in the kitchen,
lrg_musk_impacts1.wav!

Utilities
Audio Converter for Windows 95/98/NT/2000 (http://www.freeturtles.com)
Windows native sound recorder (sndrec32.exe)

Shogun Music
Drive:\shogun\Sounds\Music
The music for the campaign map and battles is found in this folder.
The music played during battles are the Battle, Tension, Mobilise, Win and Lose wavefiles.
Frontend.wav is the music you listen to while you are scrolling through the menus when you run shogun.

Battle Sound Events
Drive:\shogun\Sounds\Battle\table.cfg
The battlefield environment and combat sounds are in folders here too. But today i'm interested in unit orders.
Drive:\shogun\Sounds\Battle\Orders\ (Actual sound files)