Soldat music

[Taehl]

I know that Soldat uses two Impulse Tracker (.it) songs and one Fast Tracker (.xm) song, and am very familiar with both formats. But whenever I try to replace the default Soldat songs (Gore, Necromancide, and Bloody Soil) with new ones, Soldat gives me errors... What's wrong? Is it just not possible to make a mod with new music?

[Evil-Ville]

Yeah it is. What are you trying to make the music with? If you are using modplug tracker then all I can tell you is to get a better tracker. Normal XM files can't have stereo samples in them but modplug allows them anyways. Same with the channel limit, the real maximum for XM is 32 but modplug allows 64. There's probably other things too.

[Taehl]

I do use ModPlug to compose, yes, but I'm trying to use songs made by others that were actually made with other applications (for instance, I'd like to convert a UT song or two, which is easy enough, since it's practically just an .it... Or does ModPlug mess up a song just by opening it and saving it?).

What would you recommend over ModPlug?

[Evil-Ville]

Milkytracker is great for xms but I am not sure about trackers that support it. (other than impulse tracker of course) Also there's something about the files used in UT (and Deus Ex) that makes them a bit incompatible, can't quite remember what

[Taehl]

If I give the songs in question to you, would you be able to look at them and tell me what Soldat isn't liking so much?

Also, I looked at the ModPlug Tracker, and found that it'd let you use only 32 channels for an xm (and I don't have any stereo samples lying around to test if it'd let me use it), which you say is correct... Perhaps you used an old version? I'm using OpenMPT v1.17RC2.

[Evil-Ville]

Yeah probably, haven't used modplug for ages. And no I probably couldn't, as I said I don't really remember what's wrong with the files, I just overheard some programmers talking about it.

[Taehl]

I just can't find what's so wrong with the songs... The only unusual thing I see is that the two .it songs have position jumps at the end... And those shouldn't be a problem, I'd think...

Oh, well, I'll compare them to the normal Soldat songs some more until I find the difference. Thanks for the help.

[numgun]

Heeey?! how do you change .wav files in .it or .xm files?

[Taehl]

Well, there's an easy, bad, lazy way, and a harder, longer, better way...

The fast and dirty way would be to use the entire song as a sample, and have the tracker simply play the song once on the right pitch. It'd be quick, it'd sound exactly like your wav, but the song would be a rediculous size (especially for a .xm or .it, which have been known to hold high-quality songs over five minutes long in less than one megabyte.)

The good way would be to remake the song completely in .it or .xm (which wouldn't be hard so much as kinda tedious). This has the advantages of allowing the song to be as small as it should be, letting you remix the song /very/ easily if you want to, and generally not looking lazy-ass.

If you need elaboration on either area, talk to me on AIM (my name's Sherimital).

[numgun]

I took the easy way and my song sounded like the whole 1 min was played in 2 secs! it was horrible. : X

I only have MSN messenger. so I cant talk by AIM.

[Taehl]

Oh? Fine. I use Trillian, which lets me talk to MSN, AIM, Y!, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, and a bunch of others I don't remember.

I've added you to my list. If I see you online, I'll attempt to help you figure out how to fix your song up the quick 'n dirty way.