The videos are problematic even on Win9x machines - and they're fatal on PowerVR.

The manual made note of the UnrealEd VisualBasic runtime dependency issue even.

Also tools like Umodel doesn't work with KHG which has me thinking that Microprose did something different with the .3d format that would break compatibility... and i'd rather see it ported to UT2004 😀

So no amount of hacking the scripts or anything or using a different codec for the videos will make it work? At least as long as it's not ported to a newer version of Unreal? Which is extremely difficult? 😜 I did manage to get my account working on the OldUnreal forums, at least.

I'm working on a KHG project which makes dynamic use of UMX music files (much like Unreal SP did) instead of the CD Audio tracks. Each CD track contains two songs, about two minutes or so of fast-paced orchestral Klingon music and then about a minute or so of quieter suspenseful themes. I always thought that this was strange and didn't work well with the pacing or atmosphere at all. So I'm separating the fast-paced tracks from the suspenseful ones and making them loop seamlessly by working with the audio data in a DAW, then I'm packaging them into UMX files and triggering them at appropriate times during the game by creating new Triggers and MusicEvents. My preliminary tests have been successful and it has really impacted the pacing of the game! The loop points aren't entirely seamless because of small timing discrepancies when looping in MODPlug Tracker, but it's close enough and most probably wouldn't notice it anyway. The goal is to get the game entirely independent of requiring the CD (or at least the CD tracks, however I've already hacked the windrv.dll file to remove the CD check for myself).

For example, in level two in the Klingon city where you have to break into the guarded compound, the orchestral music plays as normal (with the added benefit of seamless looping), but when you head down into the sewers underneath the city, the music changes to the quieter suspenseful theme. Then when you come back up from the sewer inside the building the music shifts back again to the klingon theme. There are a lot of ways I can think of to utilize these dynamic changes effectively throughout the game. Some levels could even start with the suspenseful theme first and shift to the fast-paced battle music later on when meeting large groups of enemies. It's been a fun project to work on. Encountered a few snags, but found workarounds.

I've changed the title of the thread since my questions are pretty much answered (for now) and in light of the reasons why I asked them.

Galaxy (I would assume that's what KHG uses since Deus Ex and Rune used it too) has this hilariously bad issue of ignoring tempo\speed commands, especially depending on how fast you're trying to set it. This easily ruins songs that rely on alternating the speed and\or tempo between two values during the course of the song. There's nothing you can do about this apart from binding Unreal to a much better module playback engine which isn't going to happen unless you somehow get some public headers or you're the god of reverse engineering.

Also if what I'm reading with how you're "De-CD'fying" the music, what you're doing is kinda... bad, you shouldn't use module formats that way, I was expecting actual tracked music based after the CD music probably using instrument samples that are derived or close to what you hear on the CD music. But making module files of essentially wav files with sampler chunk loop data in it is very inefficient and can lead to stupid problems during normal gameplay. (crashes, audio getting stuck in a stutter loop, etc)

If you're going to go the path of putting giant streams into module formats, make your patterns play the samples then go into a surrogate pattern that simply loops back to itself, make sure the samples are set to loop. That way you don't have to rely on the weird way OpenMPT tries to "predict" how big a pattern should be and how the tempo and speed should be set to accordingly to make it loop without the sample itself being set to looping.

Another fun bug with Galaxy is how it interprets Xxx panning commands, either they do exactly the opposite of what you intend or they somehow enable the surround bit on that channel and completely make it sound spacey and odd from that point on, Galaxy from my experience could only handle the S8x for panning but that command is from the aged ScreamTracker 3 where for reasons I never understood they limited the panning to values between 0-F, and this is on the Gravis Ultrasound!

You'd think specifying X80 would centre the channel but instead it somehow enables the surround bit and as a result makes the sound output as if it were coming from behind you...

eh, one game that did such a thing is Mobile Forces. Its UMX files are just bigass PCM tracks.

I was just stating the problems I've had with Galaxy when it came to UMX files with large WAV's as samples in them.

Another game that did (not entirely) same idea was Tactical Ops: War on Terror. The UMX files had segments of music that played sequentially, though what confuses me is, they go through the trouble splitting the music like that but they don't even bother just tracking the music like a "normal" person because most of that music sounded tracked to begin with...

Oh Unreal 2 did the same thing too, it used DirectMusic just to playback segments of ADPCM files.

KHR sounds like a more unstable game than Unreal ever was so just becareful how you try to get UMX based music working in it, too big of files might mess up the sound engine.

I've completed UMX-ifying the soundtrack and so far have not run into any problems in any of my playtests. The game isn't really unstable, that is there haven't been any crashes or anything, even before the UMX files. I'm still trying to implement dynamics with triggers and whatnot which is proving difficult for the effect I'm looking for.

I toyed with the idea of tracking new mods based on the original tracks. Besides the fact that it wouldn't sound exactly the same, and therefore not authentic, some of the sounds used would be impossible to reproduce unless I had the specific synth the composer used for the original recordings. The orchestral sections I could get by with, but the suspenseful tracks use a lot of unique synths and sound effects. I would enjoy the challenge, if I could get a hold of the samples somehow. If I run into problems I may yet take that route, though. But my initial plan was to just remedy the problem of requiring the CD (because it only plays from the first CD drive device). I wanted to honour the original tracks which are great.

Also, setting the samples to loop is a great idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that. I was struggling with setting proper loop points for certain tracks that didn't loop properly by creating unique commands for the last pattern and changing the tempo speeds....bah...testing that was annoying because you have to wait for the entire song to be done.

Really? I thought Unreal engine titles allow you to specify the exact letter the CD is supposed to be located on... unless they HARDCODED IT...

Must be. You can install the game from any drive and it will work, but it always looks for the CD audio on the first device (the drive letter of which comes before all other CD drives).

So after completing my task of transforming the CD Audio tracks into perfectly looping UMX files, I decided to go back and attempt to recreate one of the tracks as an actual proper tracked MOD. I gathered some samples from my libraries and used an existing MOD as a base. There are still some samples in there that I'm not happy with, and this song isn't completely copied yet, but it's a nice start I think. Though, it's much easier to recreate an orchestral song than it is to recreate some of the synth music from the game with all their unique sound effects. It'd be easier if I knew what equipment was used when recording the original score, but unfortunately I don't. The orchestral sounds are very similar to Roland/Edirol ones that I've heard/used, however. Either way, 30 MB down to 6.6MB a song IS a better trade-off. But recreating all the songs takes a LOT more time.

Here's the original and the work in progress of my recreation. It's an IT module so it'll play in Winamp or VLC or something. It will not play in WMP, obviously. The original MOD I'm working over was called "Distant Voyage", which is why it has that title. It's not the name of the song, though. 😀

Original Track
ReTracked MOD

Thoughts?

So I screwed up my KHG file system and had to start over. Everything's working again except for UnrealEd. I have no idea what I did to get it working previously. I put a note in the OP apparently about using the files from UnrealEdFix4 to solve the issue but there's only the one file (unrealed.exe) and when I overwrite it I still get the same wrong runtime dll error. I have another zip called ManualEditorFix but replacing those files doesn't work either. I realize this is a long shot but would anyone have any idea what I might have been doing with these files I'm about to mention?:

I discovered I have two folders with these files, one called "original" and another one called "patched". In the patched folder are all the same files as in ManualEditorFix and UnrealEdFix4 but all the extensions end with a "_" and they're smaller. I figured they must be patch files that need to be patched onto the original files. I have a vague memory of possibly doing this but I can't recall how. Anybody have any ideas? I really have no clue what I was doing. I really should document all these solutions I find because I can never remember how I did them after if I lose it all!

EDIT: Never mind, they were compressed files. The Expand command uncompresses them. Turns out these files somehow fix the editor. I don't remember where I got them, but I also don't care. 😀

Hello! Stumbled upon your thread and found it quite interesting (especially the dinamic music idea). I wonder if you still working on that? Never had the chance to finish the game, maybe that's it? 😀

Yeah, I wish to continue it, but I've hit a wall with development. There are some things I'd like to pull off but they won't really work in ancient UnrealEd. The latest Unreal Gold version can do them (I think), but KHG isn't upgraded for it. There was another guy working on updating all the Unreal scripts to support KHG and has made impressive progress, but he's only one man and has a life I'm sure.

Sorry for the necro, but for anyone interested you can follow any future progress made (any there may be) at the OldUnreal forums. I threw up a release of everything I have so far.

http://www.oldunreal.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.p … num=1388379423/