Well, assuming you want the music to work on a level-by-level basis (i.e. the same way it worked in Marathon 1), then the first thing I think you'll want to do is use Atque to split open the Marathon 2 Map file. What you're basically going to do is split open the contents, add a new text file that specifies what music track should play on what level, and then merge it all back together again.
Once you've done that, look inside the folder for the split map file. At the bottom you should see a sub-folder titled 'Resources'. Inside there you'll want to create a new folder called 'TEXT'. Inside there, you're going to create a .txt file called '00128.txt' - this is the file that will let you determine what music tracks will play on what levels.
Here's where a little bit of coding comes into play - this is basically the same as any other kind of MML coding, so it should be very simple. The first line you'll want to put in, at the very top of the file, is this:
This, I assume, tells the game what kind of parameters it should expect to deal with in the next part of the code.
Now, for each level, you'll add a new line of code that should look something like this:
Code: Select all
<level index="0">
<music file="Tracks/Momar.mp3"/>
</level>
It works like this: you tell it what level you're referring to with the "level index" part - remember that the first level (in this case, Waterloo Waterpark) is numbered as level 0, and every level after counts up from there.
Now, you specify what music file you want to play on that level. The example I give here is "Tracks/Momar.mp3". What this means is that the game will look in the same place it puts the rest of it's data (on Mac OS X, right-click Marathon 2, hit "Show Package Contents", look under Contents=>Resources=>DataFiles - this is where all of Marathon 2's basic contents are) for a folder called "Tracks", and inside that, it will look for a file called "Momar.mp3". It should be simple enough to swap this out for whatever you want.
Then, you put in "</level>" to tell it you've stopped setting parameters for that level and would like to move on to something else. Now you do the next level in the same fashion.
Finally, at the very bottom of the file, you put "</marathon_levels>" to end the code.
Here's a full example of such a file, and the one that I use in my own musical version of Marathon 2's Map:
- 00128.txt.zip
- Example text file for you to play around with.
- (965 Bytes) Downloaded 301 times
If you want, I can also email my "Tracks" folder to you, with all of the music I use in the above file inside - I couldn't attach it here because the compressed version takes up 78mb of space, and you can only attach files that are 2mb or less to a Pfhorums post.
Sorry if this wasn't the best-worded post ever - trying to mix code and prose in a clear and succinct way without spending an hour writing it is a surprisingly difficult task!
I apologize if this is the wrong section but wasn't sure where else to ask. I'm new to these forums and a bit new to the Marathon franchise in general, I just finished playing the first game of the trilogy and look forward to playing the second chapter now, however I have a question. I know Marathon 2 never had an unofficial soundtrack, but through a bit of google searching I stumbled upon a fan made soundtrack meant to be used with the "Aleph One Special Edition of Marathon 2". Now, I'm not sure whether this refers to the standard marathon 2 running under aleph one or what, but the file contained a bunch of .mp3 files which do not appear to be compatible with Aleph One (as far as I know anyway). I found another link, http://simplici7y.com/items/marathon-2- ... undtrack-3, which is apparently bundled with an edited map file that allows the soundtrack to play seamlessly throughout the levels, just like in Marathon 1. There's just one problem, in that the download link for that has been dead for a long time now apparently and I can find nowhere else to get it.
