Home For Builders Adding Custom Music: BMU Files

Adding Custom Music: BMU Files

Intended Audience:      [Printer Friendly Version]
By Derek French

This tutorial will show you the steps needed to add custom music into your module that can then be selected in the toolset as Battle, Day, or Night Music.

Steps for Adding Music

The process we will use is as follows:

1. Adding the BMU (BioWare Music Unit) file to your "music" directory
2. Editing the "ambientmusic.2da"
3. Adding the "ambientmusic.2da" to a Hak Pak

 

Adding the BMU

Getting custom music into Neverwinter Nights involves adding your BMU (BioWare Music Unit) file to your "music" directory and editing the "ambientmusic.2da". For this example, we are just duplicating the Chapter 1 Theme music file (mus_theme_chap1.bmu) and calling it "mus_my_mod_theme.bmu".

1. Put your .bmu file in the "music" directory where you have installed Neverwinter Nights (The default location is "C: \NeverwinterNights \NWN \music"). File naming is critical for BMUs, so your file must:

• be no longer than 16 characters before the ".bmu" extension, as it is a resource name
• be all lowercase, including the extension
• start with "mus_bat_" for battle music, "mus_" for all others

 

Editing ambientmusic.2da

2. Copy the "ambientmusic.2da" file out of the "source" directory where you have installed Neverwinter Nights (The default location is "C: \NeverwinterNights \NWN \source").

3. Add a new line to the end of "ambientmusic.2da" with you favorite text editor. Here is a sample showing the last two lines, and then our new line 57 added:

 

	Description	Resource	Stinger1	Stinger2	Stinger3	DisplayName
0	61901	****	****	****	****	****
.	.	.	.	.	.	.
.	.	.	.	.	.	.
.	.	.	.	.	.	.
55	66882	mus_theme_morag	****	****	****	****
56	67545	mus_tavern4	****	****	****	****
57	****	mus_my_mod_theme	****	****	****	"My Module Theme"

 

Here is a screenshot of "ambientmusic.2da" with the above edits:

If you have version 1.24 or earlier of Neverwinter Nights, you won't have the last column of "DisplayName". In that case your BMU file name will appear as "mus_my_mod_theme" in the Toolset. In 1.25 and later, the Toolset will display "My Module Theme".

 

Creating the Hak Pak

4a. If you already have a Hak Pak for your module, then you will need to add this newly edited "ambientmusic.2da" file to it.

4b. If you don't have a Hak Pak for your module, create a new one, and add this newly edited "ambientmusic.2da" file to it. (Note: you can read more on creating and using Hak Paks in this previous sound tutorial) 5. Open your module in the Toolset.

6. If you have just created this new Hak Pak, attach it to your module on the 'Advanced' tab of the 'Module Properties' dialog in the Toolset.

7. At this point, you will be able to select this new music from the Audio tab of the Area Properties dialog.

8. Play your module and groove to the new beat.