Blasted Music Files

Alright, I know how this is suppsoed to work, but it isn't, even after searching to confirm my solutions. I'm trying to get custom music to play, but it won't. I know that on a Mac, all you have to do is take a music file, name it Nova Music.mp3, and drop it into the plugs or files folder. Did that, won't work. Am I missing some critical step here? Both stock Nova and Polycon music work for me, so I'm stumped as to why this does not.

Its scared of you? Other then that I have no idea why other then: Is it in actual .mp3 format or is it mearly named "Noav Music.mp3"? I have had problems with stuff like that happening to me before.

Just name it "Nova Music". The .mp3 extension is only needed on Windows. I don't know if it will prevent it from working on a Mac, though.

You will need to make sure it really is an MP3. iTunes can convert it to one if needed.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 25 May 2006 - 09:15 PM

@lindley, on May 25 2006, 10:13 PM, said in Blasted Music Files:

...The .mp3 extension is only needed on Windows...

Ahh forgot that he is on a mac. Oops.

It's not needed even on windows. But windows does tolerate the mp3 extension I think. Whatever. Should work if you messed around as they said.

If all fails, try luring it with food.

I've tried with and without extensions and on multiple files that are (or at least claim to be) .MP3s. I looked at the original Nova Music after importing it into iTunes and its a MPEG instead of a MP3. I wonder if that has to with anything.

I'll keep working at it though.

OH! You have to clear any ID Tag info. Winamp allows to see these things. Everything has to be blank. Well I don't know if every field has to be, but better safe than sorry. Winamp can open such tags. I think many players can, but I'm not sure if all of them can.

In short, open that file in some player. Look around for info options about your files. Edit them, remove everything. Name it Nova Music and place it. Then, if it still fails to play the music in nova, you could try the food luring part.

This post has been edited by Mumbling Psycho : 25 May 2006 - 10:48 PM

@joshtigerheart, on May 25 2006, 08:39 PM, said in Blasted Music Files:

I've tried with and without extensions and on multiple files that are (or at least claim to be) .MP3s. I looked at the original Nova Music after importing it into iTunes and its a MPEG instead of a MP3. I wonder if that has to with anything.

You may find this thread useful. It covers most of the difficulties of getting music to work on both platforms, although Mumbling Psycho's suggestion is a new one on me, if it's correct.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 25 May 2006 - 10:50 PM

(Large cutted out part)I'm using windows and I can absolutely swear on every of my family members's heads as well as my own that the extension does not affect anything on windows. At least for the Nova Music thing.(/brief recap of cutted out part) EDIT: Damn I was beaten at it by the edit of edwards. <_<

Back on-topic, I strongly believe the ID info thing is right. It happened to me. Heck, in a worst case scenario send me the tune, let me edit it and I'll send it back after 2 minutes and it may run.

This post has been edited by Mumbling Psycho : 25 May 2006 - 10:58 PM

Okay, I said this in another topic not too long ago but here's what I do to change the music on my mac:
1. Go into iTunes and find the piece I want.
2. Drag it into my plug-ins folder.
3. Get Info and rename it "Nova Music". This is important - unless you have changed the STR# which holds the music file name it must be named like this with no extension. Just renaming the file directly will only hide the extension hence you must Get Info and do it from there.
4. Launch Nova and enjoy.

It's really that simple! The format of the file does not matter nor do any of the tags attached to it. It does require that the type/creator codes are present but iTunes will have set these automatically so you shouldn't need to worry about that.

If you want to distribute the music for other players on both platforms to use then grab Plugin Archiver which will tell you what you need to do if it finds any incompatibilities.

I'm pretty sure the windows version actually does require the .mp3 extension else it has no way to know what type of file it is. Mumbling Psycho may be forgetting that windows likes to hide extensions too. If anyone can get a file that is not an mp3 to play on the windows version I would very much like to hear.

This post has been edited by Guy : 26 May 2006 - 12:05 AM

@guy, on May 26 2006, 04:56 AM, said in Blasted Music Files:

This is important - unless you have changed the STR# which holds the music file name it must be named like this with no extension.

Which STR# would that be, and where is it?

@lindley, on May 26 2006, 05:20 AM, said in Blasted Music Files:

Which STR# would that be, and where is it?

STR# 130, in the Nova Application proper. If you are on Windows, it is in Nova.rez, but changing it has no effect on WinNova.

Edwards

And Edwards' link saves the day, which in turn makes Orca, Edwards, Zacha, and Guy responcible for solving this problem of mine since they had that nice long discussion that they figured out str# 130 was required, which was what I lacked. It works now. 🙂

If you don't mind, I got one other issue and I don't feel like starting a new thread to ask. Presently, in my TC, I'm using light and medium blaster shots as place holders. However, they "fade" into existance. I can hardly see them because of this. Its strange, since the EVC Javelin Rockets are not having this problem.

@joshtigerheart, on May 26 2006, 09:33 AM, said in Blasted Music Files:

Presently, in my TC, I'm using light and medium blaster shots as place holders. However, they "fade" into existance.

Set the Falloff field to 0- I suspect it is currently "-1", which often causes exactly that effect. See this and subsequent posts for a detailed explanation.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 26 May 2006 - 11:59 AM

Whoa, in the vein of Chuck Norris stuff (have you had your Chuck Norris fact of the day today?), I'll say: Zacha Pedro is so good, he can solve problems and be thanked for that without ever posting in the topic.

And, of course, Edwards is so good, he can solve two problems in a row in the same topic, and in fact he had already solved them before.

Quote

Mumbling Psycho may be forgetting that windows likes to hide extensions too. If anyone can get a file that is not an mp3 to play on the windows version I would very much like to hear.

Mumbling Psycho is a windows user that has tested this. It does require the file to be an mp3 one, but it does not require the extension to be present. You can delete de extension or have it around for all nova cares.

@mumbling-psycho, on May 26 2006, 04:00 PM, said in Blasted Music Files:

Mumbling Psycho is a windows user that has tested this. It does require the file to be an mp3 one, but it does not require the extension to be present. You can delete de extension or have it around for all nova cares.

That is very odd. I am not normally a Windows user, but I do have a copy of WinNova running on a WIndows computer. When I try to start up Nova with the default music named to "Nova Music" (I removed the extension), it says "Cannot find 'Nova Music.mp3. To make sure you have updated properly, check to make sure this file is in your Nova Data folder.'", and starts up without music. If you are running WinNova 1.0.6, it looks like they may have changed the behaviour on you.

This is with Nova 1.0.9, running on Windows 98, with Quicktime version 6.1. Your mileage may vary on other systems, but mine cares about the extension.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 26 May 2006 - 07:43 PM

Quote

That is very odd. I am not normally a Windows user, but I do have a copy of WinNova running on a WIndows computer. When I try to start up Nova with the default music named to "Nova Music" (I removed the extension), it says "Cannot find 'Nova Music.mp3. To make sure you have updated properly, check to make sure this file is in your Nova Data folder.'", and starts up without music. If you are running WinNova 1.0.6, it looks like they may have changed the behaviour on you.

This is with Nova 1.0.9, running on Windows 98, with Quicktime version 6.1. Your mileage may vary on other systems, but mine cares about the extension.

Edwards

Hmm, well, my original nova music file did not have an extension. And I still had the music. That is with Windows XP and Nova 1.0.6. I believe it's most certainly tied to the windows version, though. Not nova related. As far as I can tell, with windows xp, messing around with extensions does not do much in the end. All extensions do is tell windows what type of file it is so it can bind them to the default app to run them. Without extension, it asks the user what to use to run the file. Technically, one could entirely remove all extensions from wevery files and it would still work. But Windows might screw up with file names if one does so because maybe some stuff is hardcoded with the extensions.

Anyways, a good example of this is how you can turn a .htm into a .txt to see the code and edit it and turn it back into a .htm to have it open with a browser. All that done manually.

However, after some more testing, nova seems to be picky about which tunes can run without requiring the extension. So, to be safe, you might wish to leave the extension, even if it costs you 4 additionnal bytes of data 😛

Note: I'm about 99,999% sure this is a windows feature, since my original nova music file does not have any extension. Windows XP probably can cope with installing the game without the extension and not go "huh?" when looking for it. Windows 98 on the other hand... You know... it's old and crappy, especially prior to the service packs... even then, it's still old.. and it's Microsoft's. At least, that's what I found out after trying to secure a windows 98 computer in my class when it suddenly started popping errors about not finding the registry database to edit access. Even the teacher couldn't figure it out (and they were really good teachers, too) and had us reinstall and try again.

This post has been edited by Mumbling Psycho : 26 May 2006 - 10:22 PM

You do have the "show file extensions" flag checked, don't you?

Yah, I agree with Edwards. Nova 1.0.6 with the original music file didn't seem to care about the extension, but any plugins which changed the music required the .mp3 extension. Nova 1.0.9 requires the extension for all music files.

Edit: Note that some file extensions are effectively the same thing - for example, .html versus .txt. Both are basic text formats, only when a web browser opens a .html file, it interprets the HTML tags. Similarly, .cbr and .rar are identical, as are .cbz and .zip. .txt and .rtf are similar, but not identical - files can be changed from .txt to .rtf simply by changing the extension, but they cannot be changed the other way as easily. Most extensions are different - for example, .mp3 is different from .mp4, and they cannot be converted back and forth simply by changing the extension.

This post has been edited by Belthazar : 27 May 2006 - 02:42 AM