Schattentänzer on 5/10/2007 at 18:14
April 23rd 2007 "MysteryDev" provided a high quality version of the System Shock 2 soundtrack. I made a small mod so you can enjoy the high quality music in the game.
The tracks were original arrangements by Eric Brosius, mixed as full songs. To make use of them for an updated in-game soundtrack, I had to split most of them into smaller bits, so the DarkEngine song format could play them. The arrangements MysteryDev provided did not offer clean sections of every sound-snippet the game uses, so in some cases I had to adapt and make some minor changes.
In some cases I had to convert the original soundfiles to 44kHz PCM waves without any other changes. This has happened when the respective section was not present in Eric's arrangement, and thus could not be recreated. Although the conversion increases the file size without any quality gain, this was necessary for technical reasons: If I hadn't done this, those files would play at double speed.
You may also note a hiss on some tracks, although it's not quite as bad as in the orignal ADPCM wavs. This hiss is already present in the mixes, and I didn't want to remove it. It would reduce the overall quality of the track and make this whole thing rather pointless. :)
Installation is simple. Make System Shock 2 mod-ready, then extract the contents of the ZIP file into the game's root directory. SHMUP is a simple replacer mod, which means it is compatible with every mod that doesn't change the original music of the game.
Due to my poor bandwidth, I decided to make it available as a seed on the (
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/) StrangeBedfellows torrent tracker (thanks Kolya).
Torrent Download: (
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/torrents/btdownload.php?type=torrent&file=SS2_Schatten_shmup_1.1.7z.torrent) SS2_Schatten_shmup_1.1.7z.torrent [250MB]
From megaupload.com: (
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1JMFCV4L) shmup_1.1.7z [250MB]
(
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/torrents/) Learn more about the SBF torrent tracker
Please seed it back after you got it, or if you want to host it: go ahead!
Enjoy!
UPDATE: Kolya has updated the archive and bundled the previously missing file with it. Thanks!
Yes, I'm aware that a SHMUP is usually something different. I just couldn't resist.
ZylonBane on 5/10/2007 at 19:13
Quote Posted by Schattentänzer
In some cases I had to convert the original soundfiles to 44kHz PCM waves without any other changes. This has happened when the respective section was not present in Eric's arrangement, and thus could not be recreated.
Which parts? It sounded to me like every bit of music from SS2 was present in the "unofficial official" soundtrack as well.
Schattentänzer on 5/10/2007 at 19:30
Here's the list of what is what. It's also in the readme inside the zip:
Medical Science 1
-----------------
- 08bells.wav
- 08bellsr.wav
Original files. The sections were not available like that, I tried to compose them of various bits but without success.
The effect used on them makes it very difficult to make clean cuts.
Medical Science 2
-----------------
All parts done.
Engineering 1
-------------
- e1brk.wav
- e1brkfil.wav
Both are a bit different from the original files. The latter misses a drum break, which wasn't in the mix.
Engineering 2
-------------
All parts done.
Hydroponics 1
-------------
All parts done.
Hydroponics 2
-------------
A single track in the original. I used the arrangement provided by MysteryDev.
Operations 1
------------
A single track in the original. I used the arrangement provided by MysteryDev.
Operations 2
------------
All parts done.
Operations 3
------------
A single track in the original. I used the arrangement provided by MysteryDev.
Command 1
---------
- 11all.wav
- 11all2.wav
Both are a bit different from the original files. Since the mix had also two sections, I compromised and used those.
Command 2
---------
All parts done.
Command 3
---------
A single track in the original. I used the arrangement provided by MysteryDev.
Recreation
----------
All parts done.
catbarf on 5/10/2007 at 19:46
Awesome stuff!
RocketMan on 5/10/2007 at 19:52
Wow, thank you (although I missed using this mod by about a week :( ) I had attempted to convert the complete tracks over myself but lost so much quality in the conversion that I gave up. It looks like I missed something that you didn't. Great job.
BTW, seeing as you've advertised this mod as 1.0, does that mean there are any revisions coming?
Schattentänzer on 6/10/2007 at 13:31
There's always the possibility of a revision. For one, people may find a problem with a file I've not spotted during testing. Second, in a few of the complete mixes there are sections present which were not there as a sound snippet in the game. Including these would require to change the song schemas, something I didn't look into too much yet.
In either case I'll probably make a cumulative patch for the mod to keep the size down. Since I'm rather busy at the moment, I wouldn't hold my breath for it though.
EDIT: Aaaand here we go. I mananged to miss including one file into the archive. The engine will play the original, which causes a very ugly sound-glitch. I uploaded the missing file to rapidshare, get it (
http://rapidshare.com/files/60739945/e1end.7z.html) here. Unzip it to the game root directory, or open and browse the archive and extract e1end.wav to \snd\songs
Thanks to miracle.freak on the SBF boards for pointing it out.
Martin Karne on 7/10/2007 at 04:48
Excellent, thank you.
BTW is anybody seeding this file?
There is just one user with 94.2% of the file complete.
Kolya on 7/10/2007 at 15:04
Schatten, Spitter and me are seeding. Feel free to hop on the bandwagon.
Aja on 8/10/2007 at 20:13
Whoever's seeding this now, thanks! I'll seed it for the rest of today and for the next few days on and off, though I can't leave the computer on all night, and my upload speed is notoriously slow.
bob_doe_nz on 9/10/2007 at 21:36
Quote Posted by Aja
Whoever's seeding this now, thanks! I'll seed it for the rest of today and for the next few days on and off, though I can't leave the computer on all night, and my upload speed is notoriously slow.
Let's see how long I can keep seeding it for.
