Posted July 18, 2009
I've been collecting tunes from games for many years now, while some come with official Soundtracks others might need a special treatment.
It's the case of Empire Earth. So I figured someone else could find this interesting aswell ;)
How to play the music from Empire Earth outside the game?
*The next two methods explain how to listen to the music files located in "Empire Earth\Data\Music":
1.Play in Winamp:
Install "Ficedula DirectMusic plugin for Winamp" Original Page: Original Page under "Miscellaneous" (ficedm-1.1.exe). I would upload it to somewhere else for those without FilePlanet account but then I would do it without the original authors acknowledgment which I'm not too fond of. Now all you have to do is to add ".sgt" files to your playlist. For some reason though Winamp's "Disk Writer" Output plugin doesn't work with those. So you can't save them as wavs for instance.
2.Open them in "DirectMusic Producer":
Download from the Microsoft Page. Make a new Project ("File" > "New" > "Project") and then go to "File" > "Insert Files into Project...". Open a ".sgt" file you will then be prompted to choose a ".sty" file. Select the one with the corresponding name, same goes for choosing the ".dls". Now in the left panel you can see your imported files, now you can play the song by hitting the "Play" button at the top of the screen. To record it to a midi or wav file you can use the 2 fields at the bottom. Click on the "+++" button to set the target directory. Now click on the red icon next to it and finally play the music file. The midi output automatically sets the correct start and end time for the resulting track. Unfortunately if you don't find a way to bind the accompanying "dls" bank into the Microsoft DirectMusic Synthesizer, the playback will sound pretty "midi-like" :P
Here are some more Information about changing the DLS soundfont in Windows: http://www.spheredev.org/wiki/Changing_soundfonts
But it didn't work for me. If you look into Winamp > "Options" > "Preferences" > "Input" > "Nullsoft MIDI Player" > "Configure" > Tab "DirectMusic" > "DLS Settings" you see the option to use a custom DLS file, but that didn't brought back the fanfares of the original when playing back my MIDI file either.
Note: to record to a wav file you NEED a "Wave Output Device", it's available under WinXP but may not be under Vista and Win7. You can still record from your Playback Device by using this trick: right-click on your Volume icon in your taskbar and select "Recording Devices". Right-click again in an empty spot of your list of recording devices and check "Show Disabled Devices". Now you might have in your list "Wave out Mixer" or "Stereo Mixer", right-click on it and Enable it ("How to enable Wave Out recording in Vista"). You might need to adjust it to properly record the sound output but now you can basically use it as recording Device. With Audacity or any other Wave editor you can choose this device in the options and record from it.
*To get the Menu music (and some other tunes):
Get "EE Studio", more informations here.
Now extract the "data.ssa" located in "Empire Earth\Data" by using the tool "ssaextract.exe" from the EE Studio. After extraction you will have several Folders, the "sounds" folder is where you have to look. 3 absolutely normal mp3s are waiting for you there ;)
T'was fun...
It's the case of Empire Earth. So I figured someone else could find this interesting aswell ;)
How to play the music from Empire Earth outside the game?
*The next two methods explain how to listen to the music files located in "Empire Earth\Data\Music":
1.Play in Winamp:
Install "Ficedula DirectMusic plugin for Winamp" Original Page: Original Page under "Miscellaneous" (ficedm-1.1.exe). I would upload it to somewhere else for those without FilePlanet account but then I would do it without the original authors acknowledgment which I'm not too fond of. Now all you have to do is to add ".sgt" files to your playlist. For some reason though Winamp's "Disk Writer" Output plugin doesn't work with those. So you can't save them as wavs for instance.
2.Open them in "DirectMusic Producer":
Download from the Microsoft Page. Make a new Project ("File" > "New" > "Project") and then go to "File" > "Insert Files into Project...". Open a ".sgt" file you will then be prompted to choose a ".sty" file. Select the one with the corresponding name, same goes for choosing the ".dls". Now in the left panel you can see your imported files, now you can play the song by hitting the "Play" button at the top of the screen. To record it to a midi or wav file you can use the 2 fields at the bottom. Click on the "+++" button to set the target directory. Now click on the red icon next to it and finally play the music file. The midi output automatically sets the correct start and end time for the resulting track. Unfortunately if you don't find a way to bind the accompanying "dls" bank into the Microsoft DirectMusic Synthesizer, the playback will sound pretty "midi-like" :P
Here are some more Information about changing the DLS soundfont in Windows: http://www.spheredev.org/wiki/Changing_soundfonts
But it didn't work for me. If you look into Winamp > "Options" > "Preferences" > "Input" > "Nullsoft MIDI Player" > "Configure" > Tab "DirectMusic" > "DLS Settings" you see the option to use a custom DLS file, but that didn't brought back the fanfares of the original when playing back my MIDI file either.
Note: to record to a wav file you NEED a "Wave Output Device", it's available under WinXP but may not be under Vista and Win7. You can still record from your Playback Device by using this trick: right-click on your Volume icon in your taskbar and select "Recording Devices". Right-click again in an empty spot of your list of recording devices and check "Show Disabled Devices". Now you might have in your list "Wave out Mixer" or "Stereo Mixer", right-click on it and Enable it ("How to enable Wave Out recording in Vista"). You might need to adjust it to properly record the sound output but now you can basically use it as recording Device. With Audacity or any other Wave editor you can choose this device in the options and record from it.
*To get the Menu music (and some other tunes):
Get "EE Studio", more informations here.
Now extract the "data.ssa" located in "Empire Earth\Data" by using the tool "ssaextract.exe" from the EE Studio. After extraction you will have several Folders, the "sounds" folder is where you have to look. 3 absolutely normal mp3s are waiting for you there ;)
T'was fun...
Post edited July 18, 2009 by pops117
