http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41520
Like many games from the 90s, TA uses a disc-based soundtrack, meaning the game will play music off of the CD and nothing else. This means that if you play with the NoCD patch you can’t hear the music in-game. The only solution before now has been to mount an audio disc image to your hard drive, but this is a complicated and annoying process that requires you to install a special program/driver, mount the disc and reorder your drive letters every time you start the game, etc.
I always suspected that true CD-free in-game music would be possible by intercepting the game’s DirectX audio disc calls and playing music files from the hard drive instead. Of course it’s one thing to know that something’s possible and another thing to pull it off… Well, someone finally pulled it off: The GOG.com release of TA uses exactly this method for properly functioning in-game music without the CD. GOG.com specializes in releasing old PC games fully working under modern operating system, and it seems TA is not the only game they’ve used this music fix for (they also get DOS games working via emulator, etc.).
I’ve been testing the GOG.com release and have created a patch from it that will work on all copies of TA including the CD release and Impulse release (which has no music at all unless you burn the mp3s onto an audio disc). I’ve also successfully applied the fix to the Excess II .exe, so it will be possible to use this on any mods that use a custom .exe, though it will require some hex editing.
How It Works
The GOG.com team used the Audiere open source audio API to translate the game’s CD calls to mp3 calls from the game folder. The music files are located in the music subfolder and are in mp3 format. The files are named 2.mp3 through 17.mp3 and correspond to audio tracks 1 through 16. TA can only recognize a maximum of 16 tracks. There are files called 0.mp3 and 1.mp3 but they are redundant filler and are not recognized by the game; they are only there so people don’t think tracks are missing.
In-game the music plays just like the CD version so build and battle music behaves the same way (however, TA’s dynamic music system is pretty buggy and doesn’t always switch into battle mode; this happens with or without the CD). You can also go into options and set the music to random or repeat, customize the build/battle selections, and play the tracks. The only glitch is that the stop button doesn’t work, but the music will go back to normal when you unpause the game (or start a game if you are still at the main menu).
What’s Included:
music folder - contains the TA soundtrack in 320kbps mp3 format
audiere.dll - the Audiere API
win32.dll - the music playback code
totala.exe - TA 3.1c NoCD exe patched to work with the above files and with the +atm hack. Will not launch without the two dll files present.
How to Create Custom Soundtracks:
Simply replace the mp3 files with your own. Remember that 0.mp3 and 1.mp3 are filler - only 2.mp3 through 17.mp3 are valid file names. Make sure you use properly encoded mp3s since poor encodings can crash the game. The easy way to test this is to simply play all your files through the options menu music player and see if it crashes. Both VBR and 320kbps mp3 work fine as long as you encode them properly (don’t use ancient software or weird settings).
This means that mods can now include hassle-free custom music as easily as they can include custom units, maps, etc.
Download from FileUniverse or 2shared (78 MB)