Featuring the music
of Joe Satriani, Motörhead, Deep Purple, Queen, and James
Brown
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One of the things that was immediately obvious about the pod-racing sequence in Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace was its potential for development as a video game. Star Wars Racer became that game, but while the racing part was quite fun, I found that I tired quickly of the short, looped audio clips included with the game. This is not to say that John Williams' compositions are bad, but screaming rock guitars played at breakneck speed seemed a more fitting acoustic backdrop. This page describes two successful methods for putting new audio files into the game.
Featuring the music
of Joe Satriani, Motörhead, Deep Purple, Queen, and James
Brown
The original Star Wars Racer game was created by LucasArts. You will need an original copy of the game CD to get started, so go out, buy it, and support the work of George Lucas & Co.
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Green indicates hacked or
modified directories and/or files "Racer" Root <DIR>
All 77 original files are retained, though the following can
probably be deleted: |
Green indicates hacked or
modified directories and/or files Directory: G:\(My CD-ROM drive) "racer100_0" Root
<DIR> All 3 original files included |
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The Process 1) What you will need:
2) Install the game from the original CD as per manufacturer's instructions. Run the game and, in your options, select whether you want to use the 22K or 11K set of sound files. The 22K set will definitely sound better. Exit the game, and delete the set you're not using from the hard drive. (In the table on the left, you will see that the two "Racer\DATA\WAVS\11K" folders are empty). This just saves hard drive space. I did keep the empty folders, however, to preserve the directory structure. 3) Copy the entire contents of the original CD to a temporary folder on the hard drive. Go to this folder and delete all files in the following directories:
These files are not needed on the modded CD because the game's installation routine copies them to the hard drive. Also, the extra filespace allows you to add new music WAV files that are significantly larger than the originals. I did not delete the folders or directories themselves. 4) Insert a blank CD-RW into the drive and run DirectCD to format the disk (if its not pre-formatted). 5) Label the new disk "racer100_0". (Note: only in DirectCD, not EasyCD, can you create a volume label that will be all lower-case letters) 6) Copy all directories, folders, and remaining files (from the temp folder, see #3 above) to the CD-RW: 7) You're now ready to create your new music files, so choose the music you want and copy those WAV files to the temp folder on your hard drive. Open your sound editing software: I used Wavelab 3 by Steinberg. 8) Open one of your new WAV files, and adjust your software settings to playback highlighted areas as loops (so you can preview your loop). Selecting a chunk of the original files is simply a matter of dragging the mouse cursor along the WAV (just like selecting a chunk of text). The hardest part will be adjusting the start and end points of your selection so that you have a loop with a seamless transition from end to start - this is most important. The main thing to listen for is a near-perfect (or perfect) retention of the beat of the music, so it helps to tap your foot to the beat. You should perceive no change in the beat during the end-start transition. When you're satisfied with the way things sound, copy your selection to a new WAV file, rename it to one of the original music filenames, and save it as a 22K (16-bit stereo) WAV file to the "gnome\data\wavs\Music" folder in your temp directory. Repeat this procedure for other new music files until you have 24 new loops. Below is a breakdown of what I created. Original filename and size is in blue, new file sizes and my chosen themes are in green. Note that your own WAVs can be significantly larger than the originals. That is why, to accomodate these new filesizes, my modded CD has so many other files that were "not retained". AnakinLoop.wav 4,757,860 13,656,644 (16-bit, 22K, 2min35sec — Ace of
Spades by Motörhead, from the CD "Ace of Spades"
(plays during splash and
settings screens) 9) Open DirectCD again, and copy your new WAV files to the "gnome\data\wavs\Music" folder on your CD-RW. Double-check the entire CD-RW so that it matches exactly the directory structure as described in "Hacked CD" above. You should have 19 directories and 377 files altogether, though total bytes may vary depending on the size of the audio files you created. 10) The last thing you need to do is create a CD-R copy of the CD-RW disk. To be honest, I don't remember exactly what I did here, but it was either a straight CD-to-CD copy or I created an image of the CD-RW. The image was then burned to a CD-R. 11) That's about it. To test your new Racer CD, run the game from the original Star Wars Racer CD-ROM. Start a game and select or create a player character. When you get to the screen where you select your pod racer, eject the original CD, and replace it with your hacked CD. To test whether things are working, you could now back up to the screen where you select a player character or further back to the options screen. The music should now be whatever you saved as "AnakinLoop.wav". 12) Enjoy. Got questions or problems, feel free to e-mail me. Contact information can be found on my home page. |
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The Process 1) What you will need:
2) Install the game from the original CD as per manufacturer's instructions. Run the game and, in your options, select whether you want to use the 22K or 11K set of sound files. The 22K set will definitely sound better. Exit the game, and delete the set you're not using from the hard drive. This just saves hard drive space. I did keep the empty folders, however, to preserve the directory structure. 3) Open Windows Explorer and go to your ..\Racer\data\wavs\ folder and create two new subfolders: one called "music", the other "music2". There should now be four subfolders in "wavs":
3) Copy all 24 wav files from the original CD to the ..\Racer\data\wavs\music\ folder on the hard drive. The "music2" folder is for our new music files. See Step 7 and Step 8 from Method 1 above. 4) Download racer.zip and extract it to your "Racer" folder. The ZIP file contains:
5) Open Windows Explorer and go to your "racer" folder. Let the modding begin:
6) That's about it. To test your new music, start a game with your new shortcut and select or create a player character. When you get to the screen where you select your pod racer, Alt-Tab out of the game, select the DOS window (ideally the only other window open on your desktop) and hit any key to unpause it. The batch file renames your music folders so that "music" becomes "music1" and "music2" becomes "music". The batch file will pause again, ready to switch them back whenever you're finished playing. So Alt-Tab back to the game. To test whether things are working, you could now back up to the screen where you select a player character or further back to the options screen. The music should now be whatever you saved as "AnakinLoop.wav". If you want to add your own splash screen and background images, follow the instructions from Method 1 above. 7) Enjoy. Got questions or problems, feel free to e-mail me. Contact information can be found on my home page. |
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