QWEEDDYZ: Re2: What if replaced music filed be stored in extracted Music folder? In GOG version for unknown reason that did for unit voices (folder SPEECH). I dont know (and that why im ask), did Warcraft 2 game use that extracted files? As most games engines do with they're data archives.
*As i remember from my experience with russian unofficial versions, russian voices can be replaced in MPQ and (*or) in extracted folder. Some unofficial russian packs use MPQ probably, but most use separate SPEECH folder. As i remember, it cannot be possible to use separate russian MPQ with separate exe file. Not like in warcraft 3 where mods\voices packs can be installed as separate MPQ+exe = no files replaced = 100% game version and Bnet compatibility. So correct move for Wc2 is using extracted SPEECH folder (or MUSIC for music).
**Im probably wrong. Maybe that folder only used by Sound Extractor tool packed with game distributive and only one way to replace any files in MPQ for Wc2 - replace whole original MPQ with modded one. Probably no any other folders in game root directory can be used by any tool\game...
If extracted folder work (for custom music) - isnt better use that folder distributed just as archived folder? Whole INSTALL.MPQ = whole game. If ilwar2 build it to him game repack - than im just download that repack
Ah, I see what you're saying. Unfortunately it seems the game doesn't allow the use of extracted music from within the directory like it does with speech sounds, so we can't just dish out a copy of the folder with the modified music, sorry. I've not heard any documentation on this, but I thought I'd test it out myself to be sure.
I can tell that the speech sound effects are stored in the War2Dat.mpq with the same directory layout of GameSFX that the W2Sounds.EXE program extracts them into. We also know that the music is stored in the Install.MPQ file and in there, its in a root directory called Music, so based on that, I created a Music folder in the Warcraft 2 directory and placed a wav file in there with the same name as the main menu music, which is OWARROOM.WAV, butI used a different wave file from my music archive (and yes, it was converted into actual wave format, not just renamed to have the .wav file extension), but after loading up Warcraft 2, the old main menu music was the same. oh well. It was worth a shot anyway.