Music Customisation in Stronghold 2

By Lord_Chris

In this tutorial, I will show you how to change any music in Stronghold 2. It's a very easy process to follow, however, before we start there are a few things you should be aware of. First of all, any music should be in the format mp3. You can find an audio converter here if you don't already know of one and your files are not in mp3 format. Secondly, you must have some kind of text editor installed. I use Notepad ++, but Notepad will do (it comes with Windows by default).

There are two ways of changing the music - you could rename the physical file names, or actually add the new files into the game. In this tutorial we will actually add the new files into the game. Finally, the music for Stronghold 2 is stored in the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Firefly Studios\Stronghold 2\fx\music\. You must navigate here before we begin the tutorial.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will add the main theme of The Lord of The Rings into the game to replace the current menu theme. I have named it as main_lotr_theme.mp3, and this should be copied into the music folder location. You should also find the file named Music Volume Levels.txt and open it up in your text editor. As you might have guessed by the file name, it is responsible for the volume levels of all in-game music.

Once you have opened up the music volume levels, you will see something like the following image. The name of the song (without the file extension) is on the left, then separated by a comma is the volume of that song in the game.



To add my file here, I would go onto a new line, and then add "main_lotr_theme". Remember not to add the file extension! Then you would add a comma to separate them. Finally, you would add the volume that you want this file to play at during the game. 100 is the default, and it is best to begin with that in case it gets too loud. You can edit this file at any time and the effects are instant next time you load up the game.



To add more music into the game, you must follow the exact same process for each song you would like to add. Note that the song must also exist in the Stronghold 2 music folder. If something goes wrong, then no sound will be played at all. If that does happen, reopen the music volume levels txt file, check that it has saved, and check the file exists in the Stronghold 2 music folder. Also make sure that you don't have any special characters in the file name, try to restrict it to letters of A-Z, a-z and 0-9 to avoid any potential problems when the game looks for the file.

Once you have edited the music volume levels, save it to your desktop. You'll likely find it will not let you save the file directly because it is protected. Once you've saved it to your desktop, copy and replace the existing file in the Stronghold 2 music folder. Once this has been edited, open up the file sh2_PlayLists.csv. This can be opened in either Microsoft Excel, or Notepad.



While the music volume levels file is responsible for the music volume, this file is actually what is responsible for playing your music in the game. On the left of the page, you will see a column named Playlist ID. This is responsible for the different events a certain track will be played. To add your own music, simply delete the current file name and add your own instead. You must include the file extension here. You can also add or remove additional music for existing events, which I will show you later. Here is a list of all events below along with explanations for reference.

A few more useful things to note:

• *end() - this is responsible for ending the current event which is playing. Once the event has ended, it will restart from the top down.
• *silence(10000) - this will be silent for 10,000 seconds before moving down the playlist. You can change the number in brackets to change the number of seconds the game is silent for. You can also remove this completely by deleting this row and placing a file name there instead.

To add your own tracks in, you can either replace the current track by changing the file name, or add a new line with your new file name in instead. You might even wish to do both of these options. As an example of what can be done, I have uploaded a custom music pack which will automatically modify the game and add in some custom music. If you're struggling, feel free to post in our Stronghold 2 forum.