Introduction
Ever get tired of World of Warcraft's default music? Wish you could inject a little bit of aural life into your game, but on your own terms? Soundtrack is the mod for you! Soundtrack allows you to assign any music you own from your own personal music library to almost any event in the game, including death, getting on your mount, leveling up, entering stealth, and various forms of combat that can distinguish between world mobs, PvP, boss battles, and more! When the event occurs, Soundtrack will play the music you have assigned to that event, almost as if the music were a part of the game itself!
PLEASE NOTE: I am not the original author. Morricone was the man behind the project, and as of now we he has yet to return to the project. This is a fan update created in order to fix a small, very limited number of bugs that have been neglected due to Morricone's unexplained absence. -FluffyBearLina
Thanks to Morricone for creating Soundtrack in the first place, and to FluffyBearLina for the update back in March 2009. Another huge thanks to Morricone for passing on his baby to me. Hopefully I can improve and keep it going for a while longer. -Lunaqua
Installation
Soundtrack requires extra installation steps to gather your music information, so please follow these steps:
- Download and Install: Install the addon the usual way. Follow the instructions from the Install tab above.
- Verify the installation: You should have a C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons\Soundtrack folder on your machine if you installed correctly.
- Install Python: Python is a programming language with which Soundtrack was written. A specific version of Python (version 2.5.2-2.X, NOT 3.0.1 and up) is necessary in order for Soundtrack to work. Stable version: 2.6.4.
- Copy Music: Copy mp3s you want to use in-game to the Interface\AddOns\Soundtrack\Music folder. If you have a lot of mp3's, you should organize them into sub-folders. (NOTE: Soundtrack also cooperates with junctions, so if you do not wish to copy your music and you have it all stored in one localized place, you may create a junction to the folder.)
- Generate your track library: One more thing before you start WoW. Run the Interface\AddOns\Soundtrack\GenerateMyLibrary.py file. This generates a file called MyTracks.lua, which is a list of every mp3 you placed in the Music folder. Soundtrack will use this list as a reference to your music. It is absolutely vital that you run GenerateMyLibrary.py whenever you add/remove mp3 files to the Music folder.
If you do not have the correct version of Python installed, or not installed at all, GenerateMyLibrary.py will not run.
Features
- Play your own mp3s inside the game.
- Assign music to entire zones or specific sub zones. The default music still plays in zones that you do not assign music.
- Assign music when battling various levels of mobs, specific named monsters, or elite mobs.
- A plethora of events that you can assign music: Victory, Flight, Dance, Stealth, Swimming, Level Up, etc.
- Expose the full World of Warcraft score in your library to assign Blizzard's music to your own events.
- Can be used as a standard media player. You can create playlists and play them using mini floating playback controls.
- Interface to assign music to events. See all your tracks, sortable or filterable by track title, album or artist names.
Custom events allows you to create your own events through lua scripting. Only for very advanced users with scripting knowledge.
Known Issues
- Zone and battle music sometimes gets interrupted in instances or battlegrounds. (This is due to the game, not Soundtrack.)
- Dance music does not stop when your character stops dancing. This is because there is currently no way to detect that you have stopped dancing, so the track stops when it reaches its end.
Feature Requests and Bug Reports
Please report any feature suggestions or bugs to my google code page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my playlist stop when I close the main window?
That's because the main window only lets you preview your playlists. To actually play them, you need to use the miniframe's playlist drop down and pick a playlist.
What types of music files are supported?
Only mp3s. Other formats are not supported by Blizzard such as wav, ogg, wma, m3u, m4a, m4p, aac, midi. MP3s with Japanese or other non-US characters in their names can cause problems, so I suggest renaming them.
There are a lot of programs to convert various music formats to mp3. I personally use iTunes for that. In iTunes, Edit->Preferences, select the Importing tab, and make sure you Import using: MP3 Encoder. Then youll be able to convert any tracks to an mp3 file.
Why do I need to copy my music to the Soundtrack/Music folder?
The only files that can be played by WoW are files placed under the World of Warcraft folder when the game is started. Advanced users might want to try junctions to add a virtual link between Soundtrack's music folder and your music folder.
How do I transfer my assignments to another machine?
- Exit WoW on the target machine.
- Copy your Interface/Addons/Soundtrack/Music folder to the target machine. If you only copy partial music files, it will still work, but the events that are missing tracks will be fixed automatically and you will lose the track assignments (since the tracks dont exist).
- Regenerate the library on the target machine. You do this the usual way, by running GenerateMyLibrary.py. You can also copy MyTracks.lua directly if you want to skip this step.
- Copy the settings. All of Soundtrack settings are stored in World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\<UserName>\SavedVariables\Soundtrack.lua. So copy this file to the same location on the target machine.
- Start WoW on the target machine!
Why do I need to install Python?
Because the Blizzard API with which I write the addon does not let me scan your music folder. This limitation is probably to prevent cheats or from addons to screw up your pc files. If this limitation is lifted, I will remove the script. So the only way to feed your list of tracks to the addon is to generate that list outside of the game. I could have written a program in any language, but the reason I picked Python is because the same script works on both Mac and PCs, and you can read the script yourself, in case you are worried about the scripts security.
The script scans all your mp3s and saves the name, album, artist and track length to the MyTracks.lua file, which is loaded in the game.
Installation Guide
- Exit "World of Warcraft" completely
- Download the mod you want to install
- Make a folder on your desktop called "My Mods"
- Save the .zip/.rar files to this folder.
- If, when you try to download the file, it automatically "opens" it... you need to RIGHT click on the link and "save as..." or "Save Target As".
- Extract the file - commonly known as 'unzipping'
Do this ONE FILE AT A TIME!
- Windows
- Windows XP has a built in ZIP extractor. Double click on the file to open it, inside should be the file or folders needed. Copy these outside to the "My Mods" folder.
- WinRAR: Right click the file, select "Extract Here"
- WinZip: You MUST make sure the option to "Use Folder Names" is CHECKED or it will just extract the files and not make the proper folders how the Authors designed
- Mac Users
- StuffitExpander: Double click the archive to extract it to a folder in the current directory.
- Verify your WoW Installation Path
That is where you are running WoW from and THAT is where you need to install your mods.
- Move to the Addon folder
- Open your World of Warcraft folder. (default is C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\)
- Go into the "Interface" folder.
- Go into the "AddOns" folder.
- In a new window, open the "My Mods" folder.
- The "My Mods" folder should have the "Addonname" folder in it.
- Move the "Addonname" folder into the "AddOns" folder
- Start World of Warcraft
- Make sure AddOns are installed
- Log in
- At the Character Select screen, look in lower left corner for the "addons" button.
- If button is there: make sure all the mods you installed are listed and make sure "load out of date addons" is checked.
- If the button is NOT there: means you did not install the addons properly. Look at the above screenshots. Try repeating the steps or getting someone who knows more about computers than you do to help.
Translations
When you download a mod, please be sure that the mod is compatible with your translation of wow. Some mods only work on the US versions, while some only work on some of the various European versions. These variations are called "Localizations".
TOC Numbers (Out of Date Mods)
When Blizzard patches WoW, they change the Interface number. This means that all mods will be "out of date" unless or until the author releases a new version for that interface. Some people go into the .toc files and update the numbers themselves, but this is STRONGLY advised against as it will cause problems locating possible incompatibilities addons. When you log into WoW after a patch, you DO NOT have to delete your interface directory. All you have to do is simply tell WoW to ignore the interface numbers and load all the mods anyway. All you have to do is, while at the "character select" screen, look in the lower left corner and click on the "addons" button. A window will pop up listing all your installed mods.
If you look in the upper left corner of that window there should be a box that says "Load Out of Date AddOns". You want to CHECK this box. Now simply go into WoW normally and all your mods should load. As of the 1.9 patch, you will have to do this after EVERY patch/update that Blizzard posts! If you encounter any problems with a mod after a patch, please be sure to let the author of the mod know so they can fix it.
See also: About "Out Of Date AddOns"
Mac Support
WoW addons are not platformed based. As such, they can be used on either Mac or PC. You can extract both .zip and .rar files on a Mac using StuffitExpander.
Directory Structure
World of Warcraft
|_ Interface
|_AddOns
|_*AddonName*
|_ *AddonName*.toc
|_ *AddonName*.xml
|_ *AddonName*.lua
|_ (possibly others as well)...
