Making a General MIDI set

[Lonely Assassin]

If I'm using eXPack and assuming I have all the files handy for doing so, how would I overwrite the default MIDI files in the MT32mus.dat file and remake them into a new DAT file? I don't like the default conversions and I'd like to be able to alter U7 / Serpent Isle to use the better General MIDI interpretations of the original pieces.

[Tenchi]

If you don't already have version 1.23, dowload it here:
http://home.nexgo.de/minako.aino/eXPack-Frontend.cab

First, click on the Browse button under "Extract". In the Browse dialog, enter "*.dat" as file name (without quotes) and press Enter. The dat files will be shown now. (I'll do a version that can show dat files without that). Now browse for 'mt32mus.dat' (is in the ultima7\static dir) and click OK. Select a target dir if you want and click the Go! button.
Now change into the new 'mt32-mus-flx' folder (it's in ultima7\static if you didn't choose a target dir) and you'll find a lot of .u7o files - these are the midi files, change the extension from u7o to mid to listen to them (go to www.lab1.de and download 'Joe' for a Program that can easily do this for all at once).
Now let's just assume you want to replace '10.mid', then just copy your mid to this folder, delete '10.mid' and rename 'your-midi.mid' to '10.mid'. Now start eXPack again, select "Create text file and build", enter "mt32mus.dat" in the text box below (without quotes), click "Browse", select all files in the 'mt32-mus-flx' dir, click OK and then click on Go!. The newly created 'mt32mus.dat' will also be in the 'mt32-mus-flx' dir, move it back to ultima7/static so it takes effect.

That's it... if you have more questions, just ask.

[Colourless]

That will only work in Black Gate. Serpent Isle uses XMI files for it's music and you won't be able to modify them.

-Colourless Dragon

[Lonely Assassin]

Thanks for the detailed instructions ^^ I'm still in the process of "tuning" some of the MIDI files but your instructions work thanks.

As for Serpent Isle, I have a program called MIDIFORM that converts MIDI into XMI, would I need only apply the same principles for SI?

[Tenchi]

> As for Serpent Isle, I have a program called MIDIFORM that converts MIDI into XMI, would I need only apply the same principles for SI?

Yes, just that the extracted files are xmi files in SI, not mid files. Besides that, it works the same.

Also, there's a new version of eXPack now: 1.30. Get it if you don't have it already:

http://home.nexgo.de/minako.aino/eXPack-Frontend.cab

Now you can have all extracted files automatically renamed to mid or xmi.