Ask the Experts / Custom Music For the New Decade: A Gustav Goblin Guide

The advent of the new save format and parkobj replacing DAT has made it possible to add your own music tracks into OpenRCT2. Users like AuraSpecs and Gymnasiast have taken this from a slightly time-consuming hassle to a smooth, easy process. Because music links and CUSTOM1.WAV are so last decade.

 

Preparing Your Music

 

The universally accepted standard for custom music is a 22050 Hz OGG file. This format provides a good blend of clear music quality and low file size. We will be using Audacity for this tutorial, so download before you follow along.

 

1. Locate and/or download your music track.

2. Open your music track in Audacity.

3. Change the Project Rate (Hz) at the bottom left to 22050.

4. Use the Amplify or Normalize effects in the Effects dropdown to adjust your audio's waveforms to about the 0.5 mark to the left of the waveforms. I like to normalize to about 1.3 db.

5. Make any other adjustments as fit such as removing silence, adding fades, or cropping your track so it loops seamlessly.

6. Once your track is ready, select File and then select Export (or press Ctrl + Shift + E).

7. Change the file type to Ogg Vorbis and export it to an easy-to-remember location. Metadata is not required.

 

Using Gymnasiast's Music Creator

 

The fastest and most user-friendly way to prepare a parkobj using your song is with the GOES Music Creator by Gymnasiast. The Music Creator lets you name your parkobj by filling in four text fields. You can also compile up to three music tracks into a single object or specify a custom image that will appear in the Object Selection. You can also show advanced options to specify a version number or titles in other languages.

 

1. Fill in every required field using the descriptions below each one as reference.

2. Upload at least one music track. Specify a track name and composer if desired.

3. Add a preview image, additional tracks, version number, or titles in other languages if desired.

4. Select Create at the bottom of the page.

5. Save the parkobj file to your object folder in your ORCT2 directory.

 

Manually Creating Music Files

 

Whether as a backup plan in case of an internet outage or to further your understanding of how custom music works, being able to manually create custom music can be important. Custom music is made of two files, your music file and the object.json file, both of which are zipped into a parkobj file. AuraSpecs has a handy tutorial on Steam you can follow along with.

 

1. Create a new folder to store your music and object files for convenience's sake.

2. Cut or copy your music file into your folder. Unlike Gymnasiast's object creator, you can also use MP3 or WAV files with this method. OGG is still recommended due to low file size.

3. Download and extract the object.json.zip attachment and copy object.json into your folder.

4. Open object.json in your text editor of choice.

5. Change every field in brackets to match your custom music.

- [ID]: Your name or handle (i.e. gustav)

- [ObjectID]: A unique identifier for the song (i.e. allstar)

- [Author1(, Author2)]: Author(s) for the song. Can be your own name or the composer of the original piece. Separate authors with commas. (i.e. Smash Mouth)

- [MUSIC FILENAME]: The exact name of your music file. Make sure the file extension matches!

- [Music Name]: The name of the song as it will appear in the object selection. (i.e. Shrek style)

6. Save object.json.

7. Select both your music file and object.json and compress both into a ZIP folder.

8. Rename the ZIP folder including extension to the ID line in object.json followed by .parkobj as the file extension. (i.e. gustav.music.allstar.parkobj)

9. Copy the new parkobj into your object folder.

 

Adding Music To Your Park

 

1. Open or restart OpenRCT2 to refresh your object library.

2. Open the Options and confirm the Cheats menu is enabled in the gear tab.

3. Open the park you want to add the custom music to.

4. Open the Object Selection from the Cheats menu (golden shovel tab).

5. Select Advanced at the right to open additional tabs.

6. Select the Music tab third from the left.

7. Locate and check your new music track.

8. Add your music track to a ride, open, and enjoy!

Great, thanks! Your tutorial came just when I needed it !

Good work Gustav. I will add that sites/tools trying to make streaming content downloadable are a legal grey zone and can sometimes be a security concern. My personal choice would be https://jdownloader.org/jdownloader2 .

This has come at a very good time! Good job Gustav!!!

Good work Gustav. I will add that sites/tools trying to make streaming content downloadable are a legal grey zone and can sometimes be a security concern. My personal choice would be https://jdownloader.org/jdownloader2 .

 

I definitely considered the legal grey area while writing this guide. Just kinda forgot to address it.