templates [TUTORIAL] UPDATED, UPDATED Guide on How to Create Music Mods (With or Without TheScraps/Klei's Templates)

[Cagealicous]

Before I go into the "Before I begin with this guide..." I have to mention I have updated the Workshop mod to have, if not, all the missing tracks like gardening, stage play music, lunar, sailing, etc. like that. (Pearl's Island, Pause music, and Full Moon music is bugged at the moment. So, that will be updated in the near future. (Hopefully...) Anyway, I did add a bit to the guide, mainly persisting in the Simple Event area. (Special thanks to @Garamondeand anyone else who updated the dynamicmusic.lua.)

Before I begin with this guide, I have to mention the previous guide I wrote back in 2019. If at anytime you want to view that guide, go to it either using the URL or click on the window below: 

For this guide, I will be showing how to download the Don't Starve Mod Tools, getting the right files for making music mods, using FMOD for specifically music mods, and uploading your music mod (if you don't already know.)
 

What you will need:

• A Text Editor (Really, any text editor will do, just not Notepad. What I use is Notepad++, but sometimes the website could be down or your operating system cannot use the program. If any issues are to occur, just use a different one.)
• Don't Starve Mod Tools (Mainly the program FMOD Designer within the tools and the Workshop Uploader.)
• Instead of including TheScraps98's guide downloads, I'm going to provide a variation of my own since his is a bit outdated, but I am still going to give credit to him. This also applies to Klei's Official Music Mod tutorial for Don't Starve since that one is also very outdated.
  For my Tutorial music mod, you can get it by clicking here.
• The audio files that you want to use. 
• A picture you want to use to represent your music mod.

 

How to get the Mod Tools

The mod tools can be found within your library. As for the process, well... it has changed with the new Steam Library update back in October of 2019. To access it, you will need to go to your Library and click the tab GAMES AND SOFTWARE. From there, you can tick the TOOLS option.

 

 

After that, you can search for the tool with the search bar or look for it in alphabetical order.
 

 

Of course, in my case, I have the tool installed along with it being within a category. When you start the tool up, you will be prompted with this message.

 

You will want to select the Launch FMOD Designer option. Congratulations! You have passed the Mod Tools section of this guide.

How to use FMOD for Music Mods

So, now that we have found the tools, lets begin with getting the project setup. First of all, you will need to download the Workshop item I will include so you can follow these steps to understand how to replace any tracks within this project file.

The first step is to load the project data. In order to do that, we go to File -> Open Project... 

 

From that point, you'll want to navigate until you get to my workshop mod. The file location can be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam/steamapps\workshop\content\322330 and it will be in a folder named whatever the Workshop ID is for the item. After you locate it, you'll want to open it.

 

Once it's open, you'll notice a bunch of events on the left-hand side window. Each one can be altered by clicking on each individual one and viewing the right-hand menu. Let's try out the music_FE event.
 

 

After you click on it, you'll see many things you can do on the right. Let's not mess with those settings right now and focus on replacing the track in question. In order to replace said track, you can right click on the big blue object in the center of the layer00 parameter. From there, you will want to Replace object...

 

Soon after, you will be prompted with a window where you can look through your added sounds. From here, we want to choose Add sound file... then you will want to locate your sound file(s) of choice. (I highly recommend that you create a folder to store all of your data in. Like for example, copy my workshop item's folder into the Don't Starve Together Mods Folder. You will need to do that anyway since you will have to test it to make sure it's working later.)

 

Then, you choose your file and it should now replace the previous slience.mp3 file. (I should also mention that you can use any format that FMOD can accept such as .wav, .mp3, or my favorite .ogg. When you use these files you will need to alter your build later on to accompany these file types so the size of the project doesn't exceed 100 MB.) Now you have figured out how to replace audio clips for these types of events. Good job!

Types of Events and How to Replace their Audio
 

The first event was just a heavily modified Multi-Track Event, which usually only show with a red "C". These events can't quite be recreated from the ground-up. Instead, you will need to copy-and-paste the event into the main music group folder. Now that's out of the way, the next two events are not too hard to understand. 

The first one is called a Simple Event. This one can have music either looping in a single playlist, or it can function as a single song that plays. (Which isn't really different from copy-and-pasting a Modified Multi-Track Event.) Many options are listed, but if you just want to add a track or few, right click on the empty space in the middle of the Playlist box and click Add Sound... From there, you can do the same thing as the last event, but you can add multiple tracks into this one. The way they work is that they are set to loop in a fashion where no-one track repeats unless they haven't been played yet. I can't really recommend selecting a different Playback Mode, but if you are feeling adventurous, then by all means! Anyhow, you can also do the same for the Playlist Behavior, but try not to change WAY too much. You don't want to get yourself stuck with messed up settings. I might also include that you can alter the sound by navigating to the Volume property. From there, you can only go into the negative range to turn down the volume. I don't recommend going past -2 unless your audio is WAY too quiet. Which even then, I would try to fix that in an audio editing software (such as Audacity) After you all said and done, you can navigate to the next type of event.

Side-note*

Now if you have an issue with porting audio into a Simple-Track Event, A simple fix would be to drag and drop your audio into the Playlist instead of right clicking and clicking Add Sound... That way you won't have a file in the Playlist saying something like "/".

 

The other one is a normal Multi-Track Event. This one is just an average Multi-track event, but you'll notice the ones for music_work have a wave going through them. This wave is a "fade-in" property created by either Klei or TheScraps98. I chose not to mess with it ever since I started working on music mods mainly because it would be difficult to fix it if you don't have a whole lot of knowledge of how FMOD Designer works. Replacing the audio is just like the first Multi-track event. Although, to get around that pesky wave, you'll need to right-click in the empty blue space occupying the audio. Don't right-click on the red wave since you might bring up the wrong properties menu. Nothing really else for me to explain here since I already had explained how the volume control and audio changing works. That pretty much wraps up this section.

 

Building your Project
 

If you feel completely done with altering the project, you are going to want to make sure you save your project. I really cannot stress this enough since over the past four years of making mods for Don't Starve Together, my projects would be lost thanks to my clumsiness of forgetting to save or just the program crashing in general. Of course, if you have higher-end PCs like I do now, you shouldn't have to worry about the engine crashing. Although, save regardless. To save, you just do like any other type of file. 
 

For building the project's file, you'll want to head over to the Banks tab. Once there, you'll want to click on the music_mod bank.
 

 

This section will allow you to view all your current sound files and the properties to the right. For the properties, you'll want to make sure your bank is named music_mod. If it isn't, change it to that. As for Compression, you'll want to change that to whatever file type you are using. (.wav, .mp3, etc...) 

 

 

After everything is set and ready to go, press Ctrl - B and it will bring up the Build menu. From here, you can see your options. If you would like, you can use the Output > > option to see where your project's exported files will end up and whatnot or even view any errors you have. Otherwise, just click Build to compile the .fsb and .fev

 

Now, you will want to navigate to find your project's compiled files are. The usual spot will be in a subfolder called sound. For the sake of the workshop mod's spot, it will end up in sound/project/sound. From there, you will want to take the .fsb and .fev files and put them in the main sound folder within the main root of the mod. 

 

 

Congrats, you have completed all the steps to making the main sound files for the mod! Now time for the final part.

Final Revisions and Uploading your Mod
 

Now it's time to wrap this whole mod up into a nice pretty bow. The first step is changing the modinfo.lua file in the main root of your music mod. I will be going off my mod's info file if you are using the workshop mod I uploaded. You will want to open the .lua file with the text editor of your choice and changing anything in the details all the way at the top to whatever you desire for each field.

 

After you have done that, then you are now complete with the coding part of this guide. The next part is to add the icon you would like to represent your music mod. If you navigate to the images folder in the mod's main folder, you will find a folder labeled icon. In this folder, you can use any of the parts given to you in that folder, but if you do, make sure you read the text document included. Although, if you feel like using your own image instead, make sure you save your image in the images folder labeled modicon.png and make sure it is 128x128. Once done with that, you can go ahead and open the Workshop Uploader.

 

 

To open the Uploader, you will want to reopen Don't Starve Mod Tools again, but this time choose the first option. Afterwards, you will be prompted with this window and you can select between Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together. For our sake, let's choose Don't Starve Together. 

 

After this has been chosen, you can select Add and you will be greeted with a new list of options.

 

The next steps are to find every piece of the required data such as the mod folder for Update Data and to use the selected Preview Image. You can also change the Name and Description here, but later you can change it from the item's Workshop page. Once you have found everything for the mod, you can tick the Tags if you are feeling interested in labeling your mod. After everything is said and done, go ahead and Publish!

Conclusion

Well, that's pretty much all that you'll need for this guide. Hopefully, this helped you with any of your endeavors towards finishing or fixing your music mods. If anything, there is always multiple ways to do something in modding. If you have any questions or feedback to give me, please let me know what you have on your mind in the replies section. I wish you all good luck and thanks for stopping by.


 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 20, 2023 by Cagealicous
New Revisions and more

[Garamonde]

Another amazing guide. I hope this gets pinned!

As for comments, I personally recommend setting the compression to .OGG, as that helps ensure your mod is small enough to be uploaded to the workshop (it has to be under 100 MB or else it won't upload, if I remember correctly) while maintaining good quality for the sounds.

Thanks for updating this!

[Sukaiba]

Do tracks like DST_theme_portaled and jukebox need to be at a different category or need to be at a certain template (Simple/Multi-track) amount of songs to work? I've already put custom music for them but they refuse to play them

I've modded basically everything else, and they are the only ones that refuse to use the custom music

Edited October 23, 2021 by Skyver

[Garamonde]

Nah, they can just be copy-pasted from music_FE and renamed. Also be sure that they are listed under the modmain.lua of your mod as RemapSoundEvent's.

[Sukaiba]

Yeah, got it done now, thanks for the info!

Though I guess I talked too soon

Now I'm having trouble with the bosses with unique music (aka Klaus, Dragonfly, Antlion, Beequeen, Fuelweaver

The one I cannot even test is Fuelweaver, I cannot even reach it)

I engage with Dragonfly and it keeps using the standard season music, tried doing a RemapSoundEvent on modmain, tried a local trigger danger in the dynamicmusic script, it keeps using the default seasonal boss music

and Ruins, I recall doing the chest offering thing from an event, which I'm super certain is the Ruins, but the Caves kept playing

(Although I'm super new to this so I could be missing some info or done some oopsie I don't realize)

Edited November 11, 2021 by Skyver

[goblinball]

@CagealicousHello! I noticed that your workshop mod appears to be missing some music, such as most specific boss themes (dfly, bee queen, etc) along with a variety of other music (such as lunar island work, gardening, cawnival, etc). How do I replace music which isn't present in the tutorial mod? Is it as simple as simple as adding an event then giving it the right name or is there some complex system?

[Leonidas IV]

On 4/3/2022 at 1:11 AM, goblinball said:

Hello! I noticed that your workshop mod appears to be missing some music, such as most specific boss themes (dfly, bee queen, etc) along with a variety of other music (such as lunar island work, gardening, cawnival, etc). How do I replace music which isn't present in the tutorial mod? Is it as simple as simple as adding an event then giving it the right name or is there some complex system?

You can use any copy of them with any name and then do a RemapSoundEvent in modmain:

RemapSoundEvent("path/to/original/music", "your/music/path/in/fmod/bank")

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Leonidas IV

[Cagealicous]

On 4/19/2022 at 1:05 PM, Leonidas IV said:

You can use any copy of them with any name and then do a RemapSoundEvent in modmain:

RemapSoundEvent("path/to/original/music", "your/music/path/in/fmod/bank")

 

Well, for the most part, yes. Although, the music uses it's own custom dynamicmusic.lua file, so the songs aren't included with the file itself. Technically, someone could possibly add the tracks back into the file, but I never have gotten the chance to do it since I don't really bother much with modding anymore. Might eventually try to fix this.

[Cagealicous]

On 4/3/2022 at 12:11 AM, goblinball said:

@CagealicousHello! I noticed that your workshop mod appears to be missing some music, such as most specific boss themes (dfly, bee queen, etc) along with a variety of other music (such as lunar island work, gardening, cawnival, etc). How do I replace music which isn't present in the tutorial mod? Is it as simple as simple as adding an event then giving it the right name or is there some complex system?

I know this response is a year late, but I plan on updating the tutorial (again) since I have figured out how to solve this issue thanks to some fellow mod creators which I don't exactly remember the names of (sorry whomever that is). Just gonna be a bit until I can roll out the edited guide and updated workshop mod.

[goblinball]

On 6/18/2023 at 11:07 AM, Cagealicous said:

I know this response is a year late, but I plan on updating the tutorial (again) since I have figured out how to solve this issue thanks to some fellow mod creators which I don't exactly remember the names of (sorry whomever that is). Just gonna be a bit until I can roll out the edited guide and updated workshop mod.

Thank you!