Adding date appropriate music to Gramaphone with SH3 Commander 2.7?

[SleazeyWombat]

Can anybody tell me how to do this?

I have 250 or so .ogg files from some of the various gramaphone packs that are around. I have converted all the .mp3 files to .ogg files to avoid skipping, incomplete play, etc.

Some of these songs are from the pre-war years, others are songs that were released in 1940, 1940, etc., all the way to 1945.

I culled all post-war songs, or covers by post-war artists. IE, no Bobby Darin, no "Victory At Sea", etc. Nothing kills the immersion for me than the gramaphone playing something from the post-war years!

Now, knowing the year (or in some cases, even the months these songs were popular), how can I add them to SH3Commander so they get randomized, and nothing from the future shows up in the playlist for a mission?

Is this even possible to do in SH3 Commander? I am quite willing to rename the files as needed for randomization, create whatever folders are needed, etc.

Thanks for any help you all can provide!

[JScones]

Yes, easy done with SH3Cmdr.

Simply create appropriate date sub-folders under the SH3 Commander\Dates\ folder. Then create the full folder path to the Gramophone folder starting from data and copy in the files.

For example:

C:\Games\SH3 Commander\Date\19390901\data\Sound\Gramophone\<All files that you want to play up to 1 Sep 1939>

C:\Games\SH3 Commander\Date\19391001\data\Sound\Gramophone\<All files that you want to play up to 1 Oct 1939>

C:\Games\SH3 Commander\Date\19391101\data\Sound\Gramophone\<All files that you want to play up to 1 Nov 1939>

File copies are cumulative, meaning that if the date is 1 Nov 1939 all files to that date will be available. However, this can be overcome by using the same file names in subsequent folders. For example, if the date was 1 Jan 1940 and your folder structure was:

C:\Games\SH3 Commander\Date\19390901\data\Sound\Gramophone\MySo ng.ogg

C:\Games\SH3 Commander\Date\19391101\data\Sound\Gramophone\MySo ng.ogg

Only one copy of MySong.ogg would be copied into SH3 - the last one.

Have a look at stock SH3Cmdr - it already does this exact thing with radio messages.

[SleazeyWombat]

Thanks, after I posted, I got to looking at the sh3 commander file structure, and the radio messages. I thought it might be something like that.

If I have a song, that was released in July 1940 (say), called SongOf1940.ogg, I would put it in the July 1940 folder, and if I understood correctly, it would be available for play for all the rest of the war, but not for play anytime before July 1940, and I would only have to put the one copy in the July1940 folder. Am I understanding correctly?

What about the randomization? Do I have to give the songs any special format name to get the randomization, or can I just leave the names as is (LiliMarlen.ogg, Tipperary.ogg, etc.) when I copy them into the appropriate date folder?

[JScones]

Originally Posted by SleazeyWombat

If I have a song, that was released in July 1940 (say), called SongOf1940.ogg, I would put it in the July 1940 folder, and if I understood correctly, it would be available for play for all the rest of the war, but not for play anytime before July 1940, and I would only have to put the one copy in the July1940 folder. Am I understanding correctly?

Correct. Although if the song was released *during* July and you don't know the exact date, I'd prolly put it in the August 1940 folder to ensure you don't get it too early.

Originally Posted by SleazeyWombat

What about the randomization? Do I have to give the songs any special format name to get the randomization, or can I just leave the names as is (LiliMarlen.ogg, Tipperary.ogg, etc.) when I copy them into the appropriate date folder?

Depends what you mean by Randomisation. With SH3Cmdr, all you need do is select the "Randomise Gramophone tracks" option and all tracks present in the Gramophone folder at time of running SH3 will be shuffled.

If you only want some tracks to play but not others, then you have a more complicated process by using SH3Cmdr's Random folder structure. Essentially the same as above, but you create the sub-folders under the Random\0\, Random\1\ etc etc folders. You can add more than the default 5 folders. SH3Cmdr selects a random number and will then load everything located under the associated Random\x\ folder.

[SleazeyWombat]

Thanks JS, I believe I have it sussed.

Thanks!