[TEC?] Audio File Shortcuts for Radio Stations

[derweissepenguin]

I just got done installing a ton of radio stations (thanks mainly to fred8615/Captain Cox/Digital_Trucker, you guys rock!), and realized most of them don't have a lot of music to fill in between programs. I was wondering if anyone knows whether creating shortcuts in the radio directory to audio files elsewhere on the disk would work, or if there is another alternative to creating full size copies of the songs I already have in other directories.

I'm going to give the shortcuts a try, I'll let people know if it works, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't. Hopefully, someone with more technical prowess than me might know why.

[fred8615]

Unfortunately, no. The problem is that you can't link to one folder for music, and another for Events. Scripted events have to be in the "Events" sub-folder of the folder linked to, or they won't play. I too wish they had setup a system like that. It would make things easier, and smaller. But they didn't, so we're stuck.

Now of course, you can link multiple stations to one folder, as I did originally for my AFRS stations. But then you run into the problem of hearing programs you've already heard all over again when you switch stations. That's why I included a single high powered station info in the AFRS Add-on.

[Von Manteuffel]

Fred 8615 is right. There's no way around having tracks, or non-scripted programmes sitting in the individual Radio Station folder next to the events.ini folder.

Since you can't cross-link you need a separate copy of a track in each Radio Station folder if you want to include it as a random track for when that station's not playing out its scripted material, but you're tuned to it.

This means that HD space vs. quality could become an issue - especially if you have a lot of radio stations. Since the game is a WWII simulation, when radio stations picked up by a boat in the middle of the Pacific would be a long way from even decent on-land AM signal quality I favour transcoding tracks and programmes to the smallest possible file size ( that's a bit-rate of around 15 kbps ). At least you'll be able to have a fair number of tracks available to you without using too many Gigabytes of HD space.

One solution is to have all your scripted news and programmes in a single station and script them within the events.ini folder to play at a certain time on a certain date. Then fill the Station folder with random material ( single tracks, or radio programmes ). That way,you'll know - for example - that News broadcasts are scheduled at - say - 06.00, 12.00 and 18.00 - each day. This can be the same News broadcast for that day, of course, and, since all we're talking about is duplicating entries in the events.cfg file and editing them to play out at a different time, you can repeat each daily broadcast as many times in the day as you see fit, just by including a differently timed link to it in the events.cfg file..

If you want specialist stations ( i.e. devoted to a particular style of music, or radio series, you can create a non-scripted station ( one with an empty events.ini file ) and just drop the tracks / programmes into the Radio Station folder for use as random tracks. Of course, it's best to avoid using date-specific tracks & programmes for this - a prime example is "White Christmas", or the Bob Hope Christmas Special which sound very odd in June, even to those who are not totally devoted to realism.

Since I have limited time to play and use lots of TC, I prefer single music tracks, or short radio features and programmes - nothing more than 15 minutes. Have a look at my music website (link below) to see if there's anything there you might be able to use.

[derweissepenguin]

Thanks, guys! I've lost my marbles and decided to try running a patrol in realtime, so I was hoping to keep myself from returning to sanity with the radio. Looks like I've got something besides homework to pass the time while I head to Hiroshima.