Muted Shandalar

[pou]

Edit

Moved to Shandalar forum.

Welcome aboard pou!




(For admins: Sorry if this is in the wrong section, as I registered only to post this. Please remove this line if/when you move this thread.)

I didn't find any directions to get the game muted (except deleting the sound files, which freezed the game), so tried my own way and ended up with this workaround.

In the .zip you will find two files, ___asd.bat and ___ASD.WAV

1.) Extract these files to your Magic\Program folder (which includes DuelSounds and Sound folders).
2.) Run ___asd.bat (which will replace all your sound files with muted ones)
3.) WOHOO! Play Shandalar and listen to music at the same time!

I won't take any responsibility updating this etc. Just giving this out of my fiancés love for the game.

edit: also, I'm drunk!

[pou]

So I had "suprisingly" missed couple of files, so here's new files

[Tapani]

Thank you!

Two days ago, I was actually looking for a way to mute Shandalar for my mod.. guess overwriting all the sound files was too barbaric for me to figure out

[pou]

Yey. If I helped at least one other than me and my girl, it was worth it
Maybe I even helped another Finn

And yes, the method is kind of brutal, but I've never listened to those sounds so..
Before (when it didn't work so well under newer Windowses) I just deleted the sound card from the virtual machine, but this wasn't option anymore..

[CirothUngol]

I wrote an "EZ DuelSound Toggler" several months ago for the 20100109 Release that I'd cobbled together (available in This Thread) It will toggle off/on the Shandalar animations and sounds in Shandalar, Gauntlet/Duels, and DeckBuilder. Just copy the following code into NotePad and save as "DuelSounds.cmd" (or any other .CMD file) and place it into your Manalink directory.

Code: Select all

@ECHO OFF
CLS
SET Display1=
SET Display2=

:: This batch file is friendly and can be used with any install of MtG: Manalink.
:: Simply set the "AltPath" variable to the FULL PATH of your MtG: Manalink Install,
:: or you may call this batch file with the FULL PATH as the 1st parameter,
:: or just drop a copy into your Manalink install directory and "SET AltPath=."
SET AltPath=.
:: MtG 2010 Edition WinXP Default is SET AltPath=C:\Program Files\MagicTG
:: MtG 2010 Edition Win Vista/7 Default is SET AltPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\MagicTG
IF NOT [%1]==[] SET AltPath=%1


ECHO CirothUngol's E-Z DuelSound Toggler
ECHO ___________________________________
ECHO.
IF NOT [%1]==[] GOTO End2

IF EXIST .\Program\DuelSounds\ARTIFACT.WAV GOTO Off1
IF EXIST .\Program\_DuelSounds\ARTIFACT.WAV GOTO On1

GOTO End1

:On1
CD .\Program
RENAME _DuelSounds DuelSounds
IF EXIST .\_Sound\ARCHMAGE.WAV (
  CD Sound
  DEL *.* /f /q
  CD..
  RD Sound
  RENAME _Sound Sound
)
CD..
ECHO.
ECHO MtG: Manalink 2.x 20100109
ECHO DuelSounds are now ON!
ECHO.
GOTO End1

:Off1
CD .\Program
RENAME DuelSounds _DuelSounds
IF EXIST .\Sound\ARCHMAGE.WAV (
  RENAME Sound _Sound
  MD Sound
  CD Sound
  COPY ..\_Sound\*WALK*.WAV /y >NUL
  CD..
)
CD..
ECHO.
ECHO MtG: Manalink 2.x 20100109
ECHO DuelSounds are now OFF!
ECHO.
GOTO End1

:End1
IF EXIST .\OldMagic\DuelSounds\ARTIFACT.WAV GOTO Off2
IF EXIST .\OldMagic\_DuelSounds\ARTIFACT.WAV GOTO On2

GOTO End2

:On2
CD .\OldMagic
RENAME _DuelSounds DuelSounds
IF EXIST .\_Sound\ARCHMAGE.WAV (
  CD Sound
  DEL *.* /f /q
  CD..
  RD Sound
  RENAME _Sound Sound
)
IF EXIST .\_StatWin\B_AMG.AVI (
  MOVE /y .\_StatWin\*.AVI .\StatWin\ >NUL
  RD _StatWin
  SET Display1= and Animations
)
CD..
ECHO.
ECHO MtG: Manalink 1.3.2
ECHO DuelSounds%Display1% are now ON!
ECHO.
GOTO End2

:Off2
CD .\OldMagic
RENAME DuelSounds _DuelSounds
IF EXIST .\Sound\ARCHMAGE.WAV (
  RENAME Sound _Sound
  MD Sound
  CD Sound
  COPY ..\_Sound\*WALK*.WAV /y >NUL
  CD..
)
IF EXIST .\StatWin\B_AMG.AVI (
  MD _StatWin
  MOVE /y .\StatWin\*.AVI .\_StatWin\ >NUL
  SET Display1= and Animations
)
CD..
ECHO.
ECHO MtG: Manalink 1.3.2
ECHO DuelSounds%Display1% are now OFF!
ECHO.
GOTO End2

:End2
IF EXIST %AltPath%\DuelSounds\ARTIFACT.WAV GOTO Off3
IF EXIST %AltPath%\_DuelSounds\ARTIFACT.WAV GOTO On3

GOTO End3

:On3
IF NOT [%AltPath%]==[.] PUSHD %AltPath%
RENAME _DuelSounds DuelSounds
IF EXIST .\_Sound\ARCHMAGE.WAV (
  CD Sound
  DEL *.* /f /q
  CD..
  RD Sound
  RENAME _Sound Sound
)
IF EXIST .\_StatWin\B_AMG.AVI (
  MOVE /y .\_StatWin\*.AVI .\StatWin\ >NUL
  RD _StatWin
  SET Display2= and Animations
)
IF NOT [%AltPath%]==[.] POPD
ECHO.
ECHO Magic the Gathering: Manalink
ECHO DuelSounds%Display2% are now ON!
ECHO.
GOTO End3

:Off3
IF NOT [%AltPath%]==[.] PUSHD %AltPath%
RENAME DuelSounds _DuelSounds
IF EXIST .\Sound\ARCHMAGE.WAV (
  RENAME Sound _Sound
  MD Sound
  CD Sound
  COPY ..\_Sound\*WALK*.WAV /y >NUL
  CD..
)
IF EXIST .\StatWin\B_AMG.AVI (
  MD _StatWin
  MOVE /y .\StatWin\*.AVI .\_StatWin\ >NUL
  SET Display2= and Animations
)
IF NOT [%AltPath%]==[.] POPD
ECHO.
ECHO Magic the Gathering: Manalink
ECHO DuelSounds%Display2% are now OFF!
ECHO.
GOTO End3

:End3
ECHO.
PAUSE

Note that it just renames the directories, and then replaces the "*WALK*.WAV" files to the "Sound" directory, which are the only ones required by Shandalar. When clicked again, it will replace everything... no harm done. Sometimes, the DeckBuilder will still have music (for some reason), but a reboot has always fixed this for me.
This .CMD script is intended for WinXP Only, and as I have no newer Windoze to test this on you will do so at your own risk! (works perfectly in WinXP, though). Please post if you have any problems with this script (remember, WinXP only...)

Edit - I have since aquired Windows 7, and this script runs just fine on any of the Microprose MTG installs I've tried... which is probably all of them. ^_^

[Huggybaby]

Nifty, thanks CirothUngol.

[chachaprince1]

I prefer to have the dual sounds but do agree that they are too loud. So, my fix was to run all of the wav files through the batch editor in WaveLab6 and lower the gain by 5.4.

This basically just made all of the dual sounds about half volume, which is where they belong.

[chachaprince1]

Attached are the dual sounds with 1/2 volume.

[zorq]

Thank you chachaprince1 for the quieter sounds. I didn't notice much difference... so I used Sound Exchange (sox) and set to 0.2 (a linear 20% I suppose).

Download and extract the latest sox at https://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/.
Next: add the sox install directory to the Path variable (expand here for Windows instructions).

| Open

Right-click My Computer and click Properties. In System Properties, click Advanced. Then click 'Environment Variables' at the bottom. Select Path, and Edit. Add a semicolon and the sox path at the end of what's already there:

Code: Select all

;C:\Program Files (x86)\sox-14-4-2

and now you can go explore the sox documentation and use it for all kinds of things.

sox has a lot of options! But the sox command we need is very simple per file, just

Code: Select all

sox artifact.wav tempdir\artifact.wav vol 0.2

And you can play around and change the 0.2 to a different loudness, expressed in dB if you like, etc. ...but we need to repeat for all the files; from a command prompt I was able to do

Code: Select all

cd c:\Program Files (x86)\MagicTG
mkdir DuelsoundsQ
for /f %x in ('dir /b duelsounds') do sox duelsounds\%x DuelsoundsQ\%x vol .2

This makes a DuelSoundsQ directory full of quieter sound files; you can then rename the old DuelSounds folder and remove the Q, or just paste over the old sounds (there's always reinstalling...). You can also apply this method to \Sounds and \Manalink\Sounds or roll your own loop/script/etc. But all I wanted was Shandalar quieter. And now off to defeat the green castle with my degenerate Timetwister/Contract From Below/Library of Leng deck...

[zorq]

Oh and here's a zip of my quieter files if you want; I also included a pile of silent wav files from pou's method. CirithUngol's looks snazzy too.

[chachaprince1]

Oh and here's a zip of my quieter files if you want; I also included a pile of silent wav files from pou's method. CirithUngol's looks snazzy too.

Hi Zorq, thanks for the files and method! So with the dual sounds and shandalar quiter, what remains at normal volume?

[zorq]

Oh, I misspoke, duelsounds is just for the duels; the Sound folder is for the rest the game including walking around in Shandalar, and Manalink/Sounds is for multiplayer setup I guess. See below for commands to make the general game sounds and manalink sounds quieter too. The audio files are a relatively big (80MB) upload so I'd rather not clutter the server backups in case that matters, given only 1 or 2 people dl'd the last one so far anyway.
This is a clunky substitute for an actual in-game volume control, but hey, it's what I know how to do. I mainly did this so I can play with sounds but also listen to podcasts in the background (tried 200% vol in VLC but they clip). (Note: avi files will still be full volume; if anybody wants to chime in with instructions to make them quieter that'd be cool too.)

OK. Once you have sox installed and in the right path (see prior post; also you can also unzip sox to your MagicTG folder if you don't want to mess with the PATH variable), run a command prompt (run->cmd) and paste in the following to create quieter sound files and back up the original loud sounds:

Code: Select all

cd c:\Program Files (x86)\MagicTG
mkdir Manalink\SoundsQ
for /f %x in ('dir /b Manalink\Sounds') do sox Manalink\Sounds\%x Manalink\SoundsQ\%x vol .2
ren Manalink\Sounds SoundsLoud && ren Manalink\SoundsQ Sounds

mkdir SoundQ
for /f %x in ('dir /b Sound') do sox Sound\%x Sound\%x vol .2
ren Sound SoundLoud && ren SoundQ Sound

mkdir DuelsoundsQ
for /f %x in ('dir /b Duelsounds') do sox Sound\%x duelsounds\%x vol .2
ren Duelsounds Duelsoundsloud && ren DuelsoundsQ Duelsounds

And to go back to default sounds:

Code: Select all

ren Manalink\Sounds SoundsQ && ren Manalink\SoundsLoud Sounds
ren Sound SoundQ && ren SoundLoud Sound
ren Duelsounds DuelsoundsQ && ren Duelsoundsloud Duelsounds

and toggle back on the quiet sounds now that you've made them:

Code: Select all

ren Manalink\Sounds SoundsLoud && ren Manalink\SoundsQ Sounds
ren Sound SoundLoud && ren SoundQ Sound
ren Duelsounds Duelsoundsloud && ren DuelsoundsQ Duelsounds

[chachaprince1]

The audio files are a relatively big (80MB) upload so I'd rather not clutter the server backups in case that matters, given only 1 or 2 people dl'd the last one so far anyway.

Hi Zorq! Thanks for your contribution! Do you think you could upload the revised files to Google Drive perhaps?