Hello, this old game JA2 has been brought back to life :cheers:, with the addition of this music. Thanks for the effort and time you put into this. I have been in a slag pit when it comes to MoDs for this game since my latest version of this game is on STEAM. Unfortunately their seems to have been some changes to the game making my 'steam' version poop. :whythis:

Anyways, this MoD works fine, even found myself surfing the net for the best deal, or I suppose take a pot shot and hit the local gaming stores..though the age of the game makes this rare.

Don't really know of any sites to recommend.

Ambient sounds would be a good addition but they'd have to be very subtle, so as not to annoy or appear repetitive.

1)Regarding sounds and music for Jagged Alliance 2 1.12, what would you like to see changed?

Button clicks in the main menu and the strategic screen don't sound very elegant. I'd keep the scheme (mechanical clicks), but improve the quality by using different, more ambient-like sounds.

1. The Laptop. I mean JA2's sounds are pretty distinctive, so I admit I have a bit of nostalgia in my head when hearing that "Woosh", but I've pretty much always thought something along the lines of "If you changed the sounds, how'd you do that?"
   I'd simply replace the button beeps with pretty (ambient) sci-fi-ish ones. Agreed, it's a very old system, but even old systems have tried to advertise their stuff pretending they were the fffuture.
   And the "Woosh", it's not annoying, but still pretty loud, especially when you close the laptop for the first time and everything has been quiet so far. I'd opt for sci-fi sounds as well, because artificial sounds can be very calm, yet distinctive and in spite of JA2's rusty old charm might add to style. An alternative would be a calm logon or logoff (not Windows), maybe even like a small electronic motor humming and some parts clicking, then a smooth beep once it is opened.
   
2. Action sounds in JA2. Steps are okay, even jumps are, but opening and closing doors and lockers sounds bad. The problem is that repeating sounds (kicking a door until it's open, checking lots of potential item containers) really emphasize how ugly a sound can be. Doors with rusted door hinges being opened and slam shut again and again by civilians and soldiers alike make a stealth mission an auditive experience of the bad kind.
   
3. The crows. Crows have to be somewhat annoying, but I used to be confused when I heard them play with a corpse. It doesn't sound anything like flesh being eaten by birds. So birds in general, including the ambient one, are not very subtle. As opposed to cows. Cows rule.
   The occasional "some crow is making some eating sound" sound could be replaced with a (maybe longer?) sound of several birds arguing.
   
4. Item sounds. I think gun sounds have to be obnoxiously loud (while not sounding too bad at the same time), but while gun shots sound cool, some sounds like cocking a rifle and especially pumpguns are not strong enough, which doesn't mean they have to be louder, but different. They're barely recognizable. I believe there are millions of projects on changing gun sounds, so I'll leave it to that.
   
5. If that
   Hawkeye

   background machining/pumping sound going on in Vengeance at mine/oil rig sites

   is possible and works for vehicles, I'd love to have the ice cream truck play a very quiet jingle on loop. =D
   

1)So the installer worked correctly and without problems?
2)Was there anything that was confusing?
3)Was everything intuitive?
4)Did you finally hear the music in game?
5)Did the music change the atmosphere and pacing of the game?

Installing this was a piece of cake, I just followed the Readme. Nice idea of delivering compressed MP3s and decoding them into WAVs. Everything went fine.
1. Yes.
   
   I wondered why there was no original music folder. It would indeed be somewhat interesting to know where the original files are / were. You could include information about how everything works in your Readme file, I'm always interested in that kind of stuff and sometimes I have a problem installing things that aren't clear to me. Your Readme, by the way, looks great.
   [edit: Does the game already look for a "music" folder?]
   • The Readme says "Decode.exe", you've got a lame.exe and a decode.bat. I managed to figure out what was meant using my huge brains. You should change that, though. =D
   • The batch can remove the original MP3 files. But what are they? You basically want to leave nothing but the WAV files in the folder and save some space, am I right? [edit: Exactly, the batch says "del *.mp3".] You should explain that and point out that the MP3 files which are about to be deleted are the ones that have just been decoded, the ones from the archive, and they don't serve any purpose except if the user wants to listen to them outside the game. Otherwise it sounds as if you're deleting the original game music if you press Yes.
   • So describe what the decoder does and what it should look like in the end (lots of WAV files instead of MP3 files). This'll also make it easier for users to check if everything went like it should have. Even better if anybody doesn't get it to work for some reason.
2. It was pretty intuitive, yes. Download a package, extract, follow installation. However, like mentioned before, the most intuitive way would just have been replacing existing files with new ones. Since that isn't possible due to file size and so on, you should explain that.
3. I'm hearing the music, it sounds good. I haven't heard every track yet, I've only tried it for some minutes, but it's good.
4. I don't want to answer that in detail. Yes, the atmosphere has changed and it feels better, I can imagine leaving the music on as opposed to the original music, which wasn't too bad, but I didn't really enjoy it. As for now, I don't even know if I will keep your music or if I'll resort to the media player again, that doesn't even depend only on the quality of the music but on my mood. I'd need to play the game for a while, but that isn't really possible for now.

Can you think of a way of making it compatible to other sound sets? Create a music folder and then drop folders with WAV files in it, all with a specific name that needs to be put into or uncommented in the JA2.ini or something? I don't think selecting it in the game will be possible without intensive work. I can, however, imagine wanting to select a music set of my choice, put it in some folder and some INI, start the game and enjoy it.

• Data
• Data-1.13
• Data-UCNAS
• MyMusic

What color should I make the beds?

It needs to be really subtle so it doesn't draw the eye away from the text.