Something to help modders - a template for inserting new area preset music to your (custom) area.

this "guide" assumes that you know basics of FMOD that comes with DA toolset.

so how to add new music preset to your area?
it's relatively simple. what you need is to load this template to your FMOD designer, add your (custom) music, build project, then add your project as entry to "music_projects.gda" file, and place all in your module override folder (with fsb and fev produced by building the project).

Prepairing yourself:
- it's up to you, I've created folder on the desktop with 2 subfolders - "source" and "build", and in source I've placed music for use in my project. builded project will obviously go to "build" folder.

Starting up:
- open FMOD.
- load template (File -> Open project), save it under another name (choose name which is meaningful to you, mine is simple - "yadam").
- click on "Events" tab.
- under hierarchy rename "your_preset_name" to name of your preset (SP use NTB_Forest, URN_Gauntlet, and similar) - this will appear in "music preset" dropdown in area editor.
- in left upper window under property "Name" change name of the project as you like, but keep it simple, in my case it is "yad_music" - this will be the name for the entry in your "music_projects.gda" file.
- in field "Audio source directory" choose path to your "source" directory, do the same for "Build directory".

Set up sound bank:
- click on "Wave banks" tab.
- rename "mymod_music_bank_strm_new" to something meaningful to you (but simple!), in my case it's "yad_music_bank_strm_new" - this will be the name of your *.fsb file.

Adding sounds:
- click on "Sound definitions" tab.
- here you have some predefined audio "folders" like "combat", "main", etc.., this is what FMOD understand as "sounds". in FMOD individual tracks are named as "wavetable". one "sound" can be made from more than one "wavetable" played randomly or in some order by probability chance. you can add new ones depending on how much you like to complicate stuff but remeber - this "folder" is what is played in the area, not individual track(s). this audio folders are already set up for use in event editor, so if you added music into "main" audio folder, it will be played in your area if you put music volume with enter/exit state "1" into your area or alterantively with scripting ("SetMusicIntensity(1)").
- right click on wanted folder, choose "Add wavetable.." and select your track(s). do that for every "folder". "main" is explore music, "combat" is for "combat", "dead" when your party is wiped out and "stingers" is for transition between game states.
- if you know FMOD you can play with different settings like volume, play mode, spawn time, etc..
- build your project.

Finishing:
- open music_projects.gda (with gdaApp) and add entry into it like "2" under ID and name of your project (what you changed instead of mymod_music that's also the name of the "*.fev" file). in my case it was "2" and "yad_music". (or just rename "mymod_music" to name of your music project)
- copy builded *.fev, *.fsb and music_projects.gda files to your mod override folder.
- restart toolset and check if you have your preset listed under area music presets.

Usage:
- place music volume in your area and set enter and exit states to "1".
OR
- in area script AREA_PRELOAD_EXIT event add line "SetMusicIntensity(1);"
- export and test in game.

Advanced:
if you want more than one track for your area, specially if area is large, you can add more sounds to project to be played depending of the situation (PC enters into "dark forest").
- on "Sound definitions tab" you can right click to "music_ingame" and choose "Add empty sound definition", name as you like.
- right click on newly created "audio folder", choose "Add wavetable.." and add wanted track(s).
- on upper window you can set defaults for the sound like volume / play mode..
- on lower window with right click on wanted wavetable you can set percentage for (I guess) how often will play..
- click on "Events" tab.
- double click "main" event.
- right click on audio layer and choose "Add sound.."
- add your's newly created sound (audio folder - loop mode set to Oneshot)
- place start of new sound little before "2" on grid.
- now you have to do the same for "combat" and "death" events, if you dont want to add new sound(s), just re-use existing for combat and death, you can duplicate them, or add them again, place them on grid like you did for "main" event.
- it is important for "main", "combat" and "death" events to all have same number of sounds on the grid, so if you have 2 sounds on main, you should have 2 sounds on combat and death event also.
- you can right click on sound and choose "Sound instance properties", there you can set some additional properties.
- play with settings (volume/play mode/etc), check existing ones and see how they can fit for new sounds.
- (re)build project and place new fsb and fev file to your mod override folder. (gda is already there and set up).
- you can test if it works by changing music volume enter and exit state to "2", or with SetMusicIntensity(2) in area script (this becomes "2." music event or "music state"). or add 2 music volumes with different states to your area and take a walk.

you can also open and check music.fdp from core fdp files project and see how other presets are made, also how everything is set up and which sounds are used. maybe you just want to create your own sound compilation, so then you'll need to extract files from original fsb with fdpExtractor and add them to your FMOD project.

More on Music volume:
- it seems that music volume is just a simple switch. enter state - what should be played when you enter; exit state - what should be played (or continue to play) when you exit volume. and if you enter combat mode, then engine plays sounds from currently selected event (state) on "combat" event grid from FMOD. how tracks are played is defined in FMOD (settings in events grid / sounds / etc.). so you can set up music volume enter state to "1" and exit state to "2", when PC enters first state should be played and when PC exit volume second state should be played.

- you can also override music volume by script, so if you have situation when your PC leaves town to manage some quest, you can have some tense music (in town), and when he completes quest upon returning to town you can set some happy music. all you have to do is to give tag to your music volume in area editor. then in quest completion plot script add "SetMusicVolumeStateByTag("tag of mv", N);" where N is number of music state.

in DA:O SP sound is optimized so in example stingers are loaded into memory and are played from there. For your custom music all is streamed from disk (there could be some delays), I believe if you don't exaggerate with music it should be fine.

I was rolling of laughs when played some darkspawn invasion quest with Iron Maiden's Trooper acoustic version in background. ^^
Huh, this was long. I hope this would be useful to someone in quest for custom music preset. I hope I was clear enough cause I'm not a native english speaker. :)