KF2: Swapping Out Music Tracks (Custom Music)

A simple guide on how to create your own custom music tracks for KF2. (Swapping out, anyway.) This allows you to change any music track in-game and replace it with one of your own. Useful for those who don't like the screamo tracks of KF2. :^)

Setting Up

Hey there, KF2 community. I realize that TWI put out the SDK on "release" for map creation only, but this doesn't have anything to do with the SDK. However, the SDK can also be used to change artist / song names of the tracks. Unfortunately, this doesn't work online and causes version mismatches. I don't know if hosting with modified track names will actually break the whitelist, but I'll do testing in the future.

Anyway, changing songs in Killing Floor 2 is not that difficult once you get the required tools and sit through the downloads. First thing's first, you'll need a few things:

• WWise Authoring Tools[www.audiokinetic.com]
Be sure to hit "Offline Setup for Windows" to open the required files. You'll need one of the WWise Authoring files (Probably 64-bit) and the Authoring Data installer.



Once that's out of the way, you'll also need:

• Audacity[sourceforge.net] or Goldwave[www.goldwave.com] (Or any program that can convert audio files)
You'll need one of these programs, due to the fact that your music files will have to be converted into .wav format to work in-game. Otherwise, it'd be a little hard converting it to .wem format. (AKA the music format KF2 uses)

Once you have all of this junk installed, you're ready to start converting.

Converting to .WAV

First thing's first, you're going to have to convert your music file to .wav format.

When you start Audacity (the best choice), it should look something like this:


To load your music file, you can either use the File menu or drag your track onto the blank window. Once you do that, it should show something like this:


Luckily, you're probably not going to have to make any edits to your sound file. If you want to do something fancy like adding a fade-in effect, that's simple. Look up some Audacity tutorials or something, it's right there in the menu.

From here, we can actually export / convert our music track to .wav format. Go to File > Export and be sure to pick WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM for the "Save as type".



You can save your file anywhere, I'd advise giving it a lowercase name with no spaces just in case. Underscores should be fine. Be sure to save it in a place you can find it later!

Now it's WWise time, we're almost there!

.WAV to .WEM - WWise

It's WWise time, the whole reason you downloaded that program!

The download may have been a little big, but it's worth it if you want to swap out your KF2 soundtrack. Since WWise is downloaded, go ahead and start it from your Start menu.

Mine looks like:
Start > All Programs > Audiokinetic > Wwise v2014.1.4 build 5248 > Wwise 64-bit


Once you start WWise, you should get a window. If you get any errors, make sure you downloaded the Wwise Authoring Data install file from the first part. It's big, but you need it!

Starting WWise should hopefully give you a window that looks like this:
(I've already made a junk project for converting my sounds.)


Hit that New button on the bottom-left and you should get a little something like this:



Feel free to hit Select None to remove all of the additional junk, and be sure to give your project a name. Hit OK and you should get a big window that looks like this:



EDIT: 4/24/2015:
There's actually another step you've got to do here. You've got to set the conversion mode to Vorbis Quality High. To do this, go to Project > Project Settings. From there, click Source Settings and click the three dots.



From here, locate Vorbis Quality High and select that as the conversion type.



After this, you can exit project settings and go back to the menu you were at before.

Next, choose Project > Import Audio Files.


You should get something like this:



Ensure that your settings match the following:


From this point, you can hit Add files... and browse for the .wav file you created with your audio program. It should add an audio entry that looks something like this:



Hit Import and you should be back at the menu shown when you created your project. From here, go back up to Project > Convert All Audio Files and you'll get this:



If you haven't checked Windows, do it already. This is what you'll need to save your .wem files. Hit OK and everything should convert properly. It won't give you a message, you'll just be back at that menu again.

Time to close WWise, you're done converting!

Swapping Files - Finale!

The (more) tedious part is done, time to get your track in-game!

WWise won't tell you that your file has been converted to .wem, but it has. To find it, you'll have to open your WWise project in:

My Documents\WwiseProjects\<your project here>\.cache\Windows\SFX

I've converted a few files before, so mine looks like this:



The .wem files should be named according to the name of the .wav file you exported earlier. Grab one of these to use for your game by copying it, then navigate to your KF2 audio folder.

<your Steam folder>\steamapps\common\killingfloor2\KFGame\BrewedPC\WwiseAudio\Windows

If you found the right folder, you should see more folders and some .wem files like so:



This is where you're going to replace the music files. Obviously, all of the music files have random names. There is, however, a way to figure out which files belong to which tracks. In this folder, you should have two files:

WwiseDefaultBank_WW_MACT_Default.txt
WwiseDefaultBank_WW_MAMB_Default.txt

MACT (Music ACTion) is for combat music played in-game.
MAMB (Music AMBient) is for ambient music played in-game.

Both of these text files contain the basic names for music tracks, and the filename they correspond to. Ambient music is played during trader-time. For the purpose of this guide, I'm going to replace Hans Volter's boss music. Since this is combat music, it'd be in the MACT file. Open WwiseDefaultBank_WW_MACT_Default.txt and scroll down until you find:

Streamed Audio	ID	Name	Audio source file	Generated audio file	Wwise Object Path	Notes

Track identification starts here. After looking through the tracks, you should be able to find the one you want. The artists are listed in abbreviated form, so Fit For a King would be FFAK. I'm replacing the boss music, so I want to find:

666327332	MUS_SH_Boss_DieVolter

(If you ever forget, boss music starts with 666.) The ID number on the left should be the same as the filename in our Windows folder we found the text file in. Sure enough, here it is:



For future reference, you might want to rename this file and put a suffix on the end. I put "_DieVolter" on the end so I know what the original track was. Still have that .wem file from earlier? Paste it into this folder. Go back to the .txt file with the IDs and find the ID of the track that you just replaced, or grab it from the renamed filename. In my case, 666327332.

I'm going to rename my file from pride_DB50BAB0.wem to 666327332.wem.

After this, you're done!

Final Words

Changing the artist and song name is definitely possible, but it won't work online as I've said before. If TWI changes this or someone figures out the hex black magic for UE3, I'll write an amendment.

After following this guide, you should be ready to create your own custom soundtrack for Killing Floor 2. It may be tedious, but you'll get all the neat features like volume decrease in ZED time. The tracks will still be listed under Killing Floor artist and song names, but this is about the only thing that can be done right now.

Hopefully TWI decides to leave things as-is in regards to the sound system, and this won't cause any mismatches or forced downloads. Once (if) the workshop comes out, music mods should definitely be a priority for upload possibilities.

Good luck, zed slayers! Have fun modding your soundtracks!

ADDENDUM: Changing Track Names

May 2, 2015:

A few people have asked me how to change the track names, even though it won't work online. (It might, if the server has the files too.) Either way, this should help with that.

First thing's first, open the SDK and head straight to the Content Browser. Head to Packages -> Audio -> Music and you should see two packages: WW_MACT_Default and WW_MAMB_Default. Assuming you read the rest of the tut, you should know what MACT and MAMB stand for.



I'm going to change the boss music for this addendum, something simple. To do so, open the WW_MACT_Default package and scroll to the bottom with all of the archetypes. The track names should be self explanatory, so locate the track you want to change.



Double-click the archetype icon of your track and it should open a window with a series of parameters. The parameters you need to change should be pretty self-explanatory:



As far as I know, the album really isn't used anywhere. But click the textboxes on the right and change the artist / song name as you desire. You can do this for as many tracks as you want, or just one. In this case, I'm going to change the boss trackname and leave it at that.

At this point, right-click any of the icons in the music package and pick Save.



This won't work in-game though, there are some extra steps we need to take. By hitting the Save button, we put it in KF2's Unpublished folder. This is located in:

C:\Users\YOU\Documents\My Games\KillingFloor2\KFGame\Unpublished\BrewedPC\Packages\Audio\Music

Go ahead and open this folder up, you should see the new .upk(s) including the tracks you changed.



Copy your music package(s) from this folder and head to your actual KF2 game folder. Furthermore, open the folder containing the music audio packages. This should be:

STEAMFOLDER\steamapps\common\killingfloor2\KFGame\BrewedPC\Packages\Audio\Music

Paste your edited .upk file(s) in here and overwrite as necessary. Keeping a backup of the originals would be a great idea, especially if you want to connect to servers! Once playing KF2 and the track you replaced begins to play, you should see your new song title in the top-right.



Remember that this does not work online, so you'll have issues when connecting to public servers. If anything happens, keep your original .upk files on hand.

Hopefully this will help some people, especially those playing solo!

[ARandomNoob]

Ok the tracks are muted

[ARandomNoob]

This guide is big, not difficult, just big

I'll try it later to see if all the instructions are correct

[Plutonia2600]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=712455634
https://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Wwise_-_Audio_Modding_(TWR2)

For those having trouble, this guide and this version of WWise (the only old one i could find) worked for me.

[ParinJhai Saelim]

Yo! unreal engine 3?

[Bingus]

"simple guide"

[SyndicateZulu]

I can attest to Handsome Deer's comment, game crashes upon map loading.

[Handsome Deer]

P.S. the musci starts but immediately crashes

[Handsome Deer]

My game crashes when music should play, only working on music between waves. My own music only play between waves, and i must change to vorbis quality low to work. Vorbis quality high crashes the game when chosen musci starts.

[Gravemind1]

Jesus christ, yeeahhh no thanks wayyyyyy too complicated for me, you'd think they'd just add a custom songs file but I guess thats too difficult :l

[TamiyaGuy]

So the guide is brilliant and I've got music playing, but it's heavily biased towards the right speaker. Another commenter had the same issue a few pages back - does anyone know of a solution to this? I'm pretty stuck.