TaleSpire – How to Organize Your Audio From Packs

The following discusses how to organize your audio obtained from Thunderstore packs.

Organizing Your Audio From Packs

By Lord Ashes

Audio Plugin now supports folders. Since a number of Thunderstore audio packs were created before this, the content in these will be flat. That means they will appear in the root of each pulldown.

If you are fine with that and don’t want to make use of the folder feature then you don’t need to read on. If, instead, you would like to organize these folders then read on.

Step 1: Disconnect the Pack folder

If we modify the contents of a pack folder and the pack gets an update, all our hard work will be reset. To avoid this we want to disconnect the audio pack folder. This means updates won’t reset our work but it also means the pack won’t be updated.

To disconnect your pack folder, do the following:

1. Locate the plugins install folder.
2. Make a copy of the pack folder. I suggest using a name such as the original pack name with “-disconnected” added to the end. This makes it clear what the original source was but also indicates that it is not longer connected.
3. Use R2ModMan to uninstall the pack. This will leave the disconnected copy but remove the original.

Step 2: Manual Detailed Organization

If you want to have a detailed breakdown of audio files into specific folders then you must do this manually since the audio files don’t have any easily accessible meta data to automatically categorize them.

1. Create folders and sub-folders (to whatever desired level) within the /Audio/Ambient and /Audio/Music folders.
2. Move the audio files into the respective folders.

Alternative: Organization By Packs

If you just want to organize your audio content by packs, do the following:

1. Rename the Audio folder (which contains Ambient and Music) to something else, so that it is not recognized by the audio plugin.
2. In your plugins install folder, create a [LocalContent]/CustomData or similar (e.g. [AudioContent]/CustomData) folder.
3. Inside the [LocalContent]/CustomData folder create the Audio/Ambient and Audio/Music sub-structures that audio plugin requires.
4. Open a command prompt using the “Run As Administorator”. Change to the Ambient folder.
5. Create a symbolic link directory pointing at the Pack’s Ambient folder.
6. Change to the Music folder.
7. Create a symbolic link directory pointing at the Pack’s Ambient folder.

Creating A Symbolic Link Directory

Note: This must be done as an administrator or it will fail.

mklink /D folder link_folder

For example:

CD /D "D:\r2modmanPlus-local\TaleSpire\profiles\Beta\BepInEx\plugins[LocalContent]\CustomData\Audio\Ambient"

mklink WeirdAl "D:\r2modmanPlus-local\TaleSpire\profiles\Beta\BepInEx\plugins\LordAshes-WeirdAlMusicPack\CustomData\Audio\Ambient"

The above code switches into the [LocalContent]\CustomData\Audio\Ambient folder and then makes a sub-folder called WeirdAl which points at the location

D:\r2modmanPlus-local\TaleSpire\profiles\Beta\BepInEx\plugins\LordAshes-WeirdAlMusicPack\CustomData\Audio\Ambient.

This will cause the Audio Plugin to think that there is a WeirdAl folder in [LocalContent]\CustomData\Audio\Ambient full of audio files even though the content is actually still in the pack.

This means when the pack is updated, the Audio Plugin will still get the updates but then you will have to do the rename of Step A to ensure that the path matches again. If you don’t do this then you content will show up twice (once for the real pack location and one for the fake pack location).

Alternative: Organize By Pack – Easier But Worse Method

If you don’t want to much around with symbolic folders, you can use Step 1 to disconnect a pack folder and then copy the files into a location within [LocalContent]/CustomData/Audio/Ambient or [LocalContent]/CustomData/Audio/Music. This is easier but you lose the the auto update feature.