Alright, guide time. I'll try to make it as simple as possible, since you have zero hex experience, so it might look longer than it actually is.
First, lose all fears of the editing part, it's dead simple.
For ease of use, right click on .snd files (do it for most of the SWG files, .iff, .cef, etc) > Properties > Open with:... Change button and select treExplorer.exe (You'll probably have to find it, and navigate where your .exe is).
Now, go and get a music_theme.snd (from the .tres), the Naboo one for example, make a copy and name it music_theme_rori.snd.
Once that is done, double click the .snd to open it with treExplorer and you'll see this:
Click on the + that's left of the FORM node, it'll expand and you'll see the SD2D003 chunk. Click on it and you'll see this:
On the left side, you have the hex values, on the right side, it's the converted hex into normal letters (ASCII character set), so you can read it.
What the .snd does, basically, is create a link between the planet's music manager and the .mp3, on top of that, I believe it also has control over how loud the sound plays by default and the bit rate (but I'll have to investigate further into it, that is what I posted in the other thread, hex values that control 'x'). A lot of files in SWG, basically are fancy ways of linking files together, to create a chain, each having a bit more control over the file that they link, than if you'd just link that file, with the .snd's in this case, they control volume and bit rate.
You're going to want to change the
music/mus_theme_naboo.mp3 to
music/mus_theme_rori.mp3, so that it links to your new .mp3.
But here comes the important part, you have to
replace the 'mus_theme_naboo' with the new name, you can't just 'delete' it and start typing in the field, because it'll overwrite the other values in the file, that's just how it works.
So, what you want to do is, in notepad for example, write out the name you want to paste in, highlight it, ctrl+c to copy
then highlight the part in treExplorer that you want to change with your mouse:
Then ctrl+v to paste it over the name you want to change, which, if done correctly, will look like:
As you can see, the only values that changed, is the actual filename, the rest remains exactly the same, which is what you want. Now, in the top left corner, click on File > Save and overwrite, or use ctrl+s.
That's it, now that .snd file will link to your
mus_theme_rori.mp3 in the music folder.
But, as of right now, the client won't see the newly created .snd, because it has a name it doesn't recognize, so, we'll need to find the file that uses the theme .snd's. We'll find this file, for the planet music, in the datatables folder in your .tre. Every planet has their own .iff. It controls things like the color of the lighting (color ramps), sky color, clouds, fog (view distance fog), attached camera effects (rain, dust storms, etc), and the ambient and music files, which is what we want to change.
So, from what I understand it, but you'll need to figure it out, in the Weather index, all the 1 numbers are the main theme, so if you look in the Rori.iff, you'll see in the mainswamp (area/region) and then the 1 and if you go further right, you'll see the column for First Music (2d .snd), these are the themes. It should say "sound/music_theme_generic_c.snd" for the weather index 1 in the mainswamp row (I just saw I forgot to edit the first one, so you'll have to do it!
), just double click on it, so it's highlighted and write or paste (If you want to paste, you'll have to right click and select paste, key combinations don't work, sadly) in the new link/name to your new music_theme_rori.snd, so it'll go from:
to
Then repeat the process for every weather index 1, for every region. You can also modify the other sounds/themes/ambients in the same way.
Save again, and that's it!
Have the rori.iff in /datatables/environment/
Have the music_theme_rori.snd in /sound/
Have the mus_theme_rori.mp3 in /music/
And that's it!
Same principle applies to most files in the .tre's, so knowing this, will help you A LOT in anything you want to do.
Then the next step would be more advanced, with actually hex editing values. I'll have a part on it and how to figure out some values (simple ones) in some files, in my weapon effects guide. I'll hopefully have time to write that guide tonight, it'll help a lot with understanding medium level modding, it's really not too hard, it just looks complicated at first.
Pro tip: Extract your .tre's one by one into a 'combined' folder, starting with the lowest and going up to patch 14, and use that as an open .tre where you can copy the exact files from, that are used by the client at the moment. If you have the .toc with the NGE .tre's, it'll only show the most recent files, which you don't want, but it's good to look around where, what is.