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Well, I guess I was wrong at the end of the last post I wrote for the Pillaging Your Games For D&D Material series. But then, it’s been a while too.

Though, I would like to make note that despite the fact that I’m making reference to Medieval II: Total War, this also applies for Rome: Total War. This is because the files that hold the information we’re going after are the same format for both games. It makes things rather convenient.

Also, this is probably the easiest way to extract both music and sound effects. There’s also voices to be extracted, if that floats your boat as DM.

So what tool will we be using for both Medieval II and Rome?

The IDX Extractor
What is IDX you say? Just the format that both Medieval II and Rome use as their data files, which covers audio, animations, and even skeleton files for the animations. Though, of course, you’re probably more interested in the audio. However, if your the more technically inclined DM and want to make use of the 3D models used by either game, you can go ahead and grab those as well, following very similar instructions that I’ll be discussing here. And, of course, those instructions are in the ReadMe files that comes with it.

So, to put it in as few steps as possible:

1. First, download the IDX Extractor from the Total War Center.
2. Open the zip file, grab xidx.exe and extract_sounds.bat and move them to your sounds directory for Medieval II (or Rome). If you used the default installation directory, it’ll be at C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\data\sounds.
3. Run extract_sound.bat.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Ok, maybe the last two steps weren’t overly necessary.

However, I do want to bear one warning to all of you: make sure you have enough space on your hard-drive! Simply running that batch files will extract ALL audio from those data files, which can take up quite a bit of room.

However, if you’re only interested in extracting certain things, such as only music or sound effects, you can right-click the extract_sounds.bat file, click Edit, and make the appropriate changes. So, if you just want music, just delete everything after the ‘-x’ except for music. Likewise if you only want sound effects.

I’ve used both the music and sound effects from Medieval II: Total War during my last session for my Eberron campaign. It turned out to have a very nice effect on the mood, and the players enjoyed the atmosphere it provided (though, admittedly, there were some moments when the music became a distraction to some). Sound effects such as marching soldiers, cavalry, and even musket firing (which I used for a naval battle involving cannons) were also used to good effect.

So, if you’re running a campaign where you plan to have some large battles between hundreds or thousands of NPCs, with your players caught in the middle of it, I definitely recommend using the sounds and music from Medieval II: Total War!