Heroes II music question

[jeff4815]

I'm wondering if it's possible to attain the Heroes II MIDI versions of the music through any means. I can get the opera ones fine via CD drive, but I don't know how to access the MIDI ones. I tried to use a WMA to MIDI converter, but it wouldn't let me because the files had copyright protection.

[cuc]

I'm writing this from memory, so there might be mistakes.

1) Use Resedit to open the game data file. You can download it from CH:

https://www.celestialheavens.com/567

2) Find the files with the extension .XMI. Those are RAD extended MIDI files, a file format commonly used by 90s computer games. Extract them.

3) Find some tools that can play or convert .XMI files. The problem is, the .XMI format allows a game to play MIDI with its own sound samples; playing .XMI outside the game will sound worse than they are in game. Not sure if this applies to Heroes II. I've found a discussion on this problem:

http://forum.dune2k.com/index.php?topic=18353.msg299375

4) As a result, maybe using a sound recording utility to record the sound output of the game would be a better method?


Personally, I think the Heroes II MIDI seem to be hastily done. The castle themes are ALL mismatched, and most CD tracks don't get a MIDI counterpart. The only thing worthwhile is the MIDI main menu theme, you can download it here as a MP3 :

http://gh.ffshrine.org/song/4225/19

[cuc]

An update:

Here's a download of Heroes II MIDI, converted to MID files.

http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/music_info. ... e=MTQxNjk=

It's converted with XMI2MID. Interestingly, on the very same website, there is an article warning against doing that, saying you should record MIDI directly from the game. But the process is really complicated, and in Heroes II's case, I don't think there's any difference between the converted files and the music in game.

http://www.mirsoft.info/gamemids-ripping-guide.php