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Getting Chunithm to recognise and add your custom song into the song selection screen is an unintuitive process, so this explains the basics on how to properly add customs.
Formatting Files
Because of the nature of the game, Chunithm is very specific on what kinds of files it expects and what kind of specifications these files have. If these specifications are incorrect, Chunithm will simply refuse to show the song on the song selection screen, without showing a clear reason why. You can find a quick overview of the kinds of files that Chunithm expects to see on the General Information page.
Images
The two types of image files that you'll likely be dealing with are Jackets and Rights. Jacket files are the "cover art" for the song, visible on the song selection screen, during gameplay, on the results screen, and elsewhere. Rights files are the rights information that appears at the bottom left of the screen when selecting the associated song. Information on the formats for these files can be found in the General Information page.
Audio
Audio is the most difficult file to get right. It's encoded in a proprietary audio format by CRIWARE called ADX2, and as such is hard to replicate. Fortunately, there are tools that can both decode and encode these files. This section will focus primarily on encoding custom files into this format. For information on decoding and extracting these files, see General Information.
Necessary Programs
- SonicAudioTools
- VGAudio
- HXD
- Audacity (optional, useful for adjusting volume, trimming, finding preview positions, and converting audio files to
.wavs.)
Extraction
In order to make custom ADX2 songs, we first have to extract an existing one. It's recommended to backup the files you're extracting, as you'll be replacing them for the purposes of this method, and you'll want to replace the files again afterwards to prevent your game from having overwritten songs. To start, navigate to root¥app¥data¥AXXX¥cueFile and select any cueFileXXXXXX folder. In a separate File Explorer window, open the SonicAudioTools folder. Drag the .acb file from the cueFile folder into AcbEditor.exe. A new folder will be created in the cueFile folder. In this folder, there will be a .hca file. We don't have to do anything with this .hca file for now, we will be overwriting it instead.
Preparing the File
First, you'll want to get the audio file that you want and putting it into Audacity or your audio editor of choice. The two things you'll want to do for now is to adjust the volume so that it has an average level of -16dB. This can be seen in Audacity with the Contrast option under Analyze. Next, you'll want to trim the song to the desired length. Songs in Chunithm usually range from 2 to 3 minutes, and you'll want to trim your song down to be around that range. If your song is longer than 3 minutes, you might want to shorten it by removing some parts in the middle of the song, such a second verse and chorus. Make sure it sounds natural! Afterwards, export the file as a 16-bit .wav file.
Encoding
Open VGAudio and find the exported .wav file that you just made. Use the program to convert it into .hca. It might be labeled as simply "HCA" or "CRI HCA". Place your new .hca file in the folder that you extracted the first .hca file, then overwrite the existing file with the same name. Drag the parent folder that contains the .hca file and drop it onto AcbEditor.exe. If everything was done correctly, you'll have overwritten the .acb and .awb files with your own custom files.
Final Touches
Rename your new .acb and .awb files with the ID of your custom song. If you haven't created the custom Music.xml file yet, just create your own unique ID. Finally, open the .acb file in HxD. Use CTRL + F and search for "music". Find any fields that contain the previous ID of the original .acb file, and replace them with the new ID. Save the .acb file, and put the file pair in a safe place. This will be used in a future step.
Putting It All Together
This section will focus on the files and directories that you'll have to create and edit.
New Folders
Adding the CueFile
In the root¥app¥data¥AXXX¥cueFile directory, create a new folder and name it cueFile00XXXX, replacing XXXX with the ID given to the custom .acb and .awb files. Drag and drop your custom .acb and .awb files into this folder. Create a new file and call it CueFile.xml. Copy and paste the contents of a CueFile.xml file from another folder into this new file. Replace the <dataName>, <name><id>, <name><str>, <acbFile><path>, and <awbFile><path> tag values with the appropriate values, usually by replacing the IDs with the correct ones.
Adding the Music
In the root¥app¥data¥AXXX¥music directory, create a new folder and name it musicXXXX, replacing XXXX with the custom ID. Create a new file here called Music.xml, and copy and paste the contents of an existing Music.xml file into this file. Follow the specifications explained on the Music document to configure this file. You'll also need the .c2s files in this directory. You can copy and paste existing .c2s files with no edits into this directory if you just want the song to appear on the song selection screen.
Adding the RightsInfo (optional)
This section is optional unless you want to add your own custom RightsInfo image. In the root¥app¥data¥AXXX¥rightsInfo directory, create a new folder and name it rightsInfoXXXXXX, replacing XXXXXX with a unique ID, which can be separate from your custom song's ID. Move your custom Rights file into this folder and name it CHU_UI_Rights_XXXX.dds. Create a file called RightsInfo.xml and copy and paste the contents of an existing RightsInfo.xml file into the new file. Replace <rightsText> with a general overview of what your rights image says, <name><id> with the same ID as the parent folder, excluding any preceding 0s, <name><str> with what your custom rights image says, and <image><path> with the file name of the .dds file that you added earlier.
Edited Files
Editing MusicSort
The MusicSort.xml file, found in the root¥app¥data¥AXXX¥music directory, lists the order of every song in the song selection menu. This is independent from the genre that the song is under, although is still formatted with the genres in mind. To add your song, simply create a new <StringID> tag with the <id> and <str> tags being replaced with the song's custom ID and the name of the song respectively.