Question about Modding sounds
 

I was wondering if anyone knows where the sounds are triggered from.

For instance when you hit the "D" key you get a voice reply "Periscope Depth, aye sir" and then the diving claxon. What I am looking for is the file that triggers the sound to see if it can be modded. I have located the sounds themselves, but I am looking for the event triggers.

Hopefully they are not hardcoded.

JCC

Have a nose inside the AnimGraphs and AnimGraphsGE folders in the Library folder in the main directory.

The .dat files are for each crewmember's animation - the triggers are in there.

See if you can get a hold of Ducimus - he'll have a shrewd idea as to what to edit.

IIRC, most of the triggers in SH4 are borked - I know there have been attempts to get the sound man to report correctly, but not with much success.

Mike.:)

Thanks

Ordinarily, a sound and it's behavior is defined in the /data/sound/sh.SDL file.

The individual sound entries in this file, are usually called upon a DSD file somewhere. Such as /data/interior/NSS_*.* or, data/submarine/NSS_*.*, or data/air, etc etc.

These sounds in the DSD files, are usually triggered by some controller or action, and have a parent child relationship with that controller and some node somewhere.

For the player submarine, DSD files that effect it are in 3 places.
particles.dsd, the dsd file for whichever interior the boat is using in the interior directory, and the dsd file for whatever submarine it is in the submarine directory.

For the new sounds that are added in SH4. Passing thermal layer, general quarters, etc. I can't find a DSD entriy for any of them. That's not to say it doesnt exist, only that i can't find it.

What is funny about these sounds though, is how they are universal. Regardless of interior, or submarine, these sounds will play. Since individual entries can't be located in any interior, submarine, or particles.dsd, it's reasonable to assume they are global in scope. Or in programming terms, they are global variables. Within the program they can be accessed by ANYTHING.

So my thought is, unless there is a DSD file im missing, or they reside very descretely in a graph file (i've never been able to see find it), then they are most likely hard coded global variables within the program. Another item that makes me think this is the implentation of the bathermalgraph. it *SHOULD* be an upgradable piece of equipment. It' was "tacked on" to all boats from the get go for looks (you'll hear "passing thermal layer" without it), and then some global variable was hashed out to active the sound for it. In sum, i think the implentation of it, was a "quick fix".. or one of those "temporarily permanant" solutions. But that's just a guess.

Global variables
 

Ducimus;
what you say makes sense and if I understand correctly explains the dreadful error regarding the rubber dinghy-bumping-into-the-sub sound which is, in fact, the normal ship collision sound. Ergo you get a horrendous grinding of metal sound when the tiny rubber boat bumps into your sub.

I tried changing the sound to something more suitable (i.e. a canoe bumping against a dock) but that ended up making the ship collisions sound like......a canoe bumping against a dock and a game crash.

All that to say that there must be 'universal' triggers which are hardcoded otherwise that dinghy horror could have been sorted out a long time ago.
:salute:

ship collision is in the particles.dsd if i remember right. But yeah, unless its being called from a DSD lower in the pecking order (submarine, or ship specific file), then its a global variable. It may be possible to override that by creating a specific entry, but i honestly don't know.

edit: as an aside, the reason why you hear ship collisions with life rafts is because the game see's them as ships. They even have damage zones assigned to them, which is why you'd see them explode like a ship.

So I can already see the water is waaaaay over my head, but what the heck.

What program would you use to read these files so one could see what was going on?

JCC

:rotfl2:

When I saw the thread title I thought "Oh cool! Here's something I can help with. Then I read your post and thought "Umm, I think I'll be moving along now. I don't even know where to begin to look, much less what to do about it." :dead:

S3D. Install it, and just fish around the game files. You'll liable to notice all sorts of things.

Installed it. First thing I noticed?

That I have absolutely no idea what I am looking at. Looks interesting though.

Hmmmm... I wonder what that does...






Thanks,

JCC

hehe :p

Once he figure's it out, he'll never be able to stay out of the game files. :DL

:har::har::har:

that figures ... it that why I can't "play" anymore ???


keltos