Audio Modding

[Corona688]

How difficult is it to add sounds to stock?  I don't mean completely redoing them or adding sounds to new situations, just changing a .wav file for an engine.

[Corona688]

The modding information on the wiki seems very outdated...  Where can one find up-to-date information?

[Corona688]

Still working blind, here...  I've edited the Rapier engine to use a different switching sound.  I put the sound into GameData\Squad\Sounds and it definitely gets loaded:

[LOG 21:25:12.857] Load(Audio): Squad/Sounds/sound_whump

...but can't be used:

[LOG 21:26:10.359] Cannot assign AudioClip 'sound_whump' to AudioFX

The wav file is 48KHz 16-bit stereo, which I thought was the appropriate kind.

[Bonus Eventus]

post the cfg

 

 

[Corona688]

I don't see any way to attach files to this forum, and doubt you want all 100kb of it spammed here.

Literally all I did was place the .wav file where I mentioned, and text-replace sound-soft-vent like so inside rapierEngine.cfg:

 

        engage
        {
            AUDIO
            {
                channel = Ship
                clip = sound_vent_soft
                volume = 1.0
                pitch = 2.0
                loop = false
            }
        }

        engage
        {
            AUDIO
            {
                channel = Ship
                clip = sound_whump
                volume = 1.0
                pitch = 2.0
                loop = false
            }
        }

I've verified the .wav is 48000 16-bit stereo in VLC.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Corona688

[Bonus Eventus]

Might be something wrong on the export side. Are you using audacity to export the sound file? The first time I tried making custom sounds, I had to play with volume settings a lot, before I could actually hear it in game. For some reason it would play very softly. This was especially true for the engage sound.

Try setting volume = 2.0 or higher to make sure it isn't playing soft. Also remember this gets overlapped with the running_closed/open sound, so it might be getting drowned out.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Bonus Eventus

[Corona688]

51 minutes ago, Bonus Eventus said:

Might be something wrong on the export side.

To repeat:

8 hours ago, Corona688 said:

I've verified the .wav is 48000 16-bit stereo in VLC.

The WAV in question was downloaded from the internet.  It's not some a weird kind of WAV, it's 16-bit little-endian PCM.

Quote

The first time I tried making custom sounds, I had to play with volume settings a lot, before I could actually hear it in game. For some reason it would play very softly. This was especially true for the engage sound.

It is not a quiet sound.  Also, to repeat:

10 hours ago, Corona688 said:

[LOG 21:26:10.359] Cannot assign AudioClip 'sound_whump' to AudioFX

 

...unless you know this is a false alarm, errors are being logged of the 'cannot do this thing' sort.  What causes this error?

I'll try making the sound mono when I have time later today.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Corona688

[Bonus Eventus]

A lot more can be wrong with an audio file than simply being not 16 bit and a wav file, doesn't mean it's unplayable. Anyways, since you downloaded it off the internet, try opening the file with an audio editor and not vlc (audio player), then export the file to a wav. VLC in my experience will play practically anything even when the file is corrupted. This is a unity error, which means that the audioclip could not be loaded because it is not what was expected. So, download audacity (open source software for any os) open the file and try to export as wav with proper settings. 

[Corona688]

1 minute ago, Bonus Eventus said:

This is a unity error, which means that the audioclip could not be loaded because it is not what was expected.

So it wasn't actually loading it earlier, when it said this?

10 hours ago, Corona688 said:

Still working blind, here...  I've edited the Rapier engine to use a different switching sound.  I put the sound into GameData\Squad\Sounds and it definitely gets loaded:

 

[LOG 21:25:12.857] Load(Audio): Squad/Sounds/sound_whump

 

...but can't be used:

 

[LOG 21:26:10.359] Cannot assign AudioClip 'sound_whump' to AudioFX

 

The wav file is 48KHz 16-bit stereo, which I thought was the appropriate kind.

I know VLC can play almost anything, but the codec information can't lie and still work...  It could be a newer revision of WAV than unity understands, perhaps, or some sort of non-WAV wrapper.

[Corona688]

Re-saving in audacity didn't work.  Yes, saving as a sane 16-bit wav, not a 32-bit float wav, or an MP3-encoded WAV, or an Intel-compressed WAV, or any other funky kind of wav, just a normal 16-bit uncompressed little-endian PCM wav a la 1990.

Mixing to mono didn't work.

Adjusting volume to 2.0 didn't work.

I wish there was more information to report.  It just didn't work.  The error message didn't change at all (well, the filename changed as I changed the filename, but that's it.)

Edited September 28, 2016 by Corona688

[Corona688]

Adjusting volume to 4.0 didn't work.

Renaming the file to sound_vent_whump in case it demanded a 'vent' sound for a 'vent' action didn't work.

[Bonus Eventus]

 

4 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

Re-saving in audacity didn't work.  Yes, saving as a sane 16-bit wav, not a 32-bit float wav, or an MP3-encoded WAV, or an Intel-compressed WAV, or any other funky kind of wav, just a normal 16-bit uncompressed little-endian PCM wav a la 1990.

Mixing to mono didn't work.

Adjusting volume to 2.0 didn't work.

I wish there was more information to report.  It just didn't work.  The error message didn't change at all (well, the filename changed as I changed the filename, but that's it.)

Well, now we know for sure nothing is wrong with the audio file. There's one more thing I can think to try: 

clip = Squad/Sounds/sound_whump

if that fails, try making a new folder in GameData named Test. Inside test create a new folder named Sounds. Place your audio file inside of the new Sounds folder then update the cfg like so:

clip = Test/Sounds/sound_whump

------

Also, what version of the game are you running?  Press Alt + f12 to pull up the debug tools, and see if there are any warnings in the console log (yellow) or errors (red).

[sebi.zzr]

@Corona688,did you consider to use:

 engage
        {
            AUDIO
            {
                channel = Ship
                clip = Squad/Sounds/sound_whump
                volume = 1.0
                pitch = 2.0
                loop = false
            }
        }

if you trying to change any sound in "ModuleEnginesFX",you need to specify the path to sound you want to use.You can even create your own folder with custom sounds.

Edited September 28, 2016 by sebi.zzr
apparently i was not typing fast enough XD

[Corona688]

The "cannot assign" is gone!  Progress!

But it still doesn't work.

I'll need to leave shortly.  I'll try other suggestions after work today.

[edit]

I tried to be clever and commented out a line when I used the full path.  Now that I just deleted it instead of commented, the sound effect DOES WORK.

THANK YOU!

Edited September 28, 2016 by Corona688