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-   -   Abe's Exoddus sound editing partially possible! (http://www.oddworldforums.net/showthread.php?t=21459)

Weezenhimer 12-25-2013 01:22 AM

Abe's Exoddus sound editing partially possible!
 
Hi,it's me again.I finally got around it and edited my sounds.dat and it works without a problem.(meaning the sound doesn't get funny like other mods I have seen)
I managed to change the pitch to make it sound weird,and even managed to translate Abe's "Hello","Follow me","All of ya"and "Sorry"in russian,and I got them to work.Here's my sound.dat file if anyone wants to try,I made it using Audacity for the pitch,PSound for Abe's russian voices and Sony Vegas to insert Abe's russian voices in the file.
Here's the link to get the sound.dat file I made.
http://www.fileshare.ro/e30092601

Nepsotic 12-25-2013 03:38 AM

Wait, so what did you do?

Weezenhimer 12-25-2013 06:14 AM

Changed the pitch down and translated a few of Abe's voices in Russian.Did you try the sounds.dat file?The changes mentioned in the first post are in it.
As for what sound properties must be used for custom sounds.dat,they are 22050kHz,16 bit PCM,Mono WAV.I can't make a video as Hypercam doesn't work on my PC.I got around editing it correctly by slowing down the Sony Vegas 10 to 0,35x,which made the sound.dat sounds play like in a gameplay,then imported extracted sounds from a russian PSX copy of AE(by "Team Kudos")and then placed the sounds where I needed.Saved the edited file as wav,then renamed the file to sounds.dat,placed in the AE directory,started the game and it worked.Now Abe was talking high pitched russian and low pitched English!The music was low pitched as well.

Nepsotic 12-25-2013 06:32 AM

Wasn't it shifted like 8 semitones or something to save space?

Weezenhimer 12-25-2013 06:42 AM

That was done automatically by the game.Lowering the pitch on sounds.dat made the entire sound in the game low pitched.I lowered the pitch randomly (somewhere at -25)and the game did the same thing.It's pretty hard to explain what I did without a video,so try the file posted and you will figure out what I exactly did.

Nepsotic 12-25-2013 12:44 PM

You pitch-shifted it, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that.

Nate 12-25-2013 04:30 PM

No need to be snarky, Nepsotic.

Nepsotic 12-25-2013 04:37 PM

Sorry, it was just a little patronising.

Phylum 12-25-2013 05:48 PM

Bare in mind you're the one that didn't understand the first post.

Nepsotic 12-25-2013 06:02 PM

Did anyone?

Nate 12-25-2013 07:06 PM

English isn't his first language. If you don't understand, ask for a clarification and leave the snark at home.

TheOddgamer98 12-26-2013 04:31 AM

Wow, that sounds really interesting! To sad that i havent a PC. I just have Abe on PSX and Emulator on my phone. So i cant mod.. :(

Nepsotic 12-26-2013 06:20 AM

:

()
English isn't his first language. If you don't understand, ask for a clarification and leave the snark at home.

I did ask for clarification? I only snarked afterwards.

Weezenhimer 12-26-2013 06:20 AM

I am still researching on how to change the PSX Abe's Exoddus sounds,and may convert a russian copy to english.I found out the audio files are VB/VH files,and I'll try seeing if it works replacing the russian VB/VH files with english VB/VH files.

Slog Bait 12-26-2013 06:33 AM

I'm not entirely sure what the point of that is whether it works or not

Why not just make entirely new vb/vh files to replace things with rather than replacing russian vb/vh files with the english vb/vh files that came before it

Weezenhimer 12-26-2013 06:47 AM

:

()
I did ask for clarification? I only snarked afterwards.

Oops,didn't notice your comment,I had the page without your comment,must have forgotten to refresh.

Here's what I did with sounds.dat,step by step:
1.Made a backup(in case something goes wrong)
2.Opened sounds.dat in Audacity with the Project Hz Rate set to 22050)
3.Lowered the pitch randomly.(I didn't check how much semitones I lowered it by)
4.Exported the edited audio as wav.
5.Opened Sony Vegas 10.
6.Set the playback speed to 0.35x(though it can also be set to 0.25x and 0.28x)
7.Edited Abe's voice with some russian voices extracted with PSound (I tried to even hide Daffy Duck's voice in there,it's when 2 Scrabs fight,and Daffy says "Well call me frankly!")
8.Saved the edited sounds.dat as a wav file,with the Hz rate being 22050)
9.Using WinRAR,I renamed sounds.wav to sounds.dat(even though it can be done from Windows Explorer too,make sure you have the option to hide file extensions unchecked)
10.Copied the new sounds.dat to my Abe's Exoddus folder
11.Started the game,and changes took effect,music was low pitched,and Abe was now talking half russian half english.

This is what I did,step by step.

Weezenhimer 12-26-2013 06:58 AM

:

()
I'm not entirely sure what the point of that is whether it works or not

Why not just make entirely new vb/vh files to replace things with rather than replacing russian vb/vh files with the english vb/vh files that came before it

It's easier to replace the russian vb/vh files with ENG vb/vh files,and I think you can't make new VB/VH files.

On the other side,does somebody know how to make a working PSX disc image after editing the game?

Nepsotic 12-26-2013 07:01 AM

:

()
Oops,didn't notice your comment,I had the page without your comment,must have forgotten to refresh.

Here's what I did with sounds.dat,step by step:
1.Made a backup(in case something goes wrong)
2.Opened sounds.dat in Audacity with the Project Hz Rate set to 22050)
3.Lowered the pitch randomly.(I didn't check how much semitones I lowered it by)
4.Exported the edited audio as wav.
5.Opened Sony Vegas 10.
6.Set the playback speed to 0.35x(though it can also be set to 0.25x and 0.28x)
7.Edited Abe's voice with some russian voices extracted with PSound (I tried to even hide Daffy Duck's voice in there,it's when 2 Scrabs fight,and Daffy says "Well call me frankly!")
8.Saved the edited sounds.dat as a wav file,with the Hz rate being 22050)
9.Using WinRAR,I renamed sounds.wav to sounds.dat(even though it can be done from Windows Explorer too,make sure you have the option to hide file extensions unchecked)
10.Copied the new sounds.dat to my Abe's Exoddus folder
11.Started the game,and changes took effect,music was low pitched,and Abe was now talking half russian half english.

This is what I did,step by step.

Okay, why?

Weezenhimer 12-26-2013 07:11 AM

To see if AE sounds can be replaced.For the music,it's not possible as they are just separate sounds that are repeated,but voices can be edited though.I need to research on adding sounds,might even change Abe's voice to sound like a Slig!

Slog Bait 12-26-2013 07:13 AM

I strongly believe all Scrabs should sound like mudokons just to throw everyone off

Weezenhimer 12-26-2013 07:36 AM

Okay,will get to that as soon as I can get each sound what it is.

Nate 12-26-2013 04:22 PM

:

()
I did ask for clarification? I only snarked afterwards.

I said two things:
  1. Ask for clarification.
  2. Leave the snark at home.

Just because you partook of #1, doesn't absolve you for breaching #2.

Nepsotic 12-26-2013 06:06 PM

But it's okay for everyone else to breach #2?

Nate 12-26-2013 06:07 PM

A certain amount of snark is acceptable in general forum use. But being snarky at someone because you don't understand them because English isn't their first language is just plain rude.

Nepsotic 12-26-2013 06:10 PM

That's fair, but it wasn't because of his language, it was because he was patronising.

Nate 12-26-2013 06:12 PM

I think it's time to take this conversation to PMs.

Nepsotic 12-26-2013 06:13 PM

Is it really worth it? I was just clarifying.

MeechMunchie 12-27-2013 08:38 AM

Oh right, you were trying to work out if it was possible to replace sounds in AE. Well, it certainly is, but seperating out the individual sounds is the hard part.

My thread on the matter may be of interest to you.

mlg man 02-03-2014 07:13 PM

I made a dll which forces Abe's Exoddus to load the sounds from .wav files instead of the Sounds.dat.

It's not user friendly at all, as the file names are all "4235235235.wav, 3523293462.wav...." at the moment. When I have some more free time I'll try and make something more easier for people to use, and then i'll release it for people to try out.

You can change a sound to however long you want, BUT, the sample rate must stay the same.

So if the sound you want to change has a sample rate of 11,025 Hz, you must save the wave file at the same rate. Of course, there might be a way to change this, but that requires more reverse engineering :P

Shrykull69 02-04-2014 05:23 AM

Can you upload that DLL to test it? And a list of the wav numbers please.