SpaceDrake

There is one possibility concerning the forum badge that might appear further in the future: if PoE adopts a long-term model at all like the Shadowrun Returns games (which are the closest real comparison/dignified competition PoE has, in a way) then there will be further Kickstarters for the "real" sequels to PoE. The expansions are obviously funded purely by purchases, but there's really no reason to not run a KS for a sequel, and the Harebrained guys even like to point out that they get lots of important feedback for each Shadowrun game from their backers for a given project. So if PoE goes for that model, you'll be able to get a forum badge and the backer achievement for the sequel if you back the sequel. Getting the original Steam backer achievement, though?... sadly, you missed the boat on that one, no way around it.

Ahh, my little thread lives. Yes, the general conclusion was that while replacing the files in one existing VO set with another was not too terribly difficult (see my big post above), putting in whole new VO sets for player use is substantially more difficult because the game is not configured to recognize the existence of new voice sets just via file drop-in; the in-game database files need to be modified as well so the game knows what to look for. This is going to require either direct modification of the game client via the Unity SDK itself, or a deeper PoE-specific modification tool from Sawyer & Co. For now, replacing existing VO sets with voices you like can be done with something like my directions above (though obviously, replace Icewind Dale with whatever source audio you'd prefer to use), but new VO sets are outside the wheelhouse of casual modification.

To be frank, any new "major" area - Aedyr, Republican Vailia, Rauatai, even Readceras - is going to have to be a new game ala BG2. Due to the way they put their maps together, any new maps need to be rendered from scratch and will probably need to be concepted out regardless. If they want to do a whole new region, most of it's going to have to be scratch-built. So even in a meaty expansion, I wouldn't expect to go any further than Eir Glanfath or maybe Readceras if they decide to recycle a lot of architectural design due to the shared cultural background of Dyrwood and Readceras. Going back across the ocean is going to require a new game.

Sure, the character data simply points to a filename. So long as the game can find PORTRAIT_NAME_L and _S, and they're .pngs of the right dimensions, the game won't care what the actual files are. You can replace the portrait as many times as you want... just make sure you keep some kind of portrait with the same filename there, or the game is gonna throw a fit!

I'm certain there are plans for us to eventually visit every corner of Eora. At the very least, I expect we'll be visiting Aedyr itself in the not-distant future (as the end of PoE's campaign might shake up certain things there more than anywhere else) and I wouldn't be surprised if we visit Rauatai sometime soon, given how much foundation it gets from Kana. The Living Lands do seem like a perfect place for the creature and environment teams to really cut loose, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a decent push internally to go there soon.:

Which Near Infinity kindly explained! A little downloading and I was able to decompress them. Which is to say... Haha! Ahahahaha! AHAHAHAHA! I'VE DONE IT! I have Female Fighter 3 working in the game! This is magnificent! Thank you all for your help! Right now it's working as a simple paste-over of the Noble voice, which my character was previously using (and whose spell barks match the new vocals most closely). Hopefully there will be a way to get more voice sets overall into the game, but for now this works, and works well. As I thought, while there's a bit of repetition, the IWD voice files are varied enough that most of the files mapped to each other fairly well - and a bit of creative use of idle and over-click files worked particularly well with this voice set to fill a few of the otherwise-holes! For those of you who've been curious as well and are looking to do this yourself, here's what you'll need: - A copy of Icewind Dale: because you do own this already, right? - Near Infinity (http://sourceforge.net/projects/nearinfinity/) and ACM2WAV (http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/dl.php?s=IEM&f=IEmodding/acm2wav.zip) - this is the best way to browse the sound files in the old Infinity games, and has push-button support for getting the files converted from old ACM-WAV to a more conventional, uncompressed WAV format that can then be worked into an OGG. Also note that Near Infinity requires Java to run. - Some kind of WAV-OGG converter: lots of options for these exist, both online and downloadable. You'll probably want something that can handle batch encoding, though. I ended up using http://download.cnet.com/Free-MP3-WMA-OGG-Converter/3000-2140_4-10793572.html, but be warned, it will try to trick you into installing lots of adware. Once you have everything, here's how you go about it: 0) Make sure Near Infinity and the ACM2WAV executable are in the same folder. Also, set up a target folder for exporting and converting. Also also, back up the original sound files! We'll be replacing them, but no crying if you overwrite files and need to reinstall to get them back! 1) Open Near Infinity and browse to your IWD install and open the .KEY file. This will allow you to browse. 2) The player sounds are under /Sounds (not /WAV, note). Navigate to the voice set you want (Female Fighter 3, in my case). 3) Select each file and choose "Export and Convert" - sadly, no batch exporting in Near Infinity. Export them to the folder you set up. 3a) Give the first file a play once you export and convert, juuuust to make sure it's working right. 4) Once everything is exported as uncompressed WAVs, use your OGG converter to convert everything to OGG. You can do what you wish with the WAVs afterward. 5) Make a sub-folder in your source export folder; you'll still want to keep your source OGGs, and copy over files for renaming as you go. 6) Going down the list Rokem provided here, choose which IWD sound files you want for each corresponding event set, copy the files into the sub-folder, and rename them appropriately for the existing sound set you want to replace (e.g., clicks would be player_voice_set_f_noble_0001 to 0003). I recommend only going to 0057, and there is a correction to be made to Rokem's list; see below. Also note that top files are somewhat prioritized for playing first in a given event set. 7) Once you're done, copy-paste the renamed sound files over to [steam directory]\common\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\data\audio\vocalization\vo wav files\player, replacing all of the files in the voice set you wish to replace. 8 ) Load up the game and behold! For anyone else who liked the old IWD Female Fighter 3, this is how I ended up divvying up the sound files (with witty commentary): _0001: HEFF_16 _0002: HEFF_18 _0003: HEFF_22 _0004: HEFF_28 _0005: HEFF_25 _0006: HEFF_27 _0007: HEFF_03 _0008: HEFF_05 _0009: HEFF_07 _0010: HEFF_14 _0011: HEFF_15 _0012: HEFF_15 - the first repeat, simply because IWD had two sounds for this to PoE's three. _0013: HEFF_34 _0014: HEFF_35 _0015: HEFF_36 _0016: HEFF_37 _0017: HEFF_38 _0018: HEFF_43 - from IWD2, specifically. _0019: HEFF_10 _0020: HEFF_11 _0021: HEFF_11 - another 2-for-3 repeat. (for 22 to 28 there's the largest bit of repetition, because IWD had two "ally death" sounds to PoE's rather excessive eight) _0022: HEFF_39 _0023: HEFF_40 _0024: HEFF_39 _0025: HEFF_40 _0026: HEFF_39 _0027: HEFF_40 _0028: HEFF_39 (now a BIG note: 0029 is actually the "attack not working" sound, not another death sound. The "second retreat" clip works well here for comedic value.) _0029: HEFF_02 _0030: HEFF_34 _0031: HEFF_35 _0032: HEFF_33 - as this is "full inventory", it works amazingly well. _0033: HEFF_12 - used to be an idle bark! works great here. _0034: HEFF_09 - a former leadership change. also works well here. _0035: HEFF_24 _0036: HEFF_32 - oh my god try this one in game it is amazing _0037: HEFF_02 - for a little more comedy. might get confusing, but. _0038: HEFF_43 - welp _0039: HEFF_19 - both this and 0040 are repurposed ready-clicks. _0040: HEFF_21 _0041: HEFF_23 _0042: HEFF_13 - oh idle and overclick, you solve so many issues by accident _0043: HEFF_04 - because hell yeah _0044: HEFF_01 _0045: HEFF_34 _0046: HEFF_35 _0047: HEFF_36 _0048: HEFF_34 _0049: HEFF_35 _0050: HEFF_36 - the other big batch of repeats as IWD didn't have a lot of "action grunts". _0051: HEFF_15 - sadly, no specific ailment messages, so the more generic "hurt" one gets used here. _0052: HEFF_40 - a repeat, but works well here. _0053: HEFF_29 _0054: HEFF_15 _0055: HEFF_23 _0056: HEFF_15 _0057: HEFF_08 If anyone wants, I could try divvying up some of the other IWD/2 voice sets as well, but picking which files to use where is half the fun, really. Anyway, so there's a bit of repeating, but it's mostly down to PoE having a ton of "ally died" barks and "action grunts" - and I don't think I even heard most of the ally death barks in the original voice set, and I'm a decent way through Act 2. Just about the entire old voice bank gets mileage, and I'm pretty sure this could be done with the rest of the IWD/IWD2 voices, too, especially since the IWD2 sets have a few more files (43 vs. 40). That said, it does look like the Baldur's Gate voices would really struggle to work here - there's just so many missing events that you'd either get tons of repetition or just tons of silence and no feedback. The one thing you'll note is that I stopped replacement at 0057. The real problem gap is the spell barks; because PoE's spell barks are completely unique, yet consistent across each voice file, those are going to be the biggest problem when it comes to adding new voice sets for heroes. In this case, picking Noble for replacement worked to my advantage as it's the closest to the voice I swapped in; if you do your own replacement like this, make sure to pick the voice with the spell barks closest to the voice you're using. You can preview them all ahead of time in the vocalization\vo wav files\player folder, and you should. Anyway, thanks again for helping with this, everyone. It might seem like a stupid little thing, but it's going to improve my enjoyment of Pillars tremendously. And hopefully this helps others get preferred voicework into Pillars too! Now if only we could crack adding new voice sets entirely...

That's actually why I was asking and a little confused - they're obviously WAVs, but for some reason they don't want to render/play in my usual playback software, so I was wondering if there was anything particularly funny/ancient about their formatting. I'll see if Near Infinity helps, though, thank you!

Actually, since there isn't a good place for it otherwise, let me ask here: is anyone familiar with the sound format of the Baldur's and Icewind voice files? While they work in the games themselves still (and I even got the IWD ones working in BGTutu and BG2), I can't seem to open them with any modern playback software or converter - which is a problem, as they need to be converted from their apparent .wav format to .ogg if I'm going to fiddle with any replacement in Pillars! From their quality in the game, I'm guessing they're 16 or even 8-bit samples? Is that's what is causing the playback issues? I'm afraid I'm not sure how to convert the files otherwise; if anyone has insight on playing and converting the files to .ogg, I'd appreciate it.

These are both great and helpful, thank you very much! If nothing else I can just plop the IWD voice set into female noble and be off to the races. It'd still be nice to put entire new vocal sets into the game, though; Velocd, exactly how much C# work are we talking about, here? Are the files even available for open editing in the current client? It would be nice if we could get one of the Obsidian sound guys to stop by and detail how a new player vocal set could be added to the game (or if this is even really possible). Also this thread really took off when I wasn't looking! Thanks for the merge and making it more visible, Cantousent. Actually, the bolded depends on the game in question. The Baldur's voice sets are far, far too small (clocking in at a measly 23 sounds at most), but the Icewind Dale vocal sets clocked in at 40 (or more, in a few cases). The only real gaps seem to be "ally falls in battle" and the spell barks - most everything else maps 1:1 to Icewind Dale's voice structure (which I suspect is, for various reasons, not just coincidence). There would be a little repetition and a few gaps (I can't remember off the top of my head if they have a few of these conditions in IWD, like "found trap"), but the IWD voice sets should be workable enough. Baldur's Gate voices will definitely be a struggle, however.

Wanted to give this a little bump for the afternoon crowd - do we know if voice pack addition is possible? (Of course I also need to figure out a way to get the ancient IWD voice clips to play nice with modern software and render so that they can be converted to .ogg, but that's a whole separate travail )

So I was wondering: new portraits is easy enough, but is it possible to add additional voice sets to the game? I will be fairly naked in my ambitions: what I want to do is add "female_fighter_3" from Icewind Dale to the game. That is more or less my favorite "protagonist voice" ever in a game like this (and more to the point, the game is strangely lacking in higher-register lady voices for protagonists/custom-mades in general). Seeing as how I own IWD, I could "construct" the sound-set myself if need be... if it's possible. Which is why I ask: is there any capacity for new voice sets in Pillars? Unlike the portraits, I didn't see any obvious place in PillarsOfEternity_Data to drop a new voice set. If it isn't currently possible, has the idea been discussed? I'd love to expand protag/custom-made character voice options a bit.

As a dude who works in localization, I can tell you from experience that voicework in any language is monstrously expensive. Multilingual voicework might be on the cards as, like, a 4m+ stretch goal or something. I have no doubt a decent portion of the budget is going to be sunk into voicework alone. Anyway, sweet update and I can't wait for that novella from Chris.