Modding in additional vocal sets: possible?

[Dark_Ansem]

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!

 

they are converted with the ACM compression...

on a sidenote, new patch is bringing new voicesets instances, I guess that will up the vs counts?

[SpaceDrake]

 

they are converted with the ACM compression...

on a sidenote, new patch is bringing new voicesets instances, I guess that will up the vs counts?

 

 

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...

Edited April 3, 2015 by SpaceDrake

[Dark_Ansem]

I'm pretty sure we will. with the new engine we could... faster and more easily but oh well

[Rokem]

The patch notes say they added a couple new voices for different actions, but I do not see any new files in my folder. Anyone else having this issue? My game got patched via steam.

[Dark_Ansem]

maybe the voices were there but the instances were not?

[luzarius]

Have you guys figured this out yet?

 

Kolsc has no voice acting and he seems to be an important part of the game.

 

The hardest part seems to be creating the .conversation file, it's basically one big confusing XML file. 

Edited April 5, 2015 by luzarius

[Dark_Ansem]

Have you guys figured this out yet?

 

Kolsc has no voice acting and he seems to be an important part of the game.

 

The hardest part seems to be creating the .conversation file, it's basically one big confusing XML file. 

 

that file has no OGG references, so I believe the actual config file is somewhere else...

[luzarius]

I managed to figure out how their system works.

 

For example, the following conversation file belongs to durance:

companion_cv_durance_hub_ashfall_v2.conversation - data\conversations\companions

it contains talknodes that have an id:

<FlowChartNode xsi:type="TalkNode">
      <NodeID>52</NodeID>

These talk nodes represent a line of dialogue whether it's voice acted or not.

 

You can find out the text for this talk node by opening up the appropriate string talk table file:

companion_cv_durance_hub_ashfall_v2.stringtable - data\localized\en\text\conversations\companions

    <Entry>
      <ID>52</ID>
      <DefaultText>Durance glances at his staff, then at you, and gives a crooked smile. "Can't take your eyes from it?" He chuckles. "Durance himself favored such knotted twists of heat, it was said, no shame in it."</DefaultText>
      <FemaleText>Durance glances at his staff, then at you, and gives a crooked smile. "Can't take your eyes from it?" He chuckles.</FemaleText>
    </Entry>

Then I copy and pasted an existing OGG file under the above naming scheme:

companion_cv_durance_hub_ashfall_v2_0052.ogg - data\audio\vocalization\vo wav files\durance

Note the naming scheme and how I renamed it with the number 52 at the end.

 

Unfortunately in game the voice file did not play.  If anyone knows why please let me know.

Edited April 6, 2015 by luzarius

[luzarius]

Sadly I think the reason none of this is working is because I need to modify the actual files contained in the unity3d assets. This means downloading unity, an extension and using their editor to add/remove files.  I was hoping it would be easier than this. It might be, I need to investigate the override folder.

[Dark_Ansem]

which would be much easier with 5... I see your point.

[kingthrall]

As much as I read and see you can replace voice files so long as you backup. It seems to me a real patchy and quick fix for something that should be as easy as putting a folder with the correct playback format with the correct labeling in its own subfolder in the voices. Baldurs gate worked like this SpaceDrake, and I could have as many voice sets as I wanted without replacing them. Something as convient from a 10+ year game like that should not have so much trouble to work around like you are doing. Im going to wait for some sort of offical dev repsonse or a propper modder tool because as nice as it is your still limited to 6 or so voice sets and have to constantly replace them. 

[luzarius]

As much as I read and see you can replace voice files so long as you backup. It seems to me a real patchy and quick fix for something that should be as easy as putting a folder with the correct playback format with the correct labeling in its own subfolder in the voices. Baldurs gate worked like this SpaceDrake, and I could have as many voice sets as I wanted without replacing them. Something as convient from a 10+ year game like that should not have so much trouble to work around like you are doing. Im going to wait for some sort of offical dev repsonse or a propper modder tool because as nice as it is your still limited to 6 or so voice sets and have to constantly replace them. 

 

I'm hoping for official dev support on this too.  There is a lot of clever writing in this game that could be enhanced by narration. I'd like to close my eyes and just listen to someone narrate, like an audio book.

[Matnik]

I'm looking into this from a technical perspective at the moment but I'm not a coder and I don't have much knowledge of Unity, so I'm hoping it can be done without too much scripting. 

 

I'm looking at ways of importing new companion and player voice packs into the game, I've got that you can import them as ogg files and overwrite the current settings but what I'm after is the ability to create *new* options. That way, players can add a larger pool of voices to the options when creating a character. Tried just a copy, rename, and paste as a quick test - nada. 

 

Anyone had any better luck on this, or is it something we'd have to wait for the devs to release and SDK for? 

[Zekram Bogg]

I'm looking into this from a technical perspective at the moment but I'm not a coder and I don't have much knowledge of Unity, so I'm hoping it can be done without too much scripting. 

 

I'm looking at ways of importing new companion and player voice packs into the game, I've got that you can import them as ogg files and overwrite the current settings but what I'm after is the ability to create *new* options. That way, players can add a larger pool of voices to the options when creating a character. Tried just a copy, rename, and paste as a quick test - nada. 

 

Anyone had any better luck on this, or is it something we'd have to wait for the devs to release and SDK for? 

This is something I want too. I mean, there are some VOs I don't think I'd ever use because I think they're terrible - both Male/Female Mystic suck to my ears - so I can replace those easily enough, but after that it means we're left with no more custom voices to choose from. And if I want to roll a party of six custom toons, it'd be nice to have the option to give them all more unique voices.

 

That said, I worry that the "drop in a VO set" dream may be impossible. Looking at what Justin Bell was saying in the thread linked to the first page of this thread, it seems that audio files all need to be named very specifically or the entire audio system freaks out and breaks. Hence why he advised creating new silent tracks and naming them exactly the same for someone who wanted to get rid of just the combat music in their game.

 

While I don't like assuming, it does seem like such specificity of file organization in the audio system is going to make a "drop in VO" system a LOT tougher without hacking into the larger audio system the game runs with. Which probably means going out and getting Unity 4 at the minimum. 

[SpaceDrake]

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.

Edited July 23, 2015 by SpaceDrake

[Zekram Bogg]

 

I've been working on a VO mod of my own, and I've been trying to figure out which files correspond to what actions. I've listened to all the sets and all the files seem to follow a similar pattern. I think what I have currently is pretty accurate, but there's a few sections with question marks that I'm not 100% sure what they correspond to.

 

Sorry for the page stretch. This is my first post and I'm not sure how to post this in an easier to read format. Hopefully you guys can find this information useful.

#Player selected
_0001
_0002
_0003

#Move order
_0004
_0005
_0006

#Battlecry
_0007
_0008
_0009

#Wounded
_0010
_0011
_0012

#Taking hits/damage?
_0013
_0014
_0015

#Dying?
_0016
_0017
_0018

#Fatigued
_0019
_0020
_0021

#Ally dies/falls in battle
_0022
_0023
_0024
_0025
_0026
_0027
_0028
_0029

#Attack hit?
_0030

#Attack missed?
_0031

#Encumbered?
_0032

#Stealth mode active
_0033
_0034
_0035

#Taking damage from allies
_0036
_0037
_0038

#Trap spotted
_0039
_0040

#Picking locks
_0041

#Leave party?
_0042

#Enemy spotted while undetected
_0043

#Retreat
_0044

#Attacking? Physical straining?
_0045
_0046
_0047
_0048
_0049
_0050

#Sick/poisoned
_0051

#Skill-check failed
_0052

#Confirm action
_0053

#Cannot complete action
_0054

#Action completed
_0055

#Immobilized
_0056

#Group leader
_0057

#Short spells
_0058
_0059
_0060
_0061
_0062

#Battlecry on steroids?
_0063
_0064
_0065

#Medium spells
_0066
_0067
_0068
_0069
_0070
_0071

#Long spell
_0072

OK, so this list is great and all, but there are a lot of ??? sections on it that I think I might be able to clear up. I've been going through the player VO files today, and after some comparative analysis of the different audio files from the personality sets I think I've figured out some more specificity on parts of the VO line list. Which I bring up because it might be a bit problematic if anyone wants the above  list as an exact guide to making their own VO's for their characters (which is something I'm working on for myself right now), so I figured I'd help out and do a little clarification on some of the vaguer sections of the list if anyone wants to follow this up on their own at home with a mic and wants to strive for maximum accuracy (which I do for myself anyway).

 

To be fair, these are in a couple of sections where you put up question marks primarily, and these audio files are certainly NOT clearly labeled with the related actions, so it's still a bit of guess work on my part based on the the context of the VOs themselves and from playing the game for a bit. But I think I have at least a few things figured out that add on to Rokem's earlier list.

 

So . . .

 

VO's 1-21, as far as I can tell, Rokem got all of these dead on the money. I do think VO lines 10-12 "Wounded" and 13-15 "Taking Hits/Damage" have more specific triggers than those listed though. Because later on in the VO lists, on lines 45-50 there are also a bunch of "taking hits" sounds. Near as I can figure, the 45-50 lines are specifically sounds that play when the character takes hits in melee engagement that aren't special attacks or critical attacks from enemies, and only from normal hits, while the 13-15"Taking Hits/Damage" are from either critical hits, or enemy special attacks/spells. I'm not sure whether or not the "wounded" VO's trigger on hit or when the player's HP/Endurance hits a certain threshold though.

 

The big area on this list that needs more clarity are VO lines _0022 - _0029. They are NOT all Ally falls messages, or at least, not exactly.

 

VO Lines _0022 - _0024 are I think, much more specifically when your ally actually DIES, or is maimed. These lines have a lot more urgency and worry in them (except for the Sinister voice set, who consistently has the opposite reaction from the other four sets) and more than one refer to death specifically.

 

Line _0025 isn't an "Ally falls" line I think, but an "ally at low health" or possibly a "heal ally" line. They all sound less about an ally going down, and more that they need to rally.

 

Lines _0026 - _0028 are "Ally KO'd" lines that play when allies get KO'd in combat, but not killed. There's a lot less urgency in these lines, and I hear these most often in combat when playing myself, while I'm pretty sure I only ever heard the 22-24 lines when I had a character die a couple of times (once Eder got maimed in my first game, and then I lost a Rogue I made to a nasty trap the other day on my current game).

 

Line _0029 is definitely not an "Ally falls" callout. It's the "Can't get through Enemy defense" callout. I've heard this enough in-game to know for sure something was wrong with the above list when this specific callout wasn't on it. And oh my god, I wish there was some variation on this callout. You can hear it all the time on Path of the Damned.

 

Line _0030 I think is more specifically for a Special Attack or Critical hit confirmation, like a Fighter knockdown, or rogue Blind attack. Perhaps even a critical hit kill.

 

Line _0031 is more specifically for a special attack or spell miss/failure, not just a general attack miss.

 

Lines 32 - 62 are accurate as far as I can tell. A couple of these lines are weird in that I don't think they'll actually play in game because I don't think the conditions to allow them to play exist in normal functionality any more. Specifically the "Leaving Party" line 42, since you remove group members through menus rather than through some kind of dialogue system and it automatically exchanges them while the game state is frozen, and line 44, "Retreating" since I don't know how one can actually trigger a "retreat" condition other than running away from an enemy until you get out of aggro range, and whenever that's happened in my game, I've never heard the line play. Line 32, "Encumbered" is a strange holdover that still has a play condition in the game, even though it's rare as hell, because you only ever trigger it if you forcibly try to add an inventory item to a party member whose personal inventory is filled, which since the game auto-stashes things when inventories are full, is a very rare event.

 

I'm ALSO not sure what exactly lines 63-65 pertain to. They seem to be battle cries when the PC is in a kind of spirit form or hyper-mode. However, after looking at some of the generic_male_paladin files, I think these are exhortations. I can't confirm until I get a Paladin myself into a higher level, but this seems correct.

 

63 and 64 are team focused Exhortations, and I think 65 is very specifically the Paladin's Sworn Enemy yell.

 

Lines _0066 - _0068 are definitely chant phrases, not just normal spell call outs. Likewise, _0069 - _0071 are Chanter invocations. All of these chanter VOs are all also very specifically the same words for all of the voice sets (the same with the earlier spells too, actually). I'm pretty sure these are Chant phrases as opposed to normal spell magic words primarily due to the male_noble voice set, which you can hear a stronger sense of rhythm in these cast VO's than in the earlier arcane spell VOs. 69-71 are all also very quick, so they seem to only really fit the shouts/invocation commands.

 

I have no idea what Line _0072 is more specifically other than "long spell" either. It might be the longer chant phrases maybe?

 

Oh, and fun little thing I noticed: the sinister sets (both male and female) have an extra 73rd line compared to the other sets which stop at 72. It's of them groaning/sighing in disdain, which might be a little hidden VO for clicking on them repeatedly maybe?

 

Anyway, hope this helps anyone else who might be thinking of making their own VO's for the game!