Modding rundown: Sound

[Noelemahc]

Okay, here's the PSP voices stuff, as snagged from the X-Box build. These are of higher quality than on the PSP; BUT lacking 5 power sounds for Hawky and 7 for Ronin as well as a couple alternate enunciations of already-existing phrases for Widow and Hawky.
This pack also does not include Hawk's and Widow's speech from the SHIELD Comic Mission (which was packed INTO their personal voicefiles!), I will rip and up those later.

The missing files will come up in a separate pack once I identify and rip the missing sounds in the PSP files.

http://www.marvelmods.com/noelemahc/PSPVoices-XBOX.rar

Excelsior!

Leastways we can now discuss the voice acting quality (anyone else thinks Widow is too violent and Ronin sounds TOO old?)

[Noelemahc]

In other other news, I'm back to rigging together a Tom Jane/Punisher voiceset (expanded this time over with his voiceovers for the protagonist of GUN), even though I really don't know if I'll ever be able to get it into MUAPC :runaway:

[Teancum]

The PC and, hopefully, the X-Box sounds can be procured via the Game Extractor tool (even the shareware version).

X-Box is confirmed.  The shareware version will extract the files, the question is, does the registered version let you add files?  If it did, I could go a long way with that.  Does anyone have the registered version?  I don't wanna buy it if I don't know if it'll work.  Speaking of which, I wonder if this dude's willing to add .fb support.  Being able to extract/write to those files would make life much simpler.

[Noelemahc]

It lists "partial support" for the insertion, but I'm not so sure about its usefulness. I mean, I can tell you how to MAKE your own - it's the hash issue that's killing me, as I do not know how to work around them.

[Teancum]

I'm trying to trim down x_voice.zss.  134mb is a bit much, but the bigger issue is that it trumps the MUA VO.  I've read the topic and I'm still lost.  If it's super complicated I'll totally live with it, but if I know what to look for I have no trouble trimming down filesize.

[Noelemahc]

See the format breakdown I've posted. If you precisely determine which files you don't need (good luck with that one - XML's X_VOICE also contains the voices for each and every MINION enemy and boss you run into), you will have to remove THEM, the corresponding data entries in virtual directories one and two and the hash pieces corresponding to each of them in each of the three dirs. Then all that is left to do is to manually adjust the file length and file amount entries in the ZSS header.

It's too big a thing to do with X_VOICE without potty training previous experimentation, so try it on a smaller file - like, check if removing one file in this manner won't break it (i.e. that file's sounds will still work in-game).

[Teancum]

Will do.  In the meantime I emailed the author of Game Extractor hoping for write support.  I offered to compensate him about 30 bucks plus the bulk of my PC game collection.

[Teancum]

Not sure if anyone ever knew, but I found a few announcer files here in the Xbox that weren't originally there.

an_blackwidow
an_captainmarvel
an_hawkeye
an_hulk
an_namor
an_ronin

So there were files for the PSP guys, plus Hulk and Ronin.  The break files are there for everyone but Namor.  I'm assuming that's basically the same files as the PC.

Also, I arbitrarily just cropped random parts of x_voice.zss (XML2).  It worked for the most part.  After cropping so much however it had mixed results, as I knew it would.  For instance, Gambits sounds still worked, but Wolverine's quit working.  I'm assuming that it's because I didn't remove the headers.

[BliZZ]

an_hulk = Menu Callout, however an_namor is like a clang sound. Don't know how they got 'Namor' out of it :runaway:

[DiamondDave]

Do we have announcer callouts for the XML2 characters?  Right now, I don't get anything when I choose Cyke, Juggy or Gambit although their voices and sounds work in game.

[BliZZ]

Do we have them? Yes. Can we use them? No. They are in the XML2 x_voice, and overwriting MUA's makes them work. The problem, of course, is that then MUA's are gone :runaway:

[Teancum]

Now, on actual data.

Directory 1 houses seemingly random numbers as 'files'. Each 'file' is a 24-byte entry, with the following format:
First two bytes are the entry number. They start from zero and move on until the number before the one named in the header's 'amount of entries in directory' entry for this directory (which makes the total equal to the number listed in the header -- as entry zero obviously get counted too).
Then comes a seemingly meaningless fixed set of symbols: [00][10][7f][00][1f][00][00][7f][00][7f], and then come twelve zero bytes. This part is identical for every file in MUA.

Still fuzzy, but I'm getting there.

Directory 2 stores the file properties. Here, the hash is almost the same, as it is always 8 times X bytes long, where X is the amount of sound files stored in the archive. Yet, there is no discernible pattern to it (i.e. how or why does it look like that).
Each 'file' in this directory is 24 bytes long, the first two bytes being the number in hex, like in the previous one, followed by two zero bytes. Then come two more bytes, housing [22][56] for every entry -- it's 22050, the frequency of the sound for the PC and X-Box versions, in hex (and little endian order, of course). The remaining 18 bytes are zeroes.

I'm still hunting for this section, I know I'm looking right over it.

Directory 3 lists the file names and locations. The hash for this section is identical in size to the one for the previous one.
The entires are all 76 bytes long, and are in the following format:
First four bytes -- offset to this file's start. Always a multiple of 16 (the listed offset always has a zero for its last digit).
Second four bytes -- length of this file.
Third four bytes -- the format code. This corresponds to the WAVE FMT table, I think, as the X-Box version lists [01] for every entry (which stands for its ADPCM format) and the PC one lists  [6a] for it (which I'm yet to find in any table I've looked at so far -- anyone know any tables for the WAV format tags?). Suffice to say, that in the PC version is ALWAYS should be [6a][00][00][00] if we want to keep the same sound format. One of these days I got to try what will happen if I use 01 instead of 6a...
Anyway, the remaining 64 bytes of each entry are devoted to storing the filename (with its extension). According to shared_sounds.XMLB, only the start of a filename matters -- the numbers don't mean anything for real, nor are fixed in any place other than the hashes.

This is actually really understandable, but when you say the first four bytes are the offset, are you saying that I can put that offset in the GoTo command (CTRL+G) and jump to the data?

[Noelemahc]

I'm still hunting for this section, I know I'm looking right over it.

See the opening section, the offsets for the start of each directory are defined in the first 100 bytes of the file.

are you saying that I can put that offset in the GoTo command (CTRL+G) and jump to the data?

Yes, just don't forget to reverse the byte order (f.e. 0x123456 would be recorded in the file as [56][34][12]). The hardest part is to determine where doth the offset start as at some places the zeroes grow out of proportion, making you scratch your head quite a few times while you determine which four bytes you actually need.

[Teancum]

Yeah... I'm sitting here thinking that this might be a decent way to trim down XML2's x_voice so it's character-specific.

Speaking of x_voice, there must be a section that defines a character's folder.  How else would my renamed x_voice know which of all those files were Gambit's?  Did you cover that already?  If you did I guess I skimmed past it.

Ideas?

[Noelemahc]

No, that's something I still CAN'T figure out. My guess is that the 'hash' sections have something to do with it, but HOW to fix it, or how to decode them - that's still a mystery.