Internalizing Sounds

EchoRanger449 · Post by **EchoRanger449** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 7:52 am

Yeah, when I was scripting b30, I made an error with the way I ended the music in my custom scene. There isn't even a tag for music. What it was was a script that I think ran a dormant script, which in turn ran at least one sound clip, or at least a series in a certain order. there were 2 of them and they had to be started like....
sound
sound_alt

and ended like...
sound_alt
sound

Or something like that- I can't remember. Also, yes, about the chunks:
I tried using a sound effects tag once for a weapon and there was something about the chunk count that caused an exception error. I'm thinking it was because the "sound looping" tag was asking for another chunk in the file, but the file didn't have it.

Oh, one more thing (about the bitmaps this time): so you just EOF>UPDATE and it doesn't matter what the meta says the dimensions are? You just inject the larger bitmap file?
--------------------------------------------------

Edit:

I found that the bitm.meta, at offsets 0x18,0x19 and 0x1a,0x1b contain the dimensions of the bitmap file. I haven't tested for multiple sub-bitmap files, but for one sub-bitmap, those are the offsets. Note that the numbers are in hex so if you have 512, that's 200 in hexidecimal. Also, that would read out in the offset as "00 20" I think. However, for smaller dimensions like 128, it would read out as "80 00".
It's reversed by bit...I think.

Makes sense that it's reversed since xml files call dependency tag types the same way (dpib, paew, ihpw)

Also, about "sufficient space in your raw data section", how would I go about doing that? I did click the link to that article, but I don't remember seeing anything there about it. Was it further down the topic?

Altimit01 · Post by **Altimit01** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 8:57 am

EOF trick would give you sufficient space. The issue would primarily be with internalization since that does silly things and means you have to modify a lot of addresses.

Couldn't really tell you what was wrong with your sounds. I've dabbled in them but haven't actively looked into it in about a month. Conure might have some insight though. Since he also knows how to use CE unlike myself.

EchoRanger449 · Post by **EchoRanger449** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:28 am

Yeah I had a mod that I had a few people with macs recursively inject stuff for me. All the names get "messed up" in sparkedit. Messed up because I'm sure Sparkedit has the default locations for item names stored somewhere so anything that alters the location of anything in the map would cause that.

Still, I wish there were some plugins for eschaton that edited the bitmap (Kornman's Guerilla allowed you to edit a lot of stuff, mostly useful for sprite animations). Yesterday I was trying to convert a custom sprite bitmap to PC, but since it wasn't like any of the other bitmaps, I had to adjust the dds file itself so the gauss flashes would fit the locations of another effects bitmap. Little did I know that only the images in the top line of the dds file were used in the sprite animations (the creator decided not to use the others). I found it out later after working several hours on it.

Altimit01 · Post by **Altimit01** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:46 am

Well bitmap plugins only go so far. 0.6 is lame and denies possibility of plugins for places where hard coded controls would be used. 0.7 corrects that. I think I also got a bitm plugin from conure. But then again, that's pretty far in the future.

Hopefully your bitmap stuff works out alright.

EchoRanger449 · Post by **EchoRanger449** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:45 am

Yeah it's fine. I'm mostly concerned about the sounds though. Also my "battle rifle" sniper rifle sound has a problem- though it's clean and it's larger than the original sniper rifle sound, it still makes this weird clicking sound at the end. A better sound extractor/injector in general would be better. However, nothing could beat duplicating or internalizing the sounds. I'll compromise until then, if I'm still around. Thanks for your work Alt- it's made modding a lot easier for me.

WaeV · Post by **WaeV** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:10 pm

Couldn't you just use Philly's renaming trick and a batch extract?

Philly · Post by **Philly** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:38 pm

That method literally does what it says on the tin: it renames the tags. That's great if you want separate tags and models, but it doesn't do bitmaps or sounds.

Altimit01 · Post by **Altimit01** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 1:02 pm

Well... it'd make new meta tags for the bitmaps and sounds. They'd just point to the exact same raw data for those bitmaps and sounds.

Philly · Post by **Philly** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 1:42 pm

Amen.

WaeV · Post by **WaeV** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 5:55 pm

Oh right, cause you can only extract metadata with HMT.

bcnipod · Post by **bcnipod** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:26 pm

I believe I already said this at some point. The sound clips that play in-game are determined via skip-fractions. These dynamically chose and play a sound clip depending on the location, surroundings, and other such factors. This causes all the sound clips to create these enormous chains of sound tags to play if the circumstances are correct. This is why when you open a sound tag in a dependancy swapper, you see a lot of the same tag, because it is linked. Hope this explains a bit more on how they work to you.

DeadHamster · Post by **DeadHamster** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:37 pm

Well Put bcnipod.

It should still be very easy to internalize, it's just that the dependancies will have to point to a new location for the tags. We just need a tool to do so...(nudges Alt).

Altimit01 · Post by **Altimit01** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 3:27 pm

Not dependencies, but pointers to raw data. I did have something in the works but my HD got wiped and my back up source isn't available at the moment.

Although sound chains are actually a bit more self-contained than that. Music clips for example have enormous amounts of data in many reflexive chunks. Sound effects on the other hand are short simple and to the point.

DeadHamster · Post by **DeadHamster** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 3:35 pm

I was actually gonna say raw data there, but thought it was wrong and you would correct me. Go figure.

And that sucks with losing the sources. You still have the stuff for eschaton right?

And BTW, I wasnt trying to be pushy before, it's just that if anyone is gonna make a new app, it's gonna be either you or conure, because anyone else who could make something like that isn't interested in PC/Mac Halo 1

EchoRanger449 · Post by **EchoRanger449** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 3:51 pm

Yeah, I'm just interested in the sound effects.