Editing Cinedesign Sounds

[giftfish]

These have been buggy since the beginning pretty much. I don't think they were ever properly implemented.

As far as I know, Cinedesign sounds are WwiseStreams in "wav" format, just like any other line of dialogue or whatnot. Most of the time these are things like gasps, grunts, beeps, etc. They are (most of the time) listed in Soundplorer, but it's not possible to listen to them like standard dialogue. It's like the toolset doesn't know where the sound is kept. Instead of playing the file it launches a window asking you to specify the AFC. Funnier, yet, it can't see the AFC files in the main Cooked, so you can't even select the proper one:

I'm 100% certain that replacing these does work -- it's how we removed the horrible, porny, not-Jennifer-Hale groan during FemShep's make out with Thane. But, for some reason, the toolset just doesn't know how to handle playing them.

[giftfish]

Something to add to this that I think helps clarify what's happening at least a little.

These Cinedesign sounds are particularly weird. So, in this screenshot you can see export references to several specific sounds:

The WwiseEvent object points to the Cinedesign bank and has a property listed for the duration of the sound. Yet, as far as I can tell, there are no WwiseStream exports for these sounds. They're triggered via InterpTrackWwiseSound Effect tracks, so from what I can tell right now, it goes matinee track > WwiseEvent > WwiseBank > Play sound in some AFC.

If there's no stream objects and that's what Soundplorer is made to play -- and those are the only sounds that exist as individual exports -- that would explain why they can't be forced to play from within the toolset. It also means we have no way to replace them.

This is an interesting problem. One thing I think we should do with the GUI overhaul is combine Soundplorer, Wwisebank Editor, Audio Extractor, and the functionality of Fob's AFC Creator into a single focused Audio Editor. If we do that, I wonder if we can get to the point where we can listen and replace these Cinedesign sounds.

FYI, the reason I was looking into this was I wanted to replace the hanar's human bodyguard's grunts into drell grunts for the changes ThaneMOD is making to Hanar Diplomat. As of right now, though, I don't think it's actually possible to do this. I can remove them, but I can't replace them.

EDIT: One thing to clarify. The sound I reference in ThaneMOD wasn't actually replaced. It was removed by hexediting the necessary Wwiseevent objects.

[SirCxyrtyx]

In regards to your first post, the sound you're attempting to play won't because it has no Filename property, so Soundplorer can't find an afc. The sound data is actually embedded in the export data for the WwiseStream. I've got Soundplorer to extract and play pcc-embedded sounds now. Now I just have to make importing work.

As for the second post, I've got no clue where those might be stored.

[SirCxyrtyx]

Hmm. It occurs to me that since WWiseStreams that store their sound in the pcc contain the offset of that sound within the pcc, a reconstructive save might break that. Going to hold off on making importing work for pcc-stored sounds until I know whether that's a problem.

[giftfish]

As for the second post, I've got no clue where those might be stored.

My guess is Wwise_CitHub_Cinedesign.afc. If you scan through the file list in the main Cooked, certain quests have their own cinedesign file associated with them. For example: wwise_cat002_cinedesign.afc.

There is no wwise_hanarplot_cinedesign.afc, which is why I'm guessing it would be in CitHub. The game has to know where to look, though, so... how does it know?

Hmm. It occurs to me that since WWiseStreams that store their sound in the pcc contain the offset of that sound within the pcc, a reconstructive save might break that. Going to hold off on making importing work for pcc-stored sounds until I know whether that's a problem.

Ack, that's a good call. Will that be a problem for Wwisebanks? They store lots of sound snippets.

[giftfish]

@SirCxyrtyx -- Just encountered a bug with the new feature you implemented with the Cinedesign sounds:

This doesn't happen with a non-cinedesign sound, and this is an edited file, which means it's decompressed, as far as I know. So, looks like we need some type of compression check for these, that should already be present for the normal sounds?