Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: mikmanner on July 17, 2009, 11:14:56 am
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Hello everyone, I'm a sound designer, and I love Freespace, I would like to spend the next couple of weeks completely re-working all the sounds in the fs2 game, upgrading them to todays standards. Only thing is, I have no idea how to actually do this outside of creating the sounds myself. Could someone possibly point me in the right direction or guide me as to how I first of all find all the original sounds so that I know what to replace and secondly replace them.
Help would be appreciated, thank you very much
Michael Manning
ps you can email me at [email protected]
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Sounds are located inside sparky_fs2.vp. Those are probably the only things you're after, since higher-quality music tracks are included in the MediaVPs and there is little that can be done with voices, apart from re-recording them altogether.
You'll need a tool for opening .vp files. VPView is a safe choice since you can't do any wrong things to .vp files with it.
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Nice one, I'll have a look now. So I guess when I want to show you guys my sounds I'll upload an edited VP file then with all the sounds inluded.
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Uploading the modified files alone (or packed in a separate vp) would probably be best. If this goes well, having them separate from the retail data is desirable for all enhancements, I believe.
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So I guess when I want to show you guys my sounds I'll upload an edited VP file then with all the sounds inluded.
Actually, editing .vp files is not recommended, mainly because people who don't know what they're doing can easily break their entire game by doing so. You can create a .vp that contains your new sounds and provide a download for it. It can then be simply used as a mod and it'll override the retail sounds without breaking anything. Also, the \freespace2\data\ folder (or \freespace2\modfolder\data\ ) can be used to override retail data without creating new .vps.
Edit: Partially what E said.
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Okay, I havn't got a fkin clue, hahah I'm just going to get the origionals and create the new ones and then I'll be back to see what to do with these new sounds.
Thanks for the help!
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Hmm, this might be interesting. :D
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It will indeed.
Especially as prior work to implement at least ONE working replacement sound has thus far managed to lead only to frustration.
I am referring to me and Herra trying to replace the FlakLaunch.wav.
Didn't go so well.
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Well, if nothing else, having the sounds will act as one heck of a motivation towards getting them ingame ;)
Very kind offer mikmanner, it's appreciated :)
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Well, if nothing else, having the sounds will act as one heck of a motivation towards getting them ingame ;)
Very kind offer mikmanner, it's appreciated :)
Hey thats cool man, I love the game, I am a sound designer for films and games and this will be a fun project for me. If anyone is up for giving me a hand after the sounds are made then that's cool!
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If anyone is up for giving me a hand after the sounds are made then that's cool!
If you can get the sounds (in proper format and with correct file names), there are many members here at HLP who can then cook them up into a .vp and upload somewhere for people to enjoy.
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I've added new sounds for weapons before, so I have some idea how it works, but I do know the way Freespace 2 handles sound is really more coder-friendly than sound-tech friendly ;) Using the sound tables is an artform.
What you could do, if you want, is do the audio, make it available, and the community can work towards getting them in-game, assuming a simple drag-drop technique doesn't work out.
One thing I should mention, though you're probably already aware, some of the sound code has been revamped, the old Engine took 22Khz 8Bit stereo, which didn't leave much room to manoeuvre in the way of quality, but now, you'll be pleased to hear, there is .ogg support, so don't feel limited to the settings of the original files :)
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Audio effects, as a non-replacement, probably works just fine.
It's the replacement part that does not.
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Audio effects, as a non-replacement, probably works just fine.
It's the replacement part that does not.
Could someone possibly point me in the right direction or guide me as to how I first of all find all the original sounds so that I know what to replace and secondly replace them.
If you're thinking he means replacing the Canon sounds for the sake of making them part of the MediaVPs, that's not what he meant.
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I would like to hear canon cannon (and not only) sounds replaced by some better versions.
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I wish I could decipher what that meant. :lol:
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Well, if there's a problem with replacing the original sounds, this will, at least, help highlight it and give motivation towards getting it fixed :)
Edit: Though, off the top of my head, I cannot think of why replacing old sounds would be a problem, but adding new ones to the list is ok... That's some weird kind of bug if that's the case.
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Hi guys thanks for the support. So yeah I've started to get some sounds together, got some really nice ones I'm sure you'll all enjoy them. Here's what I'm going to do, create the sounds with the propper names of the sounds they are replacing, then I'm going to upload them to rapidshare and post a download link on this forum, if anyone with coding knowlage is willing to pick the project up from there then that'll be great. I'm only going to work 2 weeks on this, but this is enough time.
Thanks a lot folks.
Mik
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One more thing, do you think that the sounds would have to be the same filesize as the origional also?
Mik
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File-size doesn't really matter. And as long as the sounds have the same filenames of the sounds they're replacing, you shouldn't need a coder.
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File-size doesn't really matter. And as long as the sounds have the same filenames of the sounds they're replacing, you shouldn't need a coder.
Awesome
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:yes:
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I'm not entirely sure, but if you ogg the sounds, the tables and/or mission files may need to be tweaked. But as it was discussed, you do the sounds; someone will take care of the rest.
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I think the music tables were reliant on the filesize, but I don't think that's the case for effects, I'll have to look at some point, but I'm pretty sure it's just an Integer/Filename reference list.
Kind of weird that, after 8+ years of Freespace, I've never actually looked into this particularly deeply... :nervous:
Looking forward to having a listen to these new sounds :D
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You'll want to look through the sounds.tbl to see what the used sounds are. Sounds specific to a ship or a weapon have a sound index in the sounds.tbl and the weapons.tbl, you can reference that against the sounds.tbl file to see what's what.
Ogg isn't really specific enough, it's not a codec it's a container. The actual codec supported is Vorbis, in an ogg capsule. I have seen some mods for instance using 128kbps, 44khz vorbis audio files.
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You'll want to look through the sounds.tbl to see what the used sounds are. Sounds specific to a ship or a weapon have a sound index in the sounds.tbl and the weapons.tbl, you can reference that against the sounds.tbl file to see what's what.
Ogg isn't really specific enough, it's not a codec it's a container. The actual codec supported is Vorbis, in an ogg capsule. I have seen some mods for instance using 128kbps, 44khz vorbis audio files.
Okay, I've just been making high quality wavs for now, to save a loss in quality. I will sort out codecs afterwards or if someone wants to help they can sort that out.
:)
Mik