Ajunta Pall WIP

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

I think I will be releasing Ajunta Pall version 1 as is. No mesh alpha. That's okay. Always room for improvement.

Here's a comparison video

https://youtu.be/DmY0KpgMy4s

[ebmar 893]

11 hours ago, VarsityPuppet said:

I think I will be releasing Ajunta Pall version 1 as is. No mesh alpha. That's okay. Always room for improvement.

Here's a comparison video

https://youtu.be/DmY0KpgMy4s

I don't know if it's just me or anyone else's facing the same problem but, your video is inaccessible VarsityPuppet 🤔

[Sith Holocron 2,473]

5 minutes ago, ebmar said:

I don't know if it's just me or anyone else's facing the same problem but, your video is inaccessible VarsityPuppet 🤔

Same here.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Apologies. Should be accessible now

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Okay, so I'm getting the installer ready now. I think I have most of it set up, but I realize that I'm not sure what's the best way to go about installing new VO.

On the one hand, I can just copy the mp3 files over to the streamwaves folder, but what am I supposed to do with the old files? Does TSLPatcher have a way of deleting or moving the old VO files?

[Sith Holocron 2,473]

Won't placing the MP3 files in the Override folder - er - override the original files?  That's how one of my mods worked.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

1 hour ago, Sith Holocron said:

Won't placing the MP3 files in the Override folder - er - override the original files?  That's how one of my mods worked.

Indeed? I never considered that. I’ll give it a shot. Thanks!

[Sith Holocron 2,473]

Could you let us know how it goes?  Thanks!

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Hmmm... so placing the modified sound files (as mp3) into override did not seem to work. Placing them into streamwaves/m37aa/free04 didn't seem to work either...

I need a way to delete existing files with TSLPatcher

OR

If I could get a hold of Miles Sound Tools and convert it whatever weird .wav file format the engine uses... that'd be good probably

[DarthParametric 3,777]

The originals are just MP3 with a fake 199 58 byte WAV header. I wonder what would happen if you added that to your files? Do you have a sample MP3 that we can try it with? Or presumably you can just hex edit one/some yourself.

 

Edit: Doing some tests, it's pretty easy to set up batch processing, assuming it works. You can just export the first 199 58 bytes from the header of an existing WAV from a hex editor and then create a batch file:

@echo off
for %%F in (*.mp3) do copy /b "header.bin" + "%%~nF.mp3" "%%~nF.wav"
pause

 

Edit 2: Actually, comparing to other MP3s, it looks like the fake header is only 58 bytes. I was going too far into actual relevant MP3 header data. Trimming 199 would allow it to play in Wnamp, etc. but I don't know how the game would react.

 

[LiliArch 115]

Is the fake header same for every file?

[JCarter426 1,214]

You really shouldn't have to do anything fussy with the audio files to get them to work. I've been putting them in the game for many, many years and I can tell you that back in 2009 I did not know anything about a fake WAV header and couldn't have been adding one.

I've always used standard, raw, uncompressed WAV files. They do have to be mono and that's what I've seen trip people up a lot. Sampling rates of both 48.0 KHz and 44.1 seem to work. I only know that because I've forgotten to pay attention to that before and surprisingly didn't have problems with either.

I don't know if putting them in Override will actually override what's in streamwaves but there are a couple options if it doesn't. You could include the original in your install under a different file name (like whatever_bak.wav). Then add both to the installer and let it overwrite the original ones. Alternatively, you could set up another patch as an uninstaller. Have both versions overwrite, one with your mod's files and one with copies of the originals. That's probably what I'd do. I've actually thought about making uninstallers with TSLPatcher before, but I always thought it was too much a pain, and I don't think it can delete certain things anyway. But this is one case where it seems doable.

[DarthParametric 3,777]

5 minutes ago, JCarter426 said:

They do have to be mono

The fake WAVs aren't mono though. It would be interesting to see - for experimental purposes if nothing else - whether simply adding the fake WAV header to a stereo MP3 is sufficient, or whether there is indeed some other processing they did via Miles

 

20 minutes ago, LiliArch said:

Is the fake header same for every file?

K1 is mostly all the same, although they do have some that go the other way - WAVs with fake MP3 headers (e.g. al_xxxx). TSL though has a few different variations (based on Obsidian using at least two different encoders, from what I can glean).

[JCarter426 1,214]

Huh, that would be interesting. It wouldn't have a lot of practical benefit, since in general with video games you want the sounds to be mono because the engine is taking care of putting everything in real 3D space. However, it would be better to have the option than not, of course, and I definitely could imagine some uses, such as with music.

Now that I think about it, of course the files must be stereo. The sound mixes for some of the game cutscenes are there, and they definitely aren't mono. If anything, it's strange that WAVs we add have had to be mono up to this point.

[Kexikus 994]

It depends on where the sound file is used.

From my experience, sound effects for weapons etc as well as dialogue files need to be mono while music files have to be stereo.

[JCarter426 1,214]

Oh, that makes more sense. It's probably that the game is can only read what it wants to read (i.e. if it's looking for one channel it doesn't know what to do with two, and the reverse) and there's nothing we can do about that. And really what it wants to read makes sense. You want SFX and VO and such to be mono and music to be stereo. The cutscene sound mixes are in the music folder and maybe they're there for a reason.

[DarthParametric 3,777]

Here you go. Thanks to @bead-v figuring out the cause, this should solve your crash problems with mesh alpha.

VP_Ajunta_Pall_Alpha_Crash_Fix.7z

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

On 8/28/2018 at 11:33 PM, DarthParametric said:

Here you go. Thanks to @bead-v figuring out the cause, this should solve your crash problems with mesh alpha.

VP_Ajunta_Pall_Alpha_Crash_Fix.7z

Thanks to my bros @DarthParametric @bead-v and @JCarter426 for hammering on MDLEdit. Looks like y'all will be getting a ghostly Ajunta Pall after all (along with a bug fix or two)

Screenshot has been brightened so the transparency can be seen more easily

Spoiler

 

[DeathScepter 46]

On 6/5/2018 at 1:33 AM, LiliArch said:

 

 

 

Your Ajunta Pall looks great, Just curious would the Ajunta Pall's robes would be included with the infamous Ajunta Pall's sword in this mod?

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

On 1/12/2019 at 4:01 PM, DeathScepter said:

Your Ajunta Pall looks great, Just curious would the Ajunta Pall's robes would be included with the infamous Ajunta Pall's sword in this mod?

Sadly no, as that would require me to make both a male and female model of Ajunta Pall’s robes, and due to engine limitations, I’d probably have to remove the hood too

[DeathScepter 46]

thank you for the information

[LiliArch 115]

Why did make an empty quote of me?