Getting Soundset to work in the game?

yotsuya

I have downloaded a few soundsets, and can play them in he Customize/Sounds area of the game, and they sound fine. But when I actually play the game - silence. As an example, I have the "Annah" soundset and would like CHARNAME to use that voice. Is there a way to do this? I have been reading posts for hours and nowhere does any simple explanation exist. I have downloaded and installed several programs which appear to do absolutely nothing to fix this (DLTECP et al). Also, I have the Steam version, so no '0766' folder, so referring to posts that discuss that folder will not be as helpful as you might think they should be...Thanks for any help!

Kilivitz

@yotsuya

Are your soundsets named properly? As of now, the EE only handles 10 custom soundsets at once, and the sets need to be named CUSTOMX ("x" being a number from 0 to 9).

yotsuya

Yay! That fixed it! Thank you.

Etamin

So how should it be? I have soundset for male mage f.i. and named it MMAGEa, MMAGEb, MMAGEc, till MMAGEm. So now i have to rename it to CUSTOM9a, CUSTOM9b, CUSTOM9c? And where to put them?

Kilivitz

@Etamin that's correct. Soundfiles should be named CUSTOMXa, CUSTOMXb and so on.

Files go on (your BG:EE install folder)\Data\00766\lang\en_US\sounds

EDIT: was pointing out to the wrong folder, corrected (thanks to Etamin)

Etamin

It doesn't work for me. I have created 13 CUSTOM1 files from a to m, put them into C:\Program Files (x86)\Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\Data\00766\sounds and i still don't hear them ingame. I was trying to put 'sounds' folder into
C:\Program Files (x86)\Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\Data\00766\lang\en_US
or
C:\Program Files (x86)\Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\Data\00766\lang\pl_PL
since i use polish language, but it didn't help.

God

@Etamin
The custom sound files should be located, for your configuration, in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\Data\00766\lang\en_US\sounds\
If you have difficulty finding the right folder, search for e.g. Female1a.wav (the original soundsets are also located in the same folder).
Your files need to be named CUSTOMxy where x is a number 0-9 and y is a letter a-w.
The files MUST be .wav 22 khz, 16 bit mono sounds. This is likely the root of your problem.
Otherwise, something is probably wrong with your CHARSND.2da.

Etamin

It works, but only when i change language for english. When i try to change it for polish and move 'sounds' folder into C:\Program Files (x86)\Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\Data\00766\lang\pl_PL i don't have soundsets in options.

Kilivitz

@Etamin yes, I stand corrected. I completely forgot about about the lang\en_US detail, my apologies.

Draith012

For those of you buying your game from Steam the folder is in Steam/steamapps/common/Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition/lang/en_US/sounds

Etamin

So nobody knows how to make custom sounds work for polish language?

Luigirules

Have you tried following this tutorial?

Isaya

@Etamin, my experience with custom sounds seems to be a bit different. I'm playing in French. The only way for me to gain access to the custom sounds when French language is set is to put them into lang\en_US\sounds.
I have tried without any succes lang\fr_FR\sounds, sounds in the main game directory and My Documents\Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition\sounds.
From my experience (I haven't tried setting various languages), it looks like the directory is hardcoded to lang\en_US\sounds.
Someone made a pack of original French voices from BG for the player character. The only place I managed to get them to work was also lang\en_US\sounds.

Etamin

Putting sounds folder into lang\en_US\ is indeed the only way to see them on voices list. But even though I can hear them when i hit "play" button, they don't exist in game. My character is silent. Only default sounds works.

Isaya

I didn't do any thorough testing, I only tested selection and action sounds either after creating a new character or changing soundset in an existing game, but they worked properly in game.
My test soundsets come from the original games. Could it be that your soundsets are not created with the proper characteristics (sampling rate, etc.) and the game is less sensitive in the "play" window?

Etamin

Ok, so i did few testing, changing soundset to my own named CUSTOM1 and then changing language ingame. The result is:
English: works fine
French: works fine
Spanish: works fine
Portuguese: works fine
Turkish: works fine
German: missing strings
Polish:... silence

If you want to help me try change language to polish and check if you have the same result as me. I will be greatful.

Isaya

I set the language to polish. I had a hard time finding my way through the menus. ;-)
And guess what? I got my custom sounds (selection and action acknoledgement, as before) in the game in Candlekeep after starting a new game. The custom sounds were in lang\en_US\sounds, as previously.
That is really strange considering what I found later on.

I extracted texts from the dialog.tlk files in English, French and Polish with WeiDU. In the latest patch (2014), they added texts at the end, from @31997 to @32126 for the purpose of custom sounds. These texts have empty texts (so no subtitles in game), but they reference all custom sounds, CUSTOM0A to CUSTOM0M and so one.
At least they do in English and French. Unfortunately, the Polish version does not have the sound references. So when the game uses the CHARSND.2DA files, it tells it to use text @31997 for a given action on the character using the CUSTOM0 soundset, and the game shoud play the sound from the reference in the corresponding text number in the dialog.tlk file.
From the observation, in my opinion, that explains why you get no sound with the Polish language.

In german, the dialog.tlk doesn't go beyond @31849, so that explains why you got "missing strings" when you tried.

That's why I'm now very surprised I got the sound to work in game when I switched to Polish. I even tried a second time, choose my second custom sound, and it's the same, I still can hear the sounds in game. I'm at a loss to understand why it works for me. It shouldn't.
An hypothesis was that I did that test on a slightly modded setup (BP-Series and RR), so I have a dialog.tlk in the 00766 directory linked to the French dialog.tlk. However, I get missing strings where I should have the BP-Series descriptions when I try to change script, so I assume it really is the dialog.tlk from the pl_PL directory that is used.
Final test: I switch to German. I start a new game, select my custom sound set, finally start in Candlekeep. I get missing strings in the dialog window, but still I hear my custom sounds!!!

Now I'm lost beyond any possible way back...

I'm really sorry that I can't get it to fail, as expected, while you can't get it to work.

Etamin

@Isaya no problem. I really appreciate your deep investigation . At least we know where lay bug.

Grieg

I will summon @viader & @Cherrycoke2l maybe they will get some insight from this topic and maybe it will be repaired?

viader

I am sure that I copied all english references, but it was in day of release... Thanks for information, I will check it!

Edit: Indeed, these strings are unreference in polish version. It will be fix.