Looking to mod the game, but I don't know where to start.

POWERFOOL

I posted this in the mod section a few days ago and have gotten no response at all. Probably because everyone hangs out here. So I hope you don't mind me bringing it up again, here.

I'm looking to full voice the "ENTIRE" game. This including non-essential NPC's. Due to the fact I personally, have to strain my eyes to read the dialog at all and I'm sure there are others suffering similar to myself. It's not good for your health.

What I "NEED" to find out is, how would I implement my voice recordings into the game, match them up to the dialog being shown on the screen and to each response?

I'm highly motivated to do this. I'd love to get started ASAP and actually make some progress. Though I'm not even sure where to start. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

POWERFOOL

Still no response at all (

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Erg

I agree with @subtledoctor.

While it is technically possible to do it with WeiDU (basically you have to loop through all the strrefs and, if necessary, replace each ~string~ with something like ~string~ [CSOUNDnn], where CSOUNDnn.ogg is the filename of a custom audio file; the filename here is just an example, you need an unique name with no more than 8 characters and preferably starting with a registered modder prefix), it is really not practical for the reasons mentioned in the post above. Besides, considering the amount of strings in the game and the average dimension of sound files, the audio folder alone in such a mod would require gigabytes of space.

POWERFOOL

subtledoctor said:

I assume you're not getting much response because

1) It would be a *phenomenal* amount of time and work, probably more than you think.

2) At least in Oblivion there are like 8 or 12 voice actors for the various NPCs; you're talking about voicing every NPC yourself. No one's heard your voice, no one knows if you have any experience voice acting... no offense but no one has a sense of whether they even want to hear your voice in the game. (Seriously no offense - it might be amazingly great, my point is that people don't know that.) So the number of people who enjoy the end product might be small, meaning a phenomenal amount of work for not much reward.

And what would you do with the dialogues where the in-game voice actors read the first line, but the rest are silent (look at some of the Haer/Aerie romance banters)? Two different voices for Haer'Dalis would be weird, and the original guy is so distinctive.

3) Much more importantly, I suspect very few people have any idea how this might be done. (I certainly don't.) Some dialogue is voiced in the game, and some mods add voicing to their dialogue. But I have no idea whether the official dialogue already in the game has hooks that can be used to inject sound files. It might involve a phenomenal amount of coding as well as a phenomenal amount of voice acting. Or it might just be straight-up impossible.

Not trying to rain on your parade! Just maybe explaining the lack of response from the forum.

Yeah... it does now seem out of the realms of possibility. Maybe I'll just get some glasses lol.

POWERFOOL

Erg said:

I agree with @subtledoctor.

While it is technically possible to do it with WeiDU (basically you have to loop through all the strrefs and, if necessary, replace each ~string~ with something like ~string~ [CSOUNDnn], where CSOUNDnn.ogg is the filename of a custom audio file; the filename here is just an example, you need an unique name with no more than 8 characters and preferably starting with a registered modder prefix), it is really not practical for the reasons mentioned in the post above. Besides, considering the amount of strings in the game and the average dimension of sound files, the audio folder alone in such a mod would require gigabytes of space.

I think I have the general ideaof how to attach sound clips to dialog. Atleast with the original BG. Though I was hoping to do these modifications with BGEE. I don't even know which files I'd need to extract and edit.

Hmm guess I'll just forget about it and move on to making a Skyrim mod or something. At this point I'm just bored with playing games. I'd rather make my own.

Thanks.

CoM_Solaufein

I would have answered earlier but I didn't have my tutorial online. This may help you in assigning sound files to text in the dialog.tlk with Near Infinity. http://www.baldursgatemods.com/forums/index.php?topic=8243.0

Erg

CoM_Solaufein said:

I would have answered earlier but I didn't have my tutorial online. This may help you in assigning sound files to text in the dialog.tlk with Near Infinity. http://www.baldursgatemods.com/forums/index.php?topic=8243.0

Yep, editing tens of thousands of strings by hand with NearInfinity is possible. It would require an enormous amount of time and it would be extremely boring, but still possible.

I would rather use some kind of automated loop in WeiDU though. The only tricky part with WeiDU would be skipping the lines that don't need voice over (e.g. names, item descriptions, journal entries, lines that already have a sound attached, etc.).

Edit: I've forgot to add that editing dialog.tlk with NearInfinity would also make the mod not redistributable.

CoM_Solaufein

Time for a reality check. BG2EE has 102832 entries in the dialog.tlk file, 80-85% of them are dialogs. Of that, 70-80% of that is unvoiced. It would take months if not a year to do all of that. Now if you want to spend that time and effort into it go ahead. This game was made at a time when there was no DVDs, it took 6 CDs for the original BG and 3 CDs when a better compression system was made, plus a budget because voice actors aren't cheap. Sound files are not small, a mod of this would be in the gigabytes.

I don't want to come across as a downer, just give you the facts before you take something like this up as a mod.

CoM_Solaufein

Erg said:

CoM_Solaufein said:

Edit: I've forgot to add that editing dialog.tlk with NearInfinity would also make the mod not redistributable.

Weidu as the ability to pull all of the strings with the sound file attach to that particular string from the dialog.tlk. Which you could use in the TP2 to install the mod. But as I said above, a mod like this would be hard, time consuming and would be a huge download.

jackjack

I know it's not the same thing, but I like to read aloud the unspoken dialogue as I play the game. The side-effect is that I get to bone up on my voice acting chops.

Twani

I used to play a lot of games reading to my ex or my niece. I still do it even when playing with no one else around at times, although I really can't do a standard 'generic guy' voice.

Gals are easy, though!

Belanos

subtledoctor said:

No one's heard your voice, no one knows if you have any experience voice acting... no offense but no one has a sense of whether they even want to hear your voice in the game.

Not to mention that hearing the same voice being used in hundreds of lines of dialogue for numerous characters would get extremely tedious after awhile.