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Final Fantasy 7 => Audio => Releases => Topic started by: ficedula on 2014-07-06 18:18:53
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A new topic seems to make sense to me so I can update post 1 with download links as and when.
So, Ultrasound v0.42: http://www.ficedula.co.uk/voices/Ultrasound_0_42.zip
Changes since v0.41:
-Added 7H plugin support
Changes since v0.4:
-Support for voicing choices on popup/selection
Changes since v0.3:
-OpenAL output
-OGG support
-Support selecting audio files based on party members
Changes since v0.2:
-Lower latency on sound playback
-Fix a few crashes
-Add Pan and Volume properties to sounds
-Add Ambient sounds, optionally looping
How to use the options:
See audio\Ultrasound.xml in the download ;) But to go into detail:
Ambient sounds are sounds that are triggered to play not because FF7 was playing a sound effect, but because some variable in the game (so far - FieldID or PPV) changed.
Currently only one ambient sound is playing at a time - whenever the FieldID/PPV changes, Ultrasound checks its list of ambient sounds, and finds the first one whose conditions match. It stops any sound that's already playing, and then plays the new sound (if any!).
(The only kind-of exception so that is that if the new sound filename is the same as the old one, it just updates the existing sound with a new pan/volume - it doesn't actually stop and then start the same sound playing.)
So, for example;
<Ambient FieldIDs="195" Loop="true">ultrasound\rain-heavy.mp3</Ambient>
<Ambient FieldIDs="202" Loop="true" Volume="0.5">ultrasound\rain-heavy.mp3</Ambient>
...if FieldID is 195, it plays the rain-heavy file (on loop). When you go into FieldID 202 (which is indoors), it carrys on playing the same sound, but at 50% volume.
If you need to set a pan, an attribute called Pan sets the panning; 0 = Full left, 1 = Full right, 0.5=Middle (default). It won't have any effect on stereo files though!
You can set Volume on replacement sound effects, but Pan won't work - Ultrasound uses whatever pan FF7 has set on the sound instead.
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Uploaded v0.35: http://www.ficedula.co.uk/voices/Ultrasound_0_35.zip
Changes:
-Triggers voice files based on dialogue IDs correctly, not text comparison
-Supports multiple ambient sound effects playing at once
For the last feature, the way it works is that <Ambient> entries in the configuration file can have a Group attribute set against them, e.g.
<Ambient FieldIDs="195" Group="1" Loop="true">ultrasound\blip2.mp3</Ambient>
If you don't set the group ID, it defaults to zero (0). When deciding which ambient sound effect(s) to play the program uses the first valid ambient sound effect it finds from each possible group. So for an example:
<Ambient FieldIDs="195" PPVs="191" Loop="true">ultrasound\rain-heavy.mp3</Ambient>
<Ambient FieldIDs="195" Loop="true" Volume="0.5">ultrasound\rain-heavy.mp3</Ambient>
<Ambient FieldIDs="195" Group="1" Loop="true">ultrasound\blip2.mp3</Ambient>
The first two ambient effects have no group ID set, so they belong to group 0. When you go into field ID 195 (which is mrkt2) Ultrasound looks at these effects, and because the first two belong to the same group, it will only play one of them (it decides based on the PPV in this case - if PPV=191, it plays the first one, otherwise, the second one).
However the third effect belongs to a different group so it will also play this effect and you'll end up with two ambient effects playing. Hopefully that makes sense.
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Uploaded v0.37: http://www.ficedula.co.uk/voices/Ultrasound_0_37.zip
-Fix choices showing under wrong dialogue ID
-Added logging option as per Shard's request
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I'm having trouble getting Ultrasound to do anything. I changed the config to find the VoiceHook.dll and data folders, it runs FF7 when I click Go, but no sounds get played (not even the ones you recorded), and no logging happens.
I installed using the original 1998 discs, plus whatever Bootleg does to the exe. The exe has probably also been changed by TouphScript.
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Tricky to work out exactly what's happening when the problem is that nothing's happening... ;)
Can you upload your EXE somewhere and PM me a link - so I can try with your exe and see if the same happens for me?
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"Whatever Bootleg does to the exe" is awfully vague, too. It can do a number of things, some of which are automatic, some not. Tell me what settings you had and I'll tell you what changed.
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I'm running more or less the default options from Bootleg (no gameplay modifications, just models/textures). I'm pretty sure it only applied the automatic patches. I think the only option I changed from the defaults was the materia model/texture.
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1.02 Patch and probably the outdated Menu Overhaul, then.
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I'm having trouble getting Ultrasound to do anything. I changed the config to find the VoiceHook.dll and data folders, it runs FF7 when I click Go, but no sounds get played (not even the ones you recorded), and no logging happens.
I installed using the original 1998 discs, plus whatever Bootleg does to the exe. The exe has probably also been changed by TouphScript.
Hm, your exe works fine with Ultrasound for me, so it's not any of the patches you've applied.
Do you not get any sounds at all, not even the standard ones...? That suggests your configuration is broken somehow.
Alternatively, try using Debugview - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx - and see what messages get output when you run the game through Ultrasound.
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I get the regular game sounds, just not the ones you setup in your Ultrasound package (the guy near the inn and the boy looking at the cat statue).
This is the DebugView output. I ran the game, loaded a save at Wall market, walked over the save point a few times, talked to the cat boy and the guy near the inn, then closed the game.
I recorded my monitor while doing it as well. YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TobxJJ_idY4).
[1452] SHIMVIEW: ShimInfo(Complete)
[1452] WM_ACTIVATEAPP
[1452] INITIALIZE DD/D3D START
[1452] WM_ACTIVATEAPP
[1452] WM_ACTIVATEAPP
[1452] FF7AlwaysRunKranmer.dll
[1452] FF7anyCDv2.dll
[1452] Hext.dll
[1452] MIDI set volume trans: 127->0; step=60
[1452] MIDI stop
[1452] reading midi file: ROCKET.mid
[1452] MIDI stop
[1452] END UNINITIALIZE DD
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That's pretty uninformative :/ If I had to guess it looks like it's not loading the VoiceHook.dll library properly; you're completely sure the path to the DLL in the config file is correct?
If so, I'll have to put a new release out with more logging to try and track this down.
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So, it turns out Avast (antivirus) blocks dll injections. I had to add an exception for the dll specifically. Now, the ambient and menu sounds (piano tones) play, but dialogue still does not play. Ultrasound is detecting the voice files are being found and says they're being played, but they aren't actually playing.
In any case, the logging does work, and that's what I really needed for the project at the moment. LMK if you think of any reason the voice files aren't playing.
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Well, glad you got the DLL working anyway ... only difference that comes to mind between the dialogue and ambient sounds is that the dialogue is in WAV files, but the ambient/SFX files are MP3s. Can't think of an obvious reason why the WAVs would be problematic, but I guess it's possible.
TBH, I'd expect we'd want to use MP3 or OGGs for distributing things anyway, so it's not the end of the world if the wav decoder I'm using isn't working completely reliably.
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Found a bug. Ultrasound crashes right before the bike minigame in Midgar, right as the game's giving you the controls.
I haven't been able to check the other minigames yet.
EDIT: It looks like it's not the minigame itself, but the boxes that pop up before it. I'm getting a lot of crashes in places where multiple windows pop up at the same time, including
- Bike minigame explanation
- Explanation of Mr. Dolphin segment
- Junon soldier training and minigame
- Shera's flashback in Rocket Town (when the countdown for the rocket starts)
- The "sephiroth enters Nibelheim" scene in the Tifa+Cloud Lifestream
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I don't assume Ultrasound works for FF8, does it? If not, is there any project out there that does something similar?
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The FF8 voiceover project is in development. It doesn't use an external tool to play the sounds, though. They're all built into the game instead.
You can use FF8Audio (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=14944.0) to replace FF8's sound effects.
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Found a bug. Ultrasound crashes right before the bike minigame in Midgar, right as the game's giving you the controls.
I haven't been able to check the other minigames yet.
EDIT: It looks like it's not the minigame itself, but the boxes that pop up before it. I'm getting a lot of crashes in places where multiple windows pop up at the same time, including
- Bike minigame explanation
- Explanation of Mr. Dolphin segment
- Junon soldier training and minigame
- Shera's flashback in Rocket Town (when the countdown for the rocket starts)
- The "sephiroth enters Nibelheim" scene in the Tifa+Cloud Lifestream
Hm, OK. In theory that should be able to fix once I can see it happening on my PC: do you happen to have a savegame close to the location of one of the crashes?
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I sure do!
http://www.mediafire.com/download/3ts9a6t58okjuw5/save.zip
You should try the airport passage saves. You shouldn't have to play very far until you get to the crash points.
I can upload other saves for the other crashes, but I'm pretty sure it's a single problem.
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Annoyingly it doesn't crash for me.
Can you clarify - when you say Ultrasound crashes, are you seeing the Ultrasound window crash & disappear, but FF7 keeps on running? Or FF7 crashes as well?
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FF7 keeps running. The Windows WERFault thing comes up and tells me Ultrasound has stopped running.
I'm running on Windows 8 64 bit.
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We found a snag. There are some lines that multiple characters give depending on who's in your party which all share the same text window (eg in the Gold Saucer play, every one of the potential dates has some lines). Will we have a way to play a different sound effect based on who's in the party, or will we have to find another workaround?
Also, FF7 has a text macro for {PARTY1}, {PARTY2}, and {PARTY3} which will obviously be impossible to voice over individually.
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You just have to add a small if clause to the script when calling the dialogue to get who is in your party and call the sound effect accordingly. For the protagonist's names you have to record every possible statement and add every possible text to the scene and replace the script command calling the dialogue with a variable in it by another slightly more complex if structure.
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We wanted to do this without modifying the game's scripting because it causes lots of incompatibilities with some other mods.
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Oh, I see. In that case I fear that there is no good way around this other than altering the texts removing all variable content so it doesn't matter who says it. For the first issue you probably have to replace all those statements by text that the party leader speaks.
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Isn't it possible to determine the character by the field model file? The other solution might be to get information about the party constellation.
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Oh, I see. In that case I fear that there is no good way around this other than altering the texts removing all variable content so it doesn't matter who says it. For the first issue you probably have to replace all those statements by text that the party leader speaks.
No, that isn't the case at all.
I don't see any problem adding support to Ultrasound for having different voice files for the same text box depending on who's in the party. Might take a bit of time to code but there's no technical reason it can't be done; it's already injecting a DLL into the FF7 process, so it can access the necessary information without too much trouble.
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Ok sure, technically it is possible but it should be a lot simpler to alter the scripting. Shard said that this causes trouble with other mods. Is this really such a big deal to add 2 lines of if structures?
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Given the choice between modifying every script where there is dialogue said by a 'generic' party member, which breaks compatibility with any other mods that modify the field files; or adding support for it into Ultrasound ... I'm not sure why you think the former is simpler.
Well, I suppose it would require less programming. It's noticeably more work though, given that it involves both having to change all the relevant field scripts and rewrite the dialogue to make sense when spoken by the party leader.
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Modding the PSX version I learned that difficulty and the required amount of work are two completely different things, Im used to doing some simple hand work on a mass of field files ;)
And it involves more than just getting the variables in the dialogues to work, Shard pointed out that Ultrasound must know which speaker to pick from the start for a statement that is given by multiple potential party members. Both issues he mentioned should cause trouble, if you find it easy to include support for that of course you do not have to touch the scripts.
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New version: http://www.ficedula.co.uk/voices/Ultrasound_0_40.zip
Changes:
-Use OpenAL output & buffer cache to try and reduce latency
-Support OGG files
-Support selecting voice files based on party members
For the last feature, it lets you change which audio file is played depending on whether a particular character is in the party or not.
The way to set that up in the XML is like this:
<Entry File="elm\tifa1.wav" ID="119" Part="a" Char1="2">...</Entry>
<Entry File="elm\tifa2.wav" ID="119" Part="a" Char2="2">...</Entry>
<Entry File="elm\tifa3.wav" ID="119" Part="a" Char3="2">...</Entry>
<Entry File="elm\vincent.ogg" ID="119" Part="a" CharAny="7">...</Entry>
What says is that when dialogue 119a is played:
-If the character in position 1 in the party is Tifa, play tifa1.wav
-If the character in position 2 in the party is Tifa, play tifa2.wav
-If the character in position 3 in the party is Tifa, play tifa3.wav
-If Vincent is anywhere in the party, play vincent.ogg
(In the game, Tifa uses character ID 2, and Vincent is ID 7. The IDs are the same as in the savegames, see http://wiki.qhimm.com/view/FF7/Savemap)
That means you can cope with dialogue that includes the {PARTYx} tags by recording multiple versions and having the correct version play back.
Shard - can't remember if we ever discussed this, but how do you want to handle choices? Although Ultrasound doesn't currently support it, it would be possible to work out which option was selected, and play an audio file based on that. The only issue is that of course once the player hits Enter to confirm which option they want, the game (usually!) goes straight onto the next piece of dialog, so you'd have the audio playing 'behind' what was on the screen.
Options I can think of:
-We don't care, we aren't going to voice choices
-Voice the option and just delay any audio for the following window until the option audio is done playing
-...any other suggestions...?
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Another option would be to voice each choice (in the characters head) as the player highlights the choice with the hand cursor, and silence it when they move to a different choice or they pick one.
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Hm, interesting. I'll try and implement that and see if it works.
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If that doesn't work, we may just have to never play dialogue choices. There are some places in the game where the character doesn't even speak the choice you make, and other places where they do.
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Victory; http://www.ficedula.co.uk/voices/Ultrasound_0_41.zip
Only change is that dialogue choices can be voiced now. The tags needed to trigger that in the files are:
<Entry File="elm\103a.wav" ID="103" Part="a">“Then let me explain how to use the world map.”</Entry>
<Entry File="elm\103b.wav" ID="103" Part="b">“Well then,what do you want to know?” Changing camera angles Map indicators Operating the buttons</Entry>
<Entry File="elm\103b_0.wav" ID="103" Part="b" Choice="0"></Entry>
<Entry File="elm\103b_1.wav" ID="103" Part="b" Choice="1"></Entry>
<Entry File="elm\103b_2.wav" ID="103" Part="b" Choice="2"></Entry>
Note the first two tags are for 'regular' dialogue; the last three are for the 3 options that are displayed as part of dialogue 103b.
When the prompt is first brought up, whichever option is initially selected will be played after the current 'regular' dialogue has finished speaking. Moving to another option will voice that choice (cancelling any existing choice file that's playing). Selecting an option doesn't automatically silence the choice, but any other dialogue being played will replace the choice (so in practice, selecting a choice usually will silence it since you almost always move onto another dialogue box!)
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So I want to start to replace the sound with the files I have from the PSX.
First thing: Can you divide the files by their content, please? So I have folders for voice, sound and ambient. Atm. as it is now it is a bit messy.
Second: Is it possible to dump the current played sound with its ID? Ideally it will ignore sound which is already replaced by the tool. This way it's easier for me to find specific sounds.
At last there is a delay when the tool kicks (first time when a replaced sound is played) in but after that it plays perfect. (only as a note)
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Oh, great tool so far!
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Second: Is it possible to dump the current played sound with its ID? Ideally it will ignore sound which is already replaced by the tool. This way it's easier for me to find specific sounds.
If you run DbgView while the game is running (with Ultrasound), it logs sounds to the debug output along with a note saying whether the sound is being replaced by Ultrasound or not. You should see lines like:
Sound 0 0 102 64...not overridden, allowing default proc
The third number is the sound ID.
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Very nice. That was quick. When we get some of this stuff edited, I'll let you know if anything needs to be tweaked.
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If you run DbgView while the game is running (with Ultrasound), it logs sounds to the debug output along with a note saying whether the sound is being replaced by Ultrasound or not. You should see lines like:
Sound 0 0 102 64...not overridden, allowing default proc
The third number is the sound ID.
But it will also dump information I dont need? I have no time to hunt down for information I do need.
@Shard
I hope SE will hire some of the voice artist for their 'Re-Try'!
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But it will also dump information I dont need? I have no time to hunt down for information I do need.
OK, but Dbgview does have a filter, so if you set the filter to only display messages containing "not overridden", you'll only see output about sound effects that are being played and haven't been replaced by Ultrasound.
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I have encountered bug which prevents the tool from working. After a certain amount of replaced sounds (I use around 50 so far) the tool does not start properly and can't be closed.
Here the files I use:
https://mega.co.nz/#!aQEQARAZ!LGFVcBEI3KkWp3fbLTIFaGmDAtvUr6y-kemVc_7IYh8
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v0.42: http://www.ficedula.co.uk/voices/Ultrasound_0_42.zip
Only change is that I've implemented a 7H plugin, so Ultrasound mods can be distributed & run through 7H without needing to install and run Ultrasound manually first. There's an example mod XML in the download, but let me know if anyone wants to do this, so I can help get it working.
@Kaldarasha: Sorry, didn't see your message before. Will take a look.
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How do i use this with 7H, ive tried making into IRO and importing and also trieng it as a folder but there arent any voices in the area the tech demo has
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Upload the iro somewhere and send me the link; I'll take a look and work out what the problem is.
Cheers
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http://www.mediafire.com/download/lfixsmxx9dejbfd/Ultrasound.iro Here's an upload of my IRO
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Well, there's a couple of issues;
1) Everything's inside an Ultrasound_0_42 folder within the archive; it shouldn't be
2) You'd need to rename 7HModSample.xml to mod.xml because that's what 7th Heaven expects it to be called - and edit the details to reflect the contents of your mod
....but I think you've also misunderstood: the 7H plugin is so you can create your own mod. Just archiving up the standard Ultrasound package doesn't achieve anything useful. The FF7 voices project hasn't released anything for download yet.
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Ah they make perfect sense. So right now this mod doesn't actually do anything then? I kinda thought it was like beta/alpha release. Really wanted to try out what you had so far
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Ultrasound isn't really a mod, so much as a tool for people to create audio mods. The voices team is one group that's using it.
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So is the voices team still working and is it possible to get anything from them as an early test.
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No, because our files will only work with our translated script, which hasn't been released yet (and won't until the project is done).
Ficedula has a few sounds in the wall market area, and he has replaced the sound that plays when you walk onto a save point.
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@ficedula
Have you looked at the problem I have posted before?
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I so badly would like this mod :)
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I so badly would like this mod :)
This isn't a mod. It's a tool you can use to make mods without changing any game files.
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What?
Oh right... I was very tired yesterday. Have mercy. It is still a brilliant tool.
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Sorry for bringing this back but im having trouble with it. I tried a long while back when i had no idea how to mod myself and now i have a good deal of knowledge but not so much with the xml files. After downloading i renamed the 7Hexample to mod.xml. Hoping that was all i needed for the testers to work so i can figure it out myself but with this as an IRO 7H crashes at startup, the game runs and the voices do not play (the files inside belong to the kid next to the cat in wallmarket) any know where im going wrong?
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I've read the first post, and it seems the way you've programmed this is similar to how I programmed Roses and Wine. I.e., you've cheated ? You look for a mem var change and then play the effect that matches.
But with a dll it should be possible to make a full and proper replacement of the sound. We can write our own code and disable the game version, thus emulating all the functions of akao correctly.
Do you have any desire to do this? Because I might at some point. I think it's time FF7 had the original sound effect quality. At the least, the battle sound effects. Does Ultrasound work this way for ordinary battle effects?
I suppose with battle effects there wouldn't be any real need to do it differently to the cheating way, since there won't be any fading or other effects.
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If this is redone do I have to start again?
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I'm not sure what you goals are. Mine is to simply make a dll that will play menu and battle effects from a folder in high quality stereo ogg vorbis format. Which is definitely doable. I think Ultrasound is more of a general purpose tool.
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So we should be fine then. I'm voicing the game. I got all areas sorted now. Only thing I cannot voice right now is inside battle text. If there is a way to do that then we have a perfect voice nod going.
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I've read the first post, and it seems the way you've programmed this is similar to how I programmed Roses and Wine. I.e., you've cheated ? You look for a mem var change and then play the effect that matches.
But with a dll it should be possible to make a full and proper replacement of the sound. We can write our own code and disable the game version, thus emulating all the functions of akao correctly.
Do you have any desire to do this? Because I might at some point. I think it's time FF7 had the original sound effect quality. At the least, the battle sound effects. Does Ultrasound work this way for ordinary battle effects?
I suppose with battle effects there wouldn't be any real need to do it differently to the cheating way, since there won't be any fading or other effects.
This is more or less what I aimed for until I meet the bug. The replacement is easy (while sill time consuming) with headphones, since FF7 has a strange behavior when plugin in other sound devices and doesn't recognize them automatically. So I was able only to hear the sounds I replaced on my headphones and nothing else.
For the future it will help if we separate the files for the modules (it will be easy to mod them later this way).
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My dll would have no issue. It would be modelled on RaW and would work perfectly with ogg files. I've already located most of the battle sound functions. The question is panning and so on. There's more going on here than just playing from what I can see. Battle is more basic than field though. Field has a whole raft of functions that are already fully documented.
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Hmm i have a request that would very much solve one of my last issues here.
You know how we have sound plays depending on PPV or Field ID so far.
Can we add a possibility where a sound plays if a specific item ID plays that sound?
My reason being Barrets Gatling gun is model ID 10.
This way i wouldn't have to find a way to add new sounds or find a pointless one.
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If I ever get round to making my dll, it will probably be battle only - but it will be based entirely on ID. If I made it for field also, it would depend how it all works - but where possible it would be ID entirely.
The programming side is the fun side. But no chance I am going to recreate 700+ oggs from some high quality source. I am not sure where we'd get that. Probably epsxe with modded field file to play all effects.
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Problem solved. I used a sound im sure only gets used once which is the very 1st train sound the second you start.
I added a FieldID tag so the sound is replaced on every field but that 1 so were golden now
EDIT: Problem IS solved except for 1 thing....
I can't put a hex file in a 7h mod to do this. I have the right codes in the document but even though they get put in they don't change. I checked it in cheat engine. If i alter them myself through it it's fine.
I assume this is because the kernel gets put in after the hext files do so they are changing it back.
I need a way to either delay it or find a way to patch only these codes into the kernel because i don't want to replace the whole thing in case another mod uses it.
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hext launch has a delay function. See readme.
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Hmm still not working. Is it just a case of doing this
..\ff7bc.exe
Delay=5000
00DBECD4 = 2E 35
Those codes refuse to change. I have this inside a hext folder inside an IRO for 7H
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delay does not go there. It goes in settings.ini in HL_Files.
See the readme and see the log.
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So i have to put hext launch ect inside the IRO as well? I thought 7H came with that stuff so i didn't bother. I don't understand how external programs running from an IRO work. Ficedula basically set up ultrasound for me.
Any hexts i've put in so far are just text documents in a hext folder. No programs required 7H just does it for me.
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Mm, 7H can also apply hex patches, but doesn't (currently) support the delay option. That would be really quite easy to add, though. I'll put an update up later today that adds that in.
(EDIT: Done)
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Only way i have found for this is to redistribute the reunion kernel with my changes if that's okay?
Was pretty hard to work this out.
I had to switch his crit sound to his normal sound, then change his normal sound to the train sound effect under the condition that it would only change if your not on map md8stin.
If you could code a sound effect to only be swapped if it came from that weapon ID it would help SO much
Still can't figure out how to add the hex codes in through 7H yet.
Id love to have a list of all the runtime vars possible for 7H.
Like i have no clue how that dynamic weapon came around.
How does it know what weapon Cloud is using???
So i figure if that's possible then changing sound depending on weapon might be too
I'll send you a link to the Beta-Test today so you can poke around and see what i've got
After that the in battle text makes this a complete thing for me.
All im lacking right now is the text inside the guard scorpion battle
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Hey ficedula, i came across something i can't figure out. Check this video and you'll see.
Sometimes when a line is spoken if you get a battle after it, once the battle is over it will play the last line again. I tried changing the game moment once it finishes and adding a PPv value to the line but that didn't work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bTUW5YUxo4 Watch from 15:40 to see an example
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Please, could you share the source code for this?