Fireball Explosion Sound Replacement

[PantherRohen]

As the title of the topic would imply, I am interested in replacing the sound of the fireball's default explosion with the explosion sound of Quake 2, OR, that of a rocket blast from Doom. I have rather little experience with this sort of thing, considering I am but slowly learning of the Creation kit and manipulation of core files and such, and I am but humbly seeking advice on this matter. Many thanks.

 

[BrotherBob]

You'll have to find the Fireball spell and the Magic Effect that is associated with it. There will probably be 2 Magic Effects, but the one we're concerned about is not the Hysteria effect. Under the Fireball Magic Effect, locate the "Explosion" field. You'll have to locate this explosion in the CK and edit its "Sound 1" and "Sound 2". But, since you want some custom sounds, you'll have to convert them to .wav files and put them somewhere in your Data folder. Then, you have to create Sound Descriptors referring to the custom sound files. Finally, you can edit the explosion's "Sound 1" and "Sound 2" to refer to these Sound Descriptors.

 

Sounds lengthy and difficult, but it's not really if you understand what you have to do.

[myztikrice]

No need to edit anything, just rename your custom wav file to the one Fireball uses and stick it in your data folder.

[PantherRohen]

My thanks for the timely response. This, however, is where my lack of knowledge kicks in. Up to this point, I have not deeply used the CK, as in, at all. What I've done is acquired the sound file I want to replace the fireball explosion. I've extracted the actual Skyrim vanilla explosion name using FMM. At current time, the only thing I am falling short on accomplishing is actually changing the files from vanilla to the new file. My response may indeed seem redundant and the droll of an idiot, but this is about the basis of my ability.

 

EDIT: I was able to (somehow) integrate the new explosion sound into the game. Now my only suffering is how to remove the vanilla sound completely.

Edited August 1, 2013 by PantherRohen

[Bozzz123]

When working with sound files, DONT use the ck. Its a lot easier to extract all the sounds using fomm. What do you mean remove the vanilla sound completely? Why would you need to do that? The file you integrated into the game loads after the original sound so that one doesnt play. If you are still hearing a vanilla sound perhaps there is another sound file that needs to be made and renamed. Meaning there are multiple fireball explosion sounds and you have only replaced one of them.

[lazyskeever]

The easiest way to replace a sound is to do it just like texture replacements, have the new sound as a unpacked .wav with the same name and folder structure and it will override the original. The sound files are loaded into "Sound Descriptors" in the CK, and in turn these Sound Descriptors are assigned to their corresponding things in the game. There can also be multiple sounds loaded into the same Sound Descriptor, making it cycle through them in a round robin for variety.

 

What you need to keep in mind here though is that the firebolt/fireball sounds are very often used as catch-all magic sounds. Illusion spells like fury and fear use the exact same sounds, for example.

[BrotherBob]

The problem with doing a replacement is that same file is used for about a dozen other explosions, so replacing it would not exclusively cause a change in the Fireball explosion, which was the desired result.

[PantherRohen]

Well, after several hours of tinkering ( and several bottles of tasty alcoholic beverage ) I have been successful in fully changing the sound to what I have craved in a pyromantic explosion. Still only the slightest hint of vanilla explosions amid the new sound, but...I suppose I can suffer that. My deepest gratitude goes to all you kind souls whom granted me a moment of their time. Danke!

[lazyskeever]

I encountered the same problem when working on my sound replacement mod. I think what I'll do is assign completely different sounds to the firebolt/fireball spells, then just replace the original firebolt sounds with more well-rounded magic sounds which affects everything else using it.

 

Of course, when editing that stuff you're going to run into conflicts with gameplay mods that change magic, including overhauls like SkyRe.