Re-using existing voice resources in new dialog

[Yukichigai]

So I've dived headlong into tinkering with GECK and so far, so good. I've done some fairly innocuous things that have gone well, but when it comes to dialog I seem to get hosed.

 

Case in point, Protector Casdin and the "Outcast Collection Agent" unmarked quest. It always irked me that he wouldn't take Tesla Helmets, especially since it meant I couldn't recover them at full repair off of his dead/frozen/paralyzed/whatever body later. Anyway, I decided to do what I thought would be a fairly simple fix. I copied the option used for Enclave Power Helmets, changed the conditions, changed the script, changed the Lone Wanderer's prompt text, then added the new dialog option to the main "collection" menu (both of them). When I loaded up the game it went fine, the option worked like a charm and he took the Tesla Helmet with no issues, EXCEPT that there was no voice. None!

 

When I went back into my plugin package and checked the voice entry for his reply it APPEARED to be pointing to the right sound name and the right path, but later I noticed that instead of ending in ",ogg" it ended in ".mp3". There's no way I can find to edit that, and the only options available allow me to re-record the audio. Is this even my problem? What am I missing here?

[llamaRCA]

Unfortunately the sound cannot be reused like that. You have to go out into the Fallout BSAs in your data folder to get the .lip and .ogg file for the line that you want to have play for Casdin and then you need to create a folder for those two files. They will live in your data folder inside your Sound\voice\TheExactNameofYourEsp.esp\MaleAdult01DefaultB. I assume you will want to go into the BSA that has the Menu Voices in it. (You can find which files you want by looking at the name of the dialogue info. The pic below shows you where to look to find the name of the dialogue info you need to look for; so you will use that to find the Casdin line you want to copy to create the new one.)

 

Once you have that done you go into the quest where you have created your new dialogue topic double click on the info and it will bring up the little box on the right. Look here for an example.

 

 

Pic of page from the GECK

 

 

Copy the name in that box and paste it over the name of the two files that you have put into the folder you've created in your Sound folder. You will rename both the .lip and the .ogg file with this same name.

 

That should do it. You should now have the sound playing with no problems.

 

:) llama

 

Edit: Oops. I messed up the file path. Eek. Fixed.

[Yukichigai]

Okay, so I did ALL of that and it still didn't work. The only thing I can figure is that the new reply I made lists the voice as being located in the EXACT same location as the old reply, e.g. Data\Sound\Voice\Fallout3.esm\blahblahblah. Is this something I'm missing, or am I just going to have to re-make the dialog entirely?

[BadPenney]

Do you have Archive Invalidation Invalidated! active on your computer either as a standalone or as part of Fallout Mod Manager?

[Yukichigai]

No I do not

[llamaRCA]

Okay, so I did ALL of that and it still didn't work. The only thing I can figure is that the new reply I made lists the voice as being located in the EXACT same location as the old reply, e.g. Data\Sound\Voice\Fallout3.esm\blahblahblah. Is this something I'm missing, or am I just going to have to re-make the dialog entirely?

 

You have to go and extract the files (the lip and ogg file) out of the BSA. To do that you go into your data file and look for the FO3 BSA files. You will see one that contains the MenuVoices files (I'm assuming that's where the Casdin line is; there is also a Voices one). Double click on it and then search for the name of the dialogue topic that you want to copy. The name is the one highlighted for you above. Then extract it. You will have to copy it to use it. It's the only way.

 

You cannot use an existing sound file twice. You have to make a second copy of it, rename it to the name of the topic/info that you have created for Casdin to say and place it in a brand new folder that you create for your new esp that you create in a set of folders that follow the file path that I described above. Once you have done that you will have working dialogue. If you don't do that you won't get him to speak the line.

 

:) llama

[Yukichigai]

Yes. I did all of that. I have the ogg and the lip file (actually, I have all of them, I just extracted all the BSAs to save time), and I put it in the exact location the dialog points to. When that didn't work, I tried the same location except I replaced "fallout3.esm" with my mod patch package's name. None of those worked.

 

Now what I need to emphasize here, what I want to make VERY clear is that somehow, some way, the new dialog I made points to the EXACT SAME location for the voice files that the old dialog points to. No, I don't know how I pulled that off, but there ya go.

 

I'm really hoping I don't have to recreate the dialog option from scratch to fix this, since I've already got it integrated into the dialog tree pretty well and I'm really not looking forward to doing that again.

[llamaRCA]

Now what I need to emphasize here, what I want to make VERY clear is that somehow, some way, the new dialog I made points to the EXACT SAME location for the voice files that the old dialog points to. No, I don't know how I pulled that off, but there ya go.

 

Hmm. I don't know how that's possible. When you made your topic/info even if you copied it on the form in the GECK to create the second one, the GECK will assign a new ID to it and won't give it the same number. You mean the number on the form that pops up on the right is the same for both topic/infos? Well, if that's the case that's why it's not playing. It has the same number as the original dialogue so the GECK thinks it's just another copy of the first dialogue and will only play it for the frst/original topic/info. It needs it's own unique identifier which is the point of going through this whole exercise of getting the BSA and copying in a new ID for it.

 

To solve that problem you are going to have to make a third topic/info with the same dialogue yet again so that you can get the unique ID number that you need for the voice files. Then I would copy that new number and paste it onto the lip/ogg files and then you can remove the other one that doesn't work from the esp.

 

It sucks I know. Dialogue work is tedious in the GECK.

 

:) llama

[Yukichigai]

Well balls, that wasn't the answer I was hoping for. Oh well, I'll just save the tedious work of remaking that dialog for later. At least I know what I have to do, and for now the dialog works... just with no sound. I'll have to fix it eventually... but not now. :P

[BadPenney]

Do you have Archive Invalidation Invalidated! active on your computer either as a standalone or as part of Fallout Mod Manager?

You must have "Archive Invalidation Invalidated!" (or recreate the method manually) in order for custom sound files to work with Fallout 3. You can not access the existing voice files directly, but must extract them from their .bsa file and recreate their sub-directory location outside the .bsa with new filenames that are provided by the GECK. AII allows Fallout 3 to access custom files outside of the .bsa source files that the game uses normally. Without it, those files are invisible and are ignored by the game.