Voice lines not working anymore for some reason?

[bananakillerBRO]

So, I've been making a huge companion mod for the past few months, I had a metric crap ton of dialog done, I go back in to test some of it and now, suddenly, none of them work. I go into the game's data and look into the voice directory and it's all still there, but they are no longer heard in game.

 

What's causing this? This just happened out of nowhere.

 

 

EDIT- I just remembered I recently copy-pasted all the voice lines onto my laptop as a backup, could this have caused anything?

Edited August 13, 2017 by bananakillerBRO

[dubiousintent]

Is the problem on your laptop, or the machine you originally developed them on? Are the paths to your files in "relative" or "absolute" format? If the path is not absolutely identical from the drive letter down on both machines, then they are "absolute" and you need to turn them into "relative" format. Which is what you need to do anyway, as it is guaranteed users will not have identical path roots. See the wiki article "How to fix hard-code texture paths in NIF files", which covers the same issue.

 

-Dubious-

[bananakillerBRO]

Is the problem on your laptop, or the machine you originally developed them on? Are the paths to your files in "relative" or "absolute" format? If the path is not absolutely identical from the drive letter down on both machines, then they are "absolute" and you need to turn them into "relative" format. Which is what you need to do anyway, as it is guaranteed users will not have identical path roots. See the wiki article "How to fix hard-code texture paths in NIF files", which covers the same issue.

 

-Dubious-

The problem is on both.

 

But what's a relative and absolute path?

[dubiousintent]

An "absolute" path is from the drive letter on down, as in "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\Common\Fallout New Vegas\Data\Textures\<filename>.dds". There can only be one way to traverse it.

 

A "relative" path is only from a particular assumed point, as in "Textures\<filename>.dds" is assumed by the game to be under the parent path "<some drive and folders>\Fallout New Vegas\Data\". All the files in the BSAs are relative to the "Data" folder. Files with relative paths could exist under any parent path, e.g. "C:\Games\Fallout New Vegas\Data\", "D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\Common\Fallout New Vegas\Data\", etc. so there can be many ways to traverse it.

 

If the problem exists on both systems, think back to the command/method you used to make the backup copy. Normally a backup won't affect the original files, unless you used a command that might have "moved" things without your intent.

 

-Dubious-

[bananakillerBRO]

I used the copy paste method with the right click.

 

I've looked and the files are "Absolute" I believe, they are located right where they need to be.

 

I'm not sure what I did exactly to cause the voice clips to be silent in game, but there one thing I did I didn't mention before as I didn't think they held much relevance, but I'll mention them below.

 

I recently recorded a significant amount of dialog with the GECK's recorder.

 

Also the "icons" for .esp files in the data folder have changed from GECK icons to these weird paper icons with a small green arrow in the center, I have no clue what these are. I'm not sure if this pertains to the situation but it's something that changed along with the clips so I figured I'd mention it.

[dubiousintent]

Well, you don't want the paths to be "absolute". That will turn around and bite you if you ever publish for others to use.

 

When copying between drives, you can't use "copy-and-paste" and preserve "properties" like permissions and date/time stamps. You should have used "XCopy" or "RoboCopy". (Google them for your version of Windows.)

 

But first you need to straighten out whatever changed on your source drive.

 

If the icons changed then the file associations have changed, and possibly how the system recognizes the file format. I don't recognize that icon description, but any change is suspect. When you put your cursor over the file in "Windows Explorer", it will display a "tool tip" with the "file type", size, and "data modified". The "file type" is what is based upon the "file association"; the default program used to open that file extension. You can change this in Windows.

 

Have you run a Windows CHKDSK ("Error checking" and then "Defragmentation" under "Properties | Tools" of the drive where they are located)?

 

Have you run a recent "anti-virus" scan? (There is no normal reason for a "copy-and-paste" to change the source file association, which suggests you have a system or drive issue.)

 

-Dubious-

Edited August 14, 2017 by dubiousintent

[madmongo]

Copy and paste shouldn't have done anything to the originals. You didn't rename the mod or convert it to an esm or anything like that, did you?

 

If you go into the conversation in the GECK, does the GECK have a Y next to the wav and the lip files? If so, if you click on the wav file, does it play in the GECK?

[bananakillerBRO]

Could you give me a walk through Windows CHKDSK? I've never heard about anything like that.

[bananakillerBRO]

So, something else happened, I updated my graphics driver, including my graphics driver, and now New Vegas won't start up correctly.

 

Instead of the main menu, this pops up.

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B94sLZuozbfgSUt6QXBYS1FxRUE

 

I swear at this point I could write the book of destroying something while try to do something simple. :dry:

 

So...could this be fixed with another update?

Edited August 15, 2017 by bananakillerBRO

[dubiousintent]

There are a number of guides to running CHKDSK on the web. This page lists 5 different ways, but the third (from Windows Explorer) is the easiest for most people.

 

It is not a good idea to update graphics drivers in the middle of any game unless necessary to fix a problem. Newer drivers often drop testing and support for older games. You can see if the 'Issue: Black Screen on startup' entry in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide helps, or you can use the Window "restore checkpoint" to rollback the graphics driver to your previous version.

 

You really should not make other changes to your system until you resolve your initial problems. Otherwise you are just compounding the issues with new complications.

 

-Dubious-