Modding Gun SFX in VATs

[AdamBulmash]

Hello, could someone please tell me how to change which sound file a particular gun uses in VATs? I'm trying to change the SFX of the Alien Assault Rifle. Thank you!

[StormWolf01]

Heya Adam.

You actually picked an easy one, for your project. When henkspamadres and elgoes made that mod, they didn't pack it up into BSA archives, so you don't have to use the Creation kit to unpack and repack them. They chose to use the loose files method, which makes things so much quicker and easier.

Fallout 4 uses sound files in the .wav format. Which is LITERALLY one of the OLDEST computer sound formats that exists. Practically any sound editor can do so.

 

I've been using a sound editor called Goldwav for well over a decade. It's literally the ONLY sound editor that I've used, since the MP3 format was released. Yeah... that was like... 1992? 1993? Something like that.

Anyway. Goldwav is not free. There are some other really good ones that are, tho I can't say how good they are, because.... like I said, I've only used Goldwav.

 

I just did a yahoo search for "Free wav editor". Audacity is a name that I recognize, and a brief look at it, it appears to have a lot of the modification settings that you would need.

https://www.audacityteam.org/

 

Once you've picked an editor that you want to use, you need to put the sound files into it. For the project, I always recommend using the source files, not the ones that you have installed in your game. So if you don't already have it, extract the contents of the rar file into a folder, and then load them into the editor from there.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12347?tab=files

 

Once extracted, you are going to look in E:\AlienAssaultRifle-v1.4.5-12347-1-4-5\00 - Core\Sound\FX\WPN\AlienAssaultRifle (E: being my external hard drive. Your's is obviously gonna be different, depending on where you download and save the file to. There's 4 sound files in that folder. 2 of them are listed as 2d and 2 of them are listed as 3d. Now, forgive me, but I DO NOT KNOW which of those sounds files VATS uses. The 2d or the 3d.

just listening to them, from the sounds of the WPN_AlienAssaultRifle_Beam_Fire_3D file, I would GUESS that VATS uses the 3d. But again, that's a guess.

 

Once you've got the program running, and the file you want to edit loaded up into it, you're on your own. I can't give you tutes on software that I don't use. So you'll just have to tinker around with it, until you've changed it to sound the way that you want it to. Then save it, I'd recommend NOT saving it directly into your game. And NOT overwriting the original file from the mod you downloaded. I usually just make a new folder to save it to, and then copy and paste that into the folder that it needs to be in, in your data folder.

\Fallout 4\Data\Sound\fx\WPN\AlienAssaultRifle

Edited November 15, 2019 by StormWolf01

[AdamBulmash]

@StormWolf01, Thank you very much for your detailed response. My project is actually even simpler than that: I simply want to replace the current sound file of the AAR and replace it with a sound file from an older version of the mod. To that end I've tried replacing the sound files in the E:\AlienAssaultRifle-v1.4.5-12347-1-4-5\00 - Core\Sound\FX\WPN\AlienAssaultRifle folder. Now, this works perfectly well when I fire the weapon out of VATs, but whenever I'm in VATs, the weapon reverts to a generic sound file used for all FO4 energy weapons. This suggests to me that the game is accessing a completely different sound file for firing the weapon in VATs than out of VATs. But I am also a noob to modding, so what the heck do I know? Any thoughts?

 

I hope this is simple fix, tho. This is one of those problems that just itches at you and makes it difficult to fully enjoy the experience, you know what I mean?

Edited November 16, 2019 by AdamBulmash

[StormWolf01]

Adam- It's been a while since I've played with the AAR. I've kinda found that I like the damage from ballistic weapons a lot better, and sometimes those smoking piles of ash are really hard to find, or click on to loot them.

I'll reinstall the mod, and play with it a bit so that I can get an understanding of what you're talking about. And then look at the files for the AAR to see if there's a problem there. If it's actually IN VATS tho, I honestly have not been able to get access to those files to see how it works.

[StormWolf01]

Ok. Reinstalled it and it's definitely some missing information for VATS.

Normal shots - sounds like an alteration of the gauss rifle.

Vats sounds, sounds like a laser rifle.

Vats without KillCam sounds closer, but with the loud explosion VATS throws in at the end, it's hard to tell.

I tinkered around with some of the sfx settings, and some of the other settings, substituting them with vanilla alternatives from the game, and couldn't get a change to go into effect.

 

It's gonna take somebody who has more knowledge of how to affect changes in VATS than I have to figure this one out, I'm afraid. I also don't know how to create a new sfx entry for the game to read, to point to the new sound file (the .wav file) for the game to use.