Re-using vanilla voice clips for new dialogue topics?

[guerillamoderno]

So I'm trying to make an Altmer follower in the CK. I know how to do that all well and good, but the problem lies in the fact that I want to use the FemaleElfHaughty voicetype for her, which is not follower-enabled. I extracted her voice clips from Voices.bsa and used a program called Unfuzer to convert the .fuz files to .wavs so I could listen to them. It's pretty obvious that there is a ton of dialogue available that could easily fit into the join, leave, follow, wait, and trade response categories followers need to operate, but that's where I'm stuck. I can't seem to get the CK to be able to recognize them or even let me select them.

 

So when I try to create a new dialogue response to a topic, and then select one of the sound files, it just opens up a list of sound effect files. I can't seem to find any of the dialogue. I also notice when I look at other dialogue entries, all the files seem to be in .xwm format, which by my understanding is only the audio component before the .lip file is generated and the two are fuzed into a .fuz file. Also, the entries are greyed out and unmodifiable. Is there a way to get the CK to just skip the whole LIP file generation process and just use a previously-finished .fuz entry, or do I really have to use unfuzer to convert these files to .wavs and then back into .xwms and re-generate the .lip files? It seems like that shouldn't be neccessary.

 

So far, the only thing I can think of to do is to pick one of those "general" follower dialogue entries (i.e. "I'm heading home if you need me"), look at what the .xwm files for them are called (they all have the same file name), then rename the Altmer dialogue I want to use for that response topic the same file name and create new folders in the sound directory for the appropriate path, which should automatically include it in the list. This would have course produce incorrect subtitles, but it's really all I can think of.

 

If anyone has experience with re-purposing existing voice files like this, I would really appreciate some guidance for how exactly to go about it. Thanks in advance for anyone who can help.

[kryptopyr]

As far as I know there are two routes you can go to accomplish this. 1) Look for "Shared" responses in the FemaleElfHaughty voice type and use those, and 2) copy and rename the vanilla voice file so it can be used by your mod.

 

The first thing I would do would be to export the dialogue data for the FemaleElfHaughty voice type and open it up as a spreadsheet. Find an NPC who uses that voice type, open up the Actor data for that NPC in the CK. In the Actor data box, under the name, is a button for dialogue. Click this and when the dialogue box opens up, make sure that it's sorting by voice type, not by NPC, then hit Export. Be patient with the dialogue box; it takes a while to open on my computer.

 

When you open this data in a spreadsheet, it will show you all of the valid voice files for that voice type. Choose which voice files you're interested in and make note of the file name. You'll also be able to tell which files are shared responses. When possible, I would use the shared responses since it's the simplest and you don't have to bother with the files or file locations.

 

If the response isn't shared, then you'll have to copy and rename the file in order to use it. In the CK, go to the new topic info you're working on for your follower. Open up the response box and hit Record. Record a few seconds of silence, then save this. This will hopefully create a new folder in Skyrim/Data/Sound/Voice. The folder will be named the same as your mod name. Inside will be your newly recorded .wav file. Go to whatever folder you extracted the vanilla .fuz files, and look for the file you need. Simply copy the .fuz file into the file with the newly created .wav and rename it to match the .wav. You can then delete the .wav file. If you've done it correctly, the CK should recognize the renamed .fuz when you reopen the response info box.

 

EDIT: Also, if you're adding your follower to the generic vanilla follower quest, you'll need to alter the appropriate formlist to include your new voicetype, or the quest won't recognize your character.

Edited January 3, 2013 by kryptopyr

[greentea101]

When you open this data in a spreadsheet, it will show you all of the valid voice files for that voice type. Choose which voice files you're interested in and make note of the file name.

Just wanted to add that he could use VFRT for that purpose.