Find and replace unique NPC dialogue?

[spukydud]

Hi all, a few pals and I are trying to figure out how to replace spoken NPC files for unique NPC's. One of our friends is playing through Oblivion for the second time, and we think it would be a hoot to do stuff like replace the Gray Fox's lines with us doing loose ad-libs of the game script. So I found out how to replace what the subtitles say. Great start. I'm not going to bother with lip syncing.

 

Replacing the voice file is proving to be more difficult. Attached is a screenshot of what seems to be the window where that is done.

Circled in red is the subtitle text. Easy enough to modify.

Circled in black are controls; the wiki on this page says that these are for recording temporary voice lines. I can record, preview, and save this just fine, but this doesn't appear in game like the subtitle change does.

Circled in blue is the path that the voice file is apparently located at, but I don't have a Sound folder in Oblivion's Data folder. If anyone could help me figure out how to locate these files so that I can simply replace them and save an esp to enable custom voice lines, I would be extremely grateful. I don't have any prior experience in modding, so I'm sorry if this seems obvious to all of you.

 

UPDATE: OK, so after I restarted my computer, the appropriate sound folders were there. I even found the temp wav file! So I used audacity to record a quick 5 second test mp3 file, adhering to the requirements on the prior wiki page, but the voice line didn't play in-game. I checked again, and I saw that I accidentally saved at a variable bitrate. Fixed bitrate fixed the issue. I feel silly making a forum post and solving it myself, but hopefully this will help others in the future.

 

UPDATE 2: Based on my test, audio files shorter than the original will result in the lip sync animation still playing out to its fullest. So it seems best to record new lines at a similar length to the original ones. But how should I know how long the original files are? I'm currently following this guide to get the original audio files all in one place. That way we can just record on a second track in audacity.

Edited September 12, 2020 by spukydud

[Oblivionaddicted]

You can create unique dialogues for the unique NPC's using the GetIsID filtering and created silent lip files using TES4Gecko or the construction set extender.

[KatsAwful]

Construction Set Extender can call the initial release of the CS to generate lip files if the appropriate text and sound file exists. It should work fine, I have not used it on Windows