Working on a music overhaul mod - ran into a few issues with music playback and the FNV engine

[LucyTheSuccubus]

Basically I am working on a mod that replaces the whole music around the wasteland. I created my own custom track sets and media controllers in GECK. Then I went ahead and edited ALL of the Audiomarkers in ALL interior and exterior worldspaces. Yes, this took quite a while, I also plan to make all DLCs and TTW. So far there are no vanilla audiomarkers left and I also hear the new music in almost all locations. I said almost for a reason... I ran into a few oddities that I couldn't figure out yet. Here are some questions.

 

- I am not quite sure what exactly the difference between loop and random is in those media controller looping settings. I suppose random plays random tracks after they finished playing and loop plays only one and at the end plays it again? Does loop always grab a random track to play? I sometimes felt like it often grabs one of the first tracks inside the media controller but maybe this is just imagination.

 

- Is there a limit how many tracks/sets these media controller can handle? I wasnt really sure when testing it.

 

- Is there actually a way to let the engine keep playing the same track if the media controller assigned to the audiomarker has the same controller profile attached? I often noticed that when I went into interior cells and then into the exterior cell, that a completely different tracks starts playing even though the engine could in theory keep playing the track it is playing right now since the media controller attached to the XY location is the same and has the same tracks.

 

- Now here is the biggest issue I noticed: The game still keeps playing vanilla music in exterior worldspaces, namely the NVWasteland cell. I dont quite get why since I replaced ALL the audiomarkers attached to the worldspace. My guess is that the game keeps playing random tracks and sounds when I am not in range of any audiomarker? Almost like how it usually is in Bethesda games like FO3 where there were a bunch of tracks assigned to the exterior worldspace that play randomly (Way easier and better to handle, shame Obsidian made it so complicated). Is this also the case with New Vegas? This would explain why I still hear random vanilla music sometimes in the wasteland and I would like to get rid of them. Is there a way to fix this and for example assign a media controller with a bunch of exploration tracks to the whole worldspace so it keeps playing those tracks when im not in range of a audiomarker? I mean that must be what the vanilla game is doing right now. I cannot explain why else it would still keep playing them. I really hope someone knows a workaround or fix.

 

 

Hope anybody here knows this stuff. It was a pain in the butt to find any information about this topic.

 

EDIT:

 

Oh wow. I think I figured my last issue out. Something about regions and incidental music sets. This took me a while to figure out. These incidental music clips are randomly and only like 10 seconds long each... I wonder if technically I can just replace these music cues with my exploration ambient soundtrack but no idea... I also cant add location media controller to regions it seems. It stricly limited to incidental. On top of that these regions also have dedicated battle music... No idea what happens if I just remove or deactivate this all. My guess is that then I have no music at all playing but guess its time for trial and error. Oh well. I will figure something out I bet.

 

EDIT2: For some reason this incidental stuff never plays. Does these INC sound files need to be in a specific format? MP3 should work too or not? Also tried OGG but also didnt play. Do these INC files need to have a maximum playtime of something? All this stuff is really odd and googling doesn't help at all since I can barely find any information about this topic. Guess that is why nobody created such music overhaul mods yet. Seems to be a pain in the NV engine.

 

EDIT3: Wow... This is seriously mindbaffling. I dont get how this incidental region sounds are supposed to work. Whenever I change the incidental mediaset or battle mediaset, the music in those locations just doesnt work at all and all I hear is the beautiful chirping of cicadas... Even when I use vanilla audio sets. WTF? I think whenever I edit any region sound data, the region somehow "breaks". At least the sound/background music thing. I dont get it, really. Is the GECK broken? I suppose that is enough for today. I need rest from this brainf*#@. Maybe anyone else can help me? I just wanna know how I have to set them up so they work.

 

Oh yeah and here is a picture of where I am at and what is not working:

https://i.imgur.com/WJNYHyN.jpg

Edited September 15, 2020 by LucyTheSuccubus

[dubiousintent]

You have already ferreted out more than we have on this aspect of the subject, but have you seen the "Music and Sounds" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article? It might have a bit of your missing information such as formats used in different circumstances.

 

Please consider writing up what you have discovered about replacing various bits of music for the benefit of others. It's only when someone takes the time to document such discoveries that we have something for others to find when searching the web.

 

-Dubious-

[LucyTheSuccubus]

Thanks a lot for your input. Yeah I read that music and sounds guide already before.

 

I actually was able to bypass some of the issues. First off I decided to not use these region sound options since I never got them working basically. I mean I know how it should work but it just doesnt. As I already stated before. I decided to deactivate them since they are playing random music soundtrack cues from inside the sounds.bsa. On top of that it also overrides the battle music. I decided to completely disable any of the music settings and only leave the ambient sounds such as gunshots and cicada chirping and such.

 

Doing this disables any music that usually plays when someone isnt in range of an audiomarker so pretty much half of the exterior wasteland cell. I dont think its too bad, lets you take in the atmosphere more and I also will add some ambient sound enhancements to my mod.

 

I also found a way to "override" this problem by actually placing a audiomarker with lets say a radius of 1million units but there is a limit, I am still investigating this. This can be exploited in such a way that someone can "bring back" the FO3 sound engine so that only a handful of tracks such as exploration tracks play randomly all the time in the exterior wasteland cell. It weirdly enough even works with all the other specific location markers! So if you are at the dam, the NCR battle music still plays! I was actually able to mimic the Fallout 3 sound design and on top of that still have location specific music. Its really great.

 

I am actually working already on a documentation about this since I found only very basic information about this topic and so far many of the bigger modders couldn't help me much since as you said this is uncharted and unknown territory.

 

 

One thing that I already stated before, that still nags me is, that the nv audio engine is a bit weird about what it plays and when. For example. You are in Novac, which has a audio marker and media location controller named novaclocation, and you hear the typical Novac music theme (which is some Fallout 3 wasteland theme) and then you go into an interior cell, the interior cell takes over. If the interior cell has the SAME location controller as the one from the exterior cell, in this case novaclocation, it keeps playing the track it already plays even when there are multiple location tracks in the controller. However, here is the thing that is a bit annoying (at least if you are perfectionist and aim for 100% immersion...) if you leave this interior cell and go back into the exterior cell with novaclocation media controller, the engine starts playing a new track from the container. This seems to be a general issue with how the sound works in NV. Whenever you enter the exterior wasteland cell, this happens. Now from what I have seen from testing this doesnt happen with all exterior cells, such as DLC locations but only the WastelandNV huge exterior cell. I dont know if this is an oversight by Obsidian or if its supposed to do it or it has to do with the size of the giant worldspace cell, no idea, I couldnt fix or workaround this. Maybe I am missing something but who knows. I also already contacted lStewieAI if he could someone fix this with a plugin but I guess he also knows barely anything about the whole sound engine thing.

 

If anyone has any sort of input on this topic, I would be really thankful.

 

Anyway, the mod is coming along fine. I have quite a lot of spare time right now and it already sounds amazing. Almost finished the base game with all DLCs. Let me tell you... Editing thousands of audio marker in X amount of world cells is... Breathtaking. The first few days I just learned by trial and error how the sound engine ticks.

Edited September 16, 2020 by LucyTheSuccubus