[Beta release] Ultrasound - sound effect replacement/addition mod

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A new topic seems to make sense to me so I can update post 1 with download links as and when.

So, Ultrasound v0.42: http://www.ficedula.co.uk/voices/Ultrasound_0_42.zip

Changes since v0.41:
-Added 7H plugin support

Changes since v0.4:
-Support for voicing choices on popup/selection

Changes since v0.3:
-OpenAL output
-OGG support
-Support selecting audio files based on party members

Changes since v0.2:

-Lower latency on sound playback
-Fix a few crashes
-Add Pan and Volume properties to sounds
-Add Ambient sounds, optionally looping


How to use the options:

See audio\Ultrasound.xml in the download ;) But to go into detail:

Ambient sounds are sounds that are triggered to play not because FF7 was playing a sound effect, but because some variable in the game (so far - FieldID or PPV) changed.
Currently only one ambient sound is playing at a time - whenever the FieldID/PPV changes, Ultrasound checks its list of ambient sounds, and finds the first one whose conditions match. It stops any sound that's already playing, and then plays the new sound (if any!).

(The only kind-of exception so that is that if the new sound filename is the same as the old one, it just updates the existing sound with a new pan/volume - it doesn't actually stop and then start the same sound playing.)

So, for example;

  <Ambient FieldIDs="195" Loop="true">ultrasound\rain-heavy.mp3</Ambient>
  <Ambient FieldIDs="202" Loop="true" Volume="0.5">ultrasound\rain-heavy.mp3</Ambient>

  ...if FieldID is 195, it plays the rain-heavy file (on loop). When you go into FieldID 202 (which is indoors), it carrys on playing the same sound, but at 50% volume.
  If you need to set a pan, an attribute called Pan sets the panning; 0 = Full left, 1 = Full right, 0.5=Middle (default). It won't have any effect on stereo files though!

  You can set Volume on replacement sound effects, but Pan won't work - Ultrasound uses whatever pan FF7 has set on the sound instead.
 
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Uploaded v0.35: http://www.ficedula.co.uk/voices/Ultrasound_0_35.zip

Changes:

-Triggers voice files based on dialogue IDs correctly, not text comparison
-Supports multiple ambient sound effects playing at once

For the last feature, the way it works is that <Ambient> entries in the configuration file can have a Group attribute set against them, e.g.

Code: [Select]
Code: 
  <Ambient FieldIDs="195" Group="1" Loop="true">ultrasound\blip2.mp3</Ambient>
If you don't set the group ID, it defaults to zero (0). When deciding which ambient sound effect(s) to play the program uses the first valid ambient sound effect it finds from each possible group. So for an example:

Code: [Select]
Code: 
  <Ambient FieldIDs="195" PPVs="191" Loop="true">ultrasound\rain-heavy.mp3</Ambient>  <Ambient FieldIDs="195" Loop="true" Volume="0.5">ultrasound\rain-heavy.mp3</Ambient>  <Ambient FieldIDs="195" Group="1" Loop="true">ultrasound\blip2.mp3</Ambient>
The first two ambient effects have no group ID set, so they belong to group 0. When you go into field ID 195 (which is mrkt2) Ultrasound looks at these effects, and because the first two belong to the same group, it will only play one of them (it decides based on the PPV in this case - if PPV=191, it plays the first one, otherwise, the second one).

However the third effect belongs to a different group so it will also play this effect and you'll end up with two ambient effects playing. Hopefully that makes sense.
 
I'm having trouble getting Ultrasound to do anything. I changed the config to find the VoiceHook.dll and data folders, it runs FF7 when I click Go, but no sounds get played (not even the ones you recorded), and no logging happens.

I installed using the original 1998 discs, plus whatever Bootleg does to the exe. The exe has probably also been changed by TouphScript.
 
Tricky to work out exactly what's happening when the problem is that nothing's happening... ;)

Can you upload your EXE somewhere and PM me a link - so I can try with your exe and see if the same happens for me?
 
"Whatever Bootleg does to the exe" is awfully vague, too. It can do a number of things, some of which are automatic, some not. Tell me what settings you had and I'll tell you what changed.
 
I'm running more or less the default options from Bootleg (no gameplay modifications, just models/textures). I'm pretty sure it only applied the automatic patches. I think the only option I changed from the defaults was the materia model/texture.
 
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I'm having trouble getting Ultrasound to do anything. I changed the config to find the VoiceHook.dll and data folders, it runs FF7 when I click Go, but no sounds get played (not even the ones you recorded), and no logging happens.

I installed using the original 1998 discs, plus whatever Bootleg does to the exe. The exe has probably also been changed by TouphScript.
Click to expand...
Hm, your exe works fine with Ultrasound for me, so it's not any of the patches you've applied.

Do you not get any sounds at all, not even the standard ones...? That suggests your configuration is broken somehow.

Alternatively, try using Debugview - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx - and see what messages get output when you run the game through Ultrasound.
 
I get the regular game sounds, just not the ones you setup in your Ultrasound package (the guy near the inn and the boy looking at the cat statue).

This is the DebugView output. I ran the game, loaded a save at Wall market, walked over the save point a few times, talked to the cat boy and the guy near the inn, then closed the game.

I recorded my monitor while doing it as well. YouTube.

Code: [Select]
Code: 
[1452] SHIMVIEW: ShimInfo(Complete) [1452] WM_ACTIVATEAPP [1452] INITIALIZE DD/D3D START [1452] WM_ACTIVATEAPP [1452] WM_ACTIVATEAPP [1452] FF7AlwaysRunKranmer.dll[1452] FF7anyCDv2.dll[1452] Hext.dll[1452] MIDI set volume trans: 127->0; step=60[1452] MIDI stop[1452] reading midi file: ROCKET.mid[1452] MIDI stop[1452] END UNINITIALIZE DD
 
That's pretty uninformative :/  If I had to guess it looks like it's not loading the VoiceHook.dll library properly; you're completely sure the path to the DLL in the config file is correct?

If so, I'll have to put a new release out with more logging to try and track this down.
 
So, it turns out Avast (antivirus) blocks dll injections. I had to add an exception for the dll specifically. Now, the ambient and menu sounds (piano tones) play, but dialogue still does not play. Ultrasound is detecting the voice files are being found and says they're being played, but they aren't actually playing.

In any case, the logging does work, and that's what I really needed for the project at the moment. LMK if you think of any reason the voice files aren't playing.
 
Well, glad you got the DLL working anyway ... only difference that comes to mind between the dialogue and ambient sounds is that the dialogue is in WAV files, but the ambient/SFX files are MP3s. Can't think of an obvious reason why the WAVs would be problematic, but I guess it's possible.

TBH, I'd expect we'd want to use MP3 or OGGs for distributing things anyway, so it's not the end of the world if the wav decoder I'm using isn't working completely reliably.
 
Found a bug. Ultrasound crashes right before the bike minigame in Midgar, right as the game's giving you the controls.

I haven't been able to check the other minigames yet.

EDIT: It looks like it's not the minigame itself, but the boxes that pop up before it. I'm getting a lot of crashes in places where multiple windows pop up at the same time, including

  • Bike minigame explanation
  • Explanation of Mr. Dolphin segment
  • Junon soldier training and minigame
  • Shera's flashback in Rocket Town (when the countdown for the rocket starts)
  • The "sephiroth enters Nibelheim" scene in the Tifa+Cloud Lifestream
 
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I don't assume Ultrasound works for FF8, does it? If not, is there any project out there that does something similar?
 
The FF8 voiceover project is in development. It doesn't use an external tool to play the sounds, though. They're all built into the game instead.

You can use FF8Audio to replace FF8's sound effects.
 
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Found a bug. Ultrasound crashes right before the bike minigame in Midgar, right as the game's giving you the controls.

I haven't been able to check the other minigames yet.

EDIT: It looks like it's not the minigame itself, but the boxes that pop up before it. I'm getting a lot of crashes in places where multiple windows pop up at the same time, including

  • Bike minigame explanation
  • Explanation of Mr. Dolphin segment
  • Junon soldier training and minigame
  • Shera's flashback in Rocket Town (when the countdown for the rocket starts)
  • The "sephiroth enters Nibelheim" scene in the Tifa+Cloud Lifestream
Click to expand...
Hm, OK. In theory that should be able to fix once I can see it happening on my PC: do you happen to have a savegame close to the location of one of the crashes?
 
Annoyingly it doesn't crash for me.

Can you clarify - when you say Ultrasound crashes, are you seeing the Ultrasound window crash & disappear, but FF7 keeps on running? Or FF7 crashes as well?
 
FF7 keeps running. The Windows WERFault thing comes up and tells me Ultrasound has stopped running.

I'm running on Windows 8 64 bit.
 
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