Adjusting SFX Volume - Battles

[Sega Chief]

I've had a few people asking for certain spell effects to have their volume reduced, notably Ultima; is there a way to do this in-game or with the .EXE by adjusting volume channels or can I do it by unpacking the SFX and tuning the volume of the .wav files?

 

[DLPB_]

It's funny you should ask this as I delve into sound effect programming... or maybe opportune timing   The answer is "depends". For field, the channel volume can be set and so you can do what you like.

For battle, as far as I can see, a lot of it may be hard coded to just use volume 127 no matter what.  It's very messy in there. A sure way of making it work would be editing the wav file itself for Ultima, as you note.

It still could be that there is a table in the exe detailing the volume to be used effect by effect for battle, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. It's far more likely, since most of those effects are decided by the same function, that they are all set to the maximum by default.  FF7 doesn't have a "play effect at volume" operation that I can see.  It sets channel volume - and I don't think any channel volume is being set regardless in battle.

I mean, a really bonkers way would be to force a channel volume change in asm and then change back after Ultima.  But that is just so much nonsense.  All in all... editing the wav is your best bet.  When/if I get round to releasing my battle effect replacer dll, this would be even more of a doddle.

 

[Sega Chief]

You have something in the pipeline for SFX? That'd be really handy, the tool for repacking SFX after editing was temperamental last time I tried it out. I'll give it another go and see if I can get it working this time; thanks for the info.

 

[DLPB_]

I've already created something that can play ogg sound effects from a sound_ogg folder. The issue is that ff7 does an awful lot of things - and I can't be sure I am doing everything.  Functions call functions. It's very messy.  It should at least be fairly simple to make it specific to battle.  Field I'd just have to take over akao and akao2. At least we have those mapped out. We know what they do.

One thing I am not sure of with battle effects is how the summon sounds are used. I think it may be one wav file but the game uses offsets to decide which part of the wav to play. That would be annoying, if so.

 

[DLPB_]

Yeah, even ff7 original uses adjusted volumes for effects. Look at alarm (60).  They've given you the ability to change channel volume, but changed the effect volume anyway.  Stupid. Assuming ff7 pc is same as ff7 psx in regards to effect volume.

 

[Sega Chief]

I've already created something that can play ogg sound effects from a sound_ogg folder. The issue is that ff7 does an awful lot of things - and I can't be sure I am doing everything.  Functions call functions. It's very messy.  It should at least be fairly simple to make it specific to battle.  Field I'd just have to take over akao and akao2. At least we have those mapped out. We know what they do.

One thing I am not sure of with battle effects is how the summon sounds are used. I think it may be one wav file but the game uses offsets to decide which part of the wav to play. That would be annoying, if so.

I think summon sounds are split up into separate wav files (I was going through them and listening to identify which were which a while ago; list is incomplete but here's an example):
683: KOTR Segment
684: KOTR Segment
685: KOTR Segment
686: KOTR Segment
687: KOTR Segment
688: KOTR Segment
689: KOTR Segment
690: KOTR Segment
691: KOTR Segment
692: KOTR Segment
693: KOTR Segment
694: KOTR Segment
695: KOTR Segment
696: KOTR Segment
697: KOTR Segment
698: KOTR Segment
699: KOTR Segment
700: KOTR Segment
701: KOTR Segment
702: KOTR Segment
703: KOTR Segment
704: KOTR Segment
705: KOTR Segment
706: KOTR Segment
707: KOTR Segment
708: KOTR Segment
709: KOTR Segment
710: KOTR Segment
711: KOTR Segment
712: KOTR Segment
713: KOTR Segment
714: KOTR Segment
715: KOTR Segment
716: KOTR Segment
717: KOTR Segment
718: KOTR Segment
719: KOTR Final Blow
720: KOTR Segment
721: KOTR Segment
722: KOTR Segment
723: KOTR Segment
724: KOTR Segment

 

[DLPB_]

That's good then!  Although I definitely heard effects that were very long and seemed to have different parts. 

My dll can also report the current effect being played - so you can see which it is.  You're right that KOR uses that range.