Sega 500

Sega 500

Custom Voice Packs

Jeff “Ezeikeil” [email protected]://gamestudies.cdis.org/~jgiles

Rounding out sound

We’ve looked at the core components of sound in UT and how to make some noise.

So today we’re going to finish off our audio travels by customising the more fun auto aspects of the game… the bots “speech”.

Rounding out sound

You know, those cool lines the bots say whenever they make a kill?

You can also access these via a popup menu to taunt you friends on lan games... Always fun.

Voice packs

These are one of the truly great customisable things about UT2003 and were one of the great ways of personalizing Unreal Tournament.

In short it could be you, in your voice telling your friends where to go once you fragged them.

Voice packs

The other cool thing is that if they are registered on the server, they are automatically downloaded and played on the client machine.

So everyone who’s playing on that server has to listen to you…

The plan

Well, obviously, since voice packs are the topic, we’re going to build one…

However, building them can be fairly repetitive so were only going to build the taunts.

The plan

Also, since recording my own taunts (other than providing you the opportunity to point and laugh in my direction) is a bit time consuming.

So, I’m going to export the sounds for the boss bot (“I am the Alpha and the Omega”) dude from the original UT and import them for my bot in UT2003.

Getting wav’s from UT

We’ve already talked about how to export sounds from UT2003 so I’m not going to talk about it here for the original UT…It’s the same process…

Look for the export button and the for the sounds you like…

Voice packs

Once you’ve exported the sounds from the original UT, Import them into UT2003 like you would any other sound.

And don’t forget to save the uax.

Voice packs

Now that you’ve got the sounds imported and the uax file saved out, this is where things go a bit odd.

Voice packs

We have to jump over to the script and create a definition for our voice pack class.

I created the Boss pack.

Voice packs

At this point, we need little more than the definition of the class, the editor will help us out with the rest…

class Boss extends xVoicePack;

//so UT knows where to look for our voice pack#exec OBJ LOAD FILE=..\Sounds\EzeBot.uax

defaultproperties{}

Voice packs

Now we have a choice, we can go on and edit the parameters in script, or we can use the editor to setup the default properties.

The choice is yours, I went the editor route.

Voice packs

So going back to the editor, I open the actor browser and look for the voice pack.

Once you find it, right click to edit it’s defaults.

Note: you’ll have to uncheck Placeable actors only in order to see it.

Voice packs

Which brings us here…

This is where you define the taunts and taunt text strings for the GUI / HUD. Open the TeamVoicePack section.

Voice packs

Now, as mentioned, we’re only going to worry about the taunts.

However the process for the other sounds is exaclty the same.

Voice packs

At the bottom of the TeamVoicePack list, you will see four sub-sections: TauntAbbrev, TauntAnim, TauntSound, and TauntString.

It’s here we’ll be setting up our sounds…

Voice packs

But the first thing you should do is set the number of taunts (numTaunts). Set the numTaunts to the number of sound clips / taunts you will be defining.

This number will not refresh right away…UEd weirdness…but it has changed, just close are reopen the window…

Voice packs

For each slot, enter the Abbrev, Sound and String, making sure you stay consistent between them for each sound slot number.

Voice packs

Abbrev is where you type in the short names of the

sound bites for the voice command menu in the HUD (typically 'v' when playing the game). 

If you don't want abbreviations, you can omit this whole section and save yourself a lot of typing, because it will use the string section instead.

Voice packs

Sound is where you map the Sound index to the

actual sound clip you want to hear. Highlight the sound in the Sound Browser that you want to use for this slot.

Go back to the Default Properties window, click in the slot you were working with (where you want the sound), and click [Use].

Voice packs

String is the text that appears in the HUD voice

menu, unless you have abbreviations. For the "Other" category sounds, you can also

configure whether the string will appear in the HUD when you play the sound.

Voice packs

So, once we’ve set up our numTaunts, time to actually set the actual taunt sounds.

Here are the steps…

Set your sound from the sound browser.

Voice packs

And then put a descriptive sting into the matching index.

Repeat this process until you’ve set all the desired taunts…

Voice packs

And, then we have to save out the defaults from the editor…and this is a bit different as we are in fact saving complied code.

Go back to the actor browser and select your voice pack class.

Voice packs

Then in the pull down window under view, select show packages.

Then make sure your package is selected…

Under file, save selected packages.

Voice packs

And once saved, if we open the uc file, we’ll find something like:

Voice packs

And that’s it for playing in the editor.

Now we’re back into scripting territory…sorta.

Voice packs

Now in the system folder, you’ll have to play with a upl file.

You may have already looked in this file, but if not, you’ll find it defines the Characters used in the game.

Voice packs

Along with various attributes for these characters, such as the species, body skin, face skin, Portrait, Text, and Sex and game style characteristics.

And guess what, you can add a reference to the voice pack in here!

Voice packs

Now, the UT is good in one respect, you don’t have to modify the exiting upl file…as playing with UT’s defaults can be a bad thing.

It will parse through the system file and load ALL the upl’s.

Voice packs

Thus, we can create our own. Just create a txt file in notpad and rename

it to upl. Just be sure that it also has the same name as your package.

Inside this file, is where we create our player definition.

Voice packs

The easiest thing to do is copy an exiting line from the xplayersL1.upl.

Just pick one you like (I used cobalt) and paste it into the new upl file.

Voice packs

Now, these read a lot like an ini file. So you need the public section.

And be sure to give your new bot a unique name.

[public]Player=(DefaultName=“The Spiffster” …<snip>…

Voice packs

And then add the following section to the line:

And just to make this easy to find and select, remove the section called Player=Pictures.<some_bot_name>

,Voice=UTBot.boss,

Voice packs

By removing the reference to the player portrait, when we open the game we should be able to play as a “mystery man”.

Yup, that’s us!

Voice packs

Once you take it in game, you should see that the taunt menu has changed. It is now using ours.

If you play it, it’s also our taunts…oh happy day!

Voice packs

I’m sure you noticed that there are lots of other parameters to play with in the upl file.

By all means poke at these and get in some custom meshes, pictures, skins and what not.

Voice packs

Essentially, it’s one stop shopping for bot creation.

If you down load JaFO's Botmanager, it’s essentially doing just this. Nothing more. The only addition is that it sets up a PlayerRecordClass as well, which is them compiled.

And there you go.

Further audio customisations of UT.

But keep in mind that you can to lots from the upl file also…that doesn’t require scritping.