Duck and Cover

Im making sound files for Fallout 2.

My new sounds lock up the game when it tries to play them.

Original sounds were: 22500 khz, 16 bit, (mono/stereo unknown).

Im using the Snd2Acm.exe utility to convert files. The utility doesnt seem to have a problem converting them.

- Should my sound files be smaller than the originals?
- Should I make my sound files 8bit instead of 16bit?
- If not, should I specify both '-wav' and '-8' flags for the utility?
(current syntax: snd2acm -wav *.wav)

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Another question:

Is there a file in the master.dat which specifies the current sound definitions?
- Can it be modified or does it have hardcoded components?
- Can I add new sounds (such as another energy weapon, with a burst mode)?

Sirgalahadwizard wrote:My new sounds lock up the game when it tries to play them.

Try to covnert these ACMs back to WAV format with acm2wav. If the decompression succeeds, the Fallout itself should not have any problem playing your sounds. But to install new sound effects into Fallout you need to alter data\sound\sfx\sndlist.lst file (see below).

Sirgalahadwizard wrote:- Should my sound files be smaller than the originals?
- Should I make my sound files 8bit instead of 16bit?
- If not, should I specify both '-wav' and '-8' flags for the utility?
(current syntax: snd2acm -wav *.wav)

- In most cases, the ACM files are smaller than the original sound files.
- 16bit WAVs are preferred.
- snd2acm file.wav file.acm is enough.

Sirgalahadwizard wrote:Is there a file in the master.dat which specifies the current sound definitions?
- Can it be modified or does it have hardcoded components?

The data\sound\sfx\sndlist.lst list file contains information about all sound effects in Fallout2. If you modify some of the ACMs, or add new sounds, you need to modify this list file, otherwise the game can refuse to play some of the ACMs.
The simplest way to modify this list-file is to use regsnd utility - it can find all changes in ACMs and record them into sndlist.lst.

Hey man, thanks for the help. I actually got it to work pretty good. Congrats on some nice editors. (I dont wanna even THINK about how those file formats work).