Editing the gamespeechcontainers?

[sporty]

Hi there,

spent some time copying the DoW2 voices into Retribution today (got most Warboss lines working :)), and while trying to figure out the best way to replace the new Diomedes FC with the old Gabriel FC, I came back to the english_gamespeechcontainers.sga.
In theory, editing this file should allow you to modify which lines are used for certain events, possibly making the undertaking of swapping voicework much easier.

Is there anyone with some experience regarding this particular file? The included .bsc files can apparently be modified with a HEX-editor, are there any other, more accessible options? What can actually be done with it, is it possible to have this file "call" additional or different voice files?

The re-recording for Retribution only covered roughly half the lines of DoW2, a simple replacement won't bring them back, but perhaps the gamespeechcontainers could :)

[sporty]

Well, my attempt to swap the Retribution .bsc files with DoW2 ones, and specifically replacing the dio files with (renamed) gab ones yielded no success, after this failure I'll probably have to stick to the more conventional methods.

It's going to be very tedious, so a thousand curses upon the bastards at Relic :p

[Copernicus]

There's no easy way of editing BSC-file; we're still trying to understand the format. It is a rather complicated one so Hex-editing probably is your only choice.

[Chaos Godstone]

I've been asked if I could replace the voice of Diomedes with that of Gabriel/Davian in Kolaris' thread (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?246133-Force-Commander-Gabriel-Angelos-Reskin-(Ranked-Compatible)) about replacing the FC. I haven't even tried once I saw the woefully small number for Thule but there are more than enough for Angelos, over 400 files in comparison to Diomedes' 200+, and thats just MP... or so the folders suggest.

[Liu]

All I want to do is replace two new lines with two of the old ones. I'm just starting with two and may do some more in the future. How do you replace new lines with old lines? I've got the two fsb audio files extracted, where do I go from here? Thanks for the help.

EDIT-- I literally started learning all this stuff today but now that I've looked into it a bit, I was thinking of extracting all the files from english_000_speech.sga, replacing the two new fsb files with the two old ones (they have the same file name in both versions) and then packing it up and putting it back (under the same name) is that how it's done? Or would the new sga file go into the mod folder instead? (keeping the original sga file where it was)

[WNxLocklear]

That'd be awesome if just Gabriel could be replaced, Chaos. He's more bad ass than Thule anyways :P

Relic needs to release some easier ways to mod their game like the team for Natural Selection2 does.

[sporty]

Good work Liu, you did figure out how it's done. Things to consider:
You just need to include those two files you want to replace in your new archive. The folder structure must match the one of the english_000_speech, and the archive should be packed as a "sound" archive. Placing the final product into your mod folder means it's loaded with priority over the standard voice archives.

Swapping Diomedes with Gabriel (voice of the old FC) can definitely be done, but it's a good amount of work. Even with some understanding of the "code" used for naming those speech files (most are obvious abbreviations), there's still no quick&easy way of finding the right replacements for those ~270 speech files, and once you do the renaming and replacing will have to be done manually.

That said, especially Diomedes is miles below the quality of the old FC Gabriel, simply due to having a lot less lines. Instead of specialised responses to events, he has to resort to generic ones. Hopefully Cope and others can eventually figure out those .bsc files, with those it might even be possible to expand the existing sets of speech.