For historical documentation purposes, here's what I figured out on the file formats during the course of my h4x:
ZoneNick_sndbnk.eff - Text listing of sound effects used in a zone:
Code:
EMIT
soundfile1
soundfile2
soundfile3
...
LOOP
soundfile1
soundfile2
RAND (optional, empty, never used)
ZoneNick_sounds.eff - No header, just raw 84-byte binary structs:
Code:
public struct EffSoundEntry
{
public Int32 UnkRef00;
public Int32 UnkRef04;
public Int32 Reserved;
public Int32 Sequence;
public float X;
public float Y;
public float Z;
public float Radius;
public Int32 Cooldown1;
public Int32 Cooldown2;
public Int32 RandomDelay;
public Int32 Unk44;
public Int32 SoundID1;
public Int32 SoundID2;
public Byte SoundType;
public Byte UnkPad57;
public Byte UnkPad58;
public Byte UnkPad59;
public Int32 AsDistance;
public Int32 UnkRange64;
public Int32 FadeOutMS;
public Int32 UnkRange72;
public Int32 FullVolRange;
public Int32 UnkRange80;
};
EffSoundEntry field notes:
- Each sound effect record can reference up to 2 sound effects / music subsongs, SoundID1 and Cooldown1 are for daytime, SoundID2/Cooldown2 for nighttime. RandomDelay is added to whichever is active.
- SoundType 0 is for day/night environment sounds that play at a constant volume, such as bats screeching or wind blowing across an open area.
- SoundType 1 is for background music, with the option of specifying different music for daytime vs nighttime in the same location. If either SoundID is a negative number, it's a PoP-added reference to the associated line number in mp3index.txt. Otherwise, it indicates which sub-song to play in the ZoneNick.xmi MIDI file at that location.
- SoundType 2 is for environment sounds that play at all times of day or night, loudest at the center and quickly fading quieter as a character moves away. Campfires, for instance.
- SoundType 3 is for day/night sound effects like SoundType 0, but the sounds act like SoundType 2 where they are only at full volume within FullVolRange, and quickly drop off as the character moves farther away from them.
- SoundID1 (32-bit signed) is either:
- A negative number, pointing to the appropriate line in mp3index.txt
- Zero, indicating no sound effect or music for that time of day
- 1-31, an index to a sound file in the EMIT section of sndbnk.eff
- 32-161, a hard-coded sound file reference. I did some trial and error to figure these out
- 162+, an index to a sound file in the LOOP section of sndbnk.eff. You subtract 161 from this number to know which LOOP sound file is played.
- AsDistance acts like a volume dampener, making an effect sound like it's happening farther away. 3000-3100 seems to be the cutoff where the sound disappears completely no matter what volume your speakers are on, so I use 3000 as a scale for the Volume setting in the .emt file.
- Any other fields are undetermined or self-explanatory. UnkRange64 ranges from -60 to +3000, similar to AsDistance's -60 to +4000, but plugging different values in it didn't seem to do anything. Same with UnkRange72 (0 - 10000, which would seem to be a candidate for FadeInMS, but didn't do anything), and UnkRange80 (0 - 3000) also had no effect.
Hard-coded SoundIDs found in the .eff files (I think these are all found packed in snd2.pfs):
Code:
39 - death_me
143 - thunder1
144 - thunder2
158 - wind_lp1
159 - rainloop
160 - torch_lp
161 - watundlp
Old style .eff to editable .emt zone sounds converter
Linear Mode
