X4 Foundations Proof-Of-Concept: voice-line changing
This is a POC mod that changes all the X4 v5.0 vanilla sector-name English voicelines to the Gawr Gura "A". This is to show that changing vanilla voice lines is possible through a mod.
The Gawr Gura "A" sound is obtained from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uzw1Zr1FE4
The sound file is then edited to reduce its length, so that the famous "A" sound is played at the beginning of the sound file.
I do not claim ownership to Gawr Gura or their related brand names and etc. This is for illustrative purposes only. Fair use!
As specified in this "precursor" mod for X Rebirth (https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=362561), you must install this mod to the game's base directory (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\X4 Foundations ) and add -prefersinglefiles to the launch options.
It seems currently impossible to install this mod as a regular extensions mod and make it work: the Gawr Gura's "A" simply would not load. (If you are replacing other types of sound, then there is a workaround that allows you to "replace" the sound effects with something else so that it is still installable as a regular extensions mod. It is to replace the sound-producing elements in the various relevant macros with custom sound definitions in libraries/sound_library.xml. However, this workaround does not seem to work for voice lines.)
Also, while this mod does not include lipsyncs for the voice lines, it should still be stressed that a complete voiceline mod should include lipsyncs. Not that I am able to make lipsyncs...
For this specific case (Betty's sector names), the sound files should all be mono-channel.
/content.xml
/cropped_a.ogg <- Cropped "A"
/source_a.ogg <- Original "A"
/propagate_a.py <- Python file to help copy the Gura "A" to the many known places in the repo
/voice-l044 <- Root of English voices
propagate.py requires Python, and will copy cropped_a.ogg to the many sector-name voice folders under voice-l044.
Interestingly, what this mod unexpectedly shows is that it is possible to add voicelines of other languages to the game, so that other than the few voiced languages (English, German, and French), you can add voice to e.g. Japanese.
As a quick demonstration, you can follow these steps:
- The Japanese language code is 81
- Clone the
voice-1044folder of this mod - Rename the copy of that folder to
voice-l081 - Add
-voicelanguage 81to the launch options - Launch the game
- You will notice that all NPC voice lines are muted except sector names, which would play the Gura "A"
However, as shown in step 6, you will need to provide all the sound file replacements in one go, so it would be practically impossible for a modding community to produce a compleet set of voicelines in any reasonable amount of time.