I chip away at the endeavor and then hit a roadblock, set it down, come back a year or two later, get a little farther, hit a roadblock, set it down for another year or two, etc. Each time I set it down, it’s preceded by an eyeroll. It’s a thousand steps if you’ve never gone through it once.
It all started with this fateful page… a 2,750 word essay on how to mod audio in AoE2:DE -
Later, a kind forumgoer directed me to a nice vid they made, located at the very bottom of that 2.750 word essay, if you stayed awake long enough to get there or didn’t go cross-eyed before getting there. But even this is a bunch of steps, just concisely layed out. Step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… 110, 111, 112, 113… etc. Since I don’t have two monitors, I will have to open this in one-half of my screen while I do Wwise and File Explorer gymnastics in the other half.
If you don’t see downloading Wwise, installing Wwise, registering for Wwise, setting up a Wwise project, converting all your files thru Wwise, making a mod, pointing to this, pointing to that, renaming this, renaming that, etc. as a bunch of bureaucratic steps compared to just dropping an .MP3 in a Taunts folder (or one of the other sound folders for battle alarm or monk sounds), then I’m sorry you don’t see efficiencies like I do.
Oh, and even if you have .MP3s, Wwise won’t let you import them. (It’s not like MP3s are the most popular lossy format or anything. Why would you support them?) So, since Definitive Edition audio modding can’t have enough bureaucratic steps, go download and install Foobar2000 and convert all your MP3s to .WAVs so you can then, and only then, use them in Wwise.
I will even have to replace (or add) the old AoE2:HD taunts into DE because the new ones have such poor equalization to them, sound dry, and lack charm.
No misconceptions here. Like I said, I have all the info needed:
“A fellow AoE enthusiast hooked me up with lots of details before. I will look at all that when I’m ready to try again”
It’s just a matter of doing it, and not rolling my eyes at the next roadblock that appears. There was this other thread where it was all layed out:
Modding them myself is low on my priority list when the process involved is 100x more cumbersome than it was with a 20 year old game.
I’m happy for you if it takes you 5 minutes. I’m sure it took you 5 minutes the first time you went through all this, too, right?
EDIT:
Wwise won’t let 8 bit files work either, sigh:
Wwise adds random HEX numbers to every file. I have 250+ files that I need to edit thanks to this feature(?)
Luckily, the HEX number seems to be the same value per conversion job. Changes in the next conversion you do. That makes a batch rename a little easier… but still, why does it even add a HEX?
Due to DE’s new AI Commands capability, taunts approx 42 thru 105 are off-limits. I will need to rename 43 and up, which doesn’t sound fun for 250 files, unless I figure out a script
Wwise has a batch renamer of some sort…
But it doesn’t let you import WEM files into the Audio File Importer. (Surprisingly, they don’t recognize their own file type as being “audio” files)
This is not an efficient process at all.
Wwise has as clear as mud UI/UX and related support pages regarding batch renamer and files, in general. You import 200 files and it doesn’t show you them in a list? So you just blindly convert ‘all audio files’ in hopes it knows what you’re trying to do.
Here was the warning that came with AoE2:HD when you go to download mods for it. Seems to me the same risks would apply to AoE2:DE. And if you browse the mods that are out there, some certainly seem a little sketchy. I don’t think any and all sound mods are, inherently, “safe”:
