Sound tutorial

Changing sounds or making a file silent

This tutorial is about changing what sounds an object uses. You can also easily make a file silet, using no sounds at all. For this tutorial I am using a standard PC, making it use typing sounds instead of the normal game sounds. Please read the whole tutorial before you try this, and if anything goes wrong, remember that it wasn't me who changed the files on your computer, it was YOU.

What you need

· A file to work on

· IFF Pencil 2 (can be downloaded here)

· Backups

1 First you should make backups. Backup the file you are about to make changes to and the Neighborhood where you are going to test your file. I've never seen this type of hack causing any damage to my game, but you never know. If it should go wrong, you'll be happy to have your backups.

2 Download and install IFF Pencil 2 (if you don't already have it.) You can put the program anywhere you want. I keep my copy in the Maxis folder, next to my The Sims folder.

3 Open up IFF Pencil 2 and open your file.

For this tutorial I'm using a computer file, I want it to play typing sounds instead of gaming sounds. The sounds that are used by the object when a Sim is interacting with it are in the FWAV resource. If you open it up you will see this. Each sound has a number A, and when the object is used there are references to these numbers and the sound is played. If you doubleclick on a sound resource you get this. B

This shows you the name of the sound being used. If you change the name of the sound to another one you have changed what sound you will hear when you play. I want this file to use typing sounds, and to do that I have opend a resource to see what name the typing sound have, and change to that name in all the places I want it to be used.C You could also open the sound far files with a fareditor to see the names of all the sounds in the game.

If you just want to remove a sound from your object you simply delete the sound name and leave it blank. There will be no sound to play. This is not how it is supposed to be, but I have never had any problems with files with empty FWAV resources. Otherwise you just put in the name of the new sound. For this PC this has to be done to replace all gaming sounds with typing sounds.

Those sound names that have a "vox" in them are for Sims talking D . You can leave them as they are, or your change them into other vox sounds. You might get a male/female confusion, that depends on what sound you use.

There are sounds that are triggerd other ways when you play the game, you mights here sounds from a file that you can't find in the FWAV resource. They can be started from global resources or from animations. Those are not coverd in this tutorial.

Good luck hacking

Hedda