P.A.L.S. now comes with a utility to lower the volume of the Power Armor Landing SFX mod's sound files!
Please make sure you follow the instructions in the description carefully, you only need the Sound folder and its subfolders, you don't need either the Power Armor Landing or Data folders.
This is pretty bizarre, but I'm having an issue where the landing sounds are playing without power armor, and the landing sounds with power armor are completely silent. The plugin is currently at the bottom of my load order.
I... can't reproduce that. That's really weird. I have absolutely no idea what could flip the sounds like that. If you take a look at the script in FNVEdit, it's pretty simple in what it does, and I have a number of fallback variables in place to make sure everything goes smoothly. The iFalling, iJustFell, and iDidWait variables are there to ensure this sort of thing really can't happen.
The only place my brain can go to right now is mod confliiiict? I really have no other notions as to what could possibly cause that. Does it happen with only the default New Vegas and DLC ESMs along with PALS enabled? If it doesn't, then that's a conflict. If it is a conflict and you track it down, could you report back so I could mention it in the description? Thanks!
I'm currently messing around with my load order, but if you'd like some extra weirdness in the meantime, the sounds working in third person seem pretty inconsistent, but they tend to always work in first person. All while not in power armor, of course. Power armor landing sounds are still silent. Will update more.
Okay, tested it with every plugin but the official ones and P.A.L.S. disabled and didn't get any different results. "The sounds working in third person seem pretty inconsistent" wording in my last comment probably should've read, "the sounds working in third person is practically never a thing that happens." Could be something related an NVSE mod, but I dunno. Guess I'll just mess around some more.
Out of curiosity, are you using NVSE or xNVSE? Do you have all the usual plugins like JIP, JohnnyGuitar, and what have you? (I can never remember which functions are from which plugins.)
I'm wracking my brain here, but I'm at a loss. For me, it just works. I've tested a whole bunch of power armors both vanilla and modded.
The only other thing I can think of is that this is being caused by the dreaded memory corruption bug I've seen a few times, that not enough people talk about. Basically, if you use a lot of high-res (2K and 4K, or even 8K) textures, a lot of high-poly meshes, and a lot of texture/mesh loose/BSA files in general? It'll cause issues.
To check this, you could try temporarily renaming your textures/meshes folders, start a new game, add power armour, and see if it works. If it is this? Welp, the memory corruption issue has struck again. The file handle mod limit isn't the only bug that can cause memory corruption and bork saves, in my experience. There's certain other texture/mesh factors that can.
Aside from that, complicated meshes can move around a lot more and that can add to save bloat. I know, for example, Unnecessary Physics can cause huge save bloat issues.
Oh yeah, I've wrestled with memory issues before. Learned my lesson when it comes to using high resolution textures and high poly meshes, so I'm almost certain that isn't the issue. I've also been doing all my testing on a very new save file. If it counts for anything, I put together a crusty video of the situation. Mainly to show that I'm not foolin' with you, but maybe you'll be able to pinpoint anything weird, I dunno. Video is with all mods enabled, but I still get the same results with all unofficial plugins but yours disabled.
Oh my lord, I think I fixed it. Renaming the "fst" folder to "pafst" finally has it working properly, I think. The sounds now only play in power armor. Only issue I'm having now is that the sounds still don't play in third person. If it's already like that, I imagine that it might be the same reason NPCs can't produce the sound, but I'm just spitballing.
EDIT: Coming back here one more time to note that I had no idea the Volumizer step in the setup process was required. My bad. :0 EDIT 2: I think it's worth noting that, while Volumizer correctly renames the "fst" folder to "pafst," I'm unable to get it to work with just the lone "landhard" folder it generates. I can only get it working when manually renaming "fst" to pafst" within the original Fallout 3 mod's files, making sure to use your plugin, of course.
Seem to be having trouble actually creating the Power Armor Landing SFX. I place the sound folder from PAL SFX into the volumizer folder and I run the volumizer shortcut but nothing happens. A window opens and closes immediately but the sound file it's supposed to convert doesn't do anything. I've tried running it as admin, turning off my virus protection, converting the sound file back into an archive nothing. Love the sound of this mod and I would love to add it to my load order.
You have to place Data folder containg sounds to make program work, at first I made the same mistake and placed only sound folder, but this simple thing fixed it.
Hey, this mod is working very well, however the landing sounds are very loud next to the entire rest of the sounds in game. I was wondering if you knew of a way to turn em down, without having to go through every folder one by one...
Otherwise, would it be too much to ask for you to lower the sounds by a hefty 5db?
I actually lowered the sounds by -20db myself, they were way too loud.
The truth is? I don't know what to do about it. The sounds I've found aren't set with permissions that allow me to upload, so I can't tamper with them. The end result is that I can either link to sounds with the wrong folder structure, or sounds which are too loud. If anyone wanted to provide me a link to sounds which are quieter which I could include in the description, or sounds which have editing permissions? I could do it.
I use this batch script in a command prompt to do the job, this one in fact:
@echo off
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%G IN ('dir /b *.wav') DO ffmpeg -i "%%G" -filter:a "volume=-20dB" "out\%%~nG.wav"
I have a utils directory full of weird batch scripts and other command line utils, and the full gamut of GNU utils too. Handy. I tend to be a scripter, I like to automate things.
I'm not experienced in using the batch scripts at all (well, I've used them couple times, but they were not related to sound files then). Could you provide a clear step-by-step instruction how we can lower the sounds from the Power Armour Landing SFX mod by -20db using your batch script, please? Or be so kind and just give us at least a good link about how it can be done.
Well, I've downloaded the new version of your mod and followed your installation instructions in the Description explicitly. I've got the newly created Power Armor Landing SFX - Volumized.7z archive, but it contains only Sound\fx\pafst\landhard\fst_landhard_01.wav file. I think this is because your Script.cmd tells the Volumizer to process the files only from those folders, which contain 'land' in their names and are in the 'pafst' folder (renamed from 'fst' by the script), not further down in the subfolders. There is only one such folder there in the 'pafst' folder - 'landhard', so the Volumizer processed the only file there - 'fst_landhard_01.wav'.
The "land" you're seeing is a subfolder in each of the folders. %%A is one of the root folders, such as conc_broken, which has a subfolder land inside of them. All folders containing a land subfolder are processed, resources is then ignored because it doesn't have one (it isn't used by the mod).
I ran the script almost twenty times, testing different volumes, before I uploaded it.
I just confirmed this again now, which is how I got these tree /f outputs.
I can only assume that the installation didn't go according to plan, did you extract the sound folder only from the Power Armor Landing SFX mod? Otherwise, I don't... I don't know what to tell you. I can't reproduce this, clearly. I've run it so many times from the Volumizer.lnk and from the Script.cmd and it always comes out right.
I've managed to catch a quick screenshot of the cmd.exe window in the process and I see that cmd.exe says that ""FFMPEG" is not an internal or external command, an executable program or a batch file. File with that name already exists or is not found." repeatedly (I assume for all the sound files it attempted to process). Then:
"Scanning the drive: 1 file, 882044 bytes (862 KiB) Creating archive: Power Armor Landing SFX - Volumized.7z Add new data to archive: 1 file, 882044 bytes (862 KiB)".
If it would help somehow to figure out the culprit, which I doubt. Maybe this is because I use not English but localized Windows 7 with localized cmd.exe.
EDIT: Ah, nevermind - it's not a big deal and I'm sure that I can easily lower the volume of the sound files by -15dB using Audacity and spend for it much less time than trying to make the cmd.exe to work. Sorry for bothering you.
EDIT2: Yep, did it. Btw, did you know that PA landing water sounds (fst_waterland_01.wav and fst_waterland_02.wav) don't contain any sounds at all, they are completely quiet?!
Superb! I've always used power armor sound mods in my playthroughs and your mod is a good addition for the power armor (PA) landing sounds, thank you! Nice trick with IsInAir, btw!
About "a power armour landing sound mod with permissions that allow modifiication and reuploading": there is P.A.M.S - Power Armor Movement Sounds mod for FO4 by ONIXer (who is active in Nexus nowadays), in which various good PA jumping sounds are also included. Perhaps, if you contact them, they would grant you permission to use/modify/upload their PA jumping sounds for your mod, although they've also credited BLUEZONE "for New Sound Effects".
Yet another little remark. "I'm an idiot and I forgot to flag the quest as already running." - Don't understand me wrong, self-criticism is always good and so on, but please don't ever put it this way, especially in download section: usually people don't like to download mods from "idiots", some of them could understand your self-criticism wrong and doing so you can potentially change their mind to download your mod.
I genuinely appreciate the suggestion! I mean, of course, having people help me out with projects instead of being mad at me when something doesn't work is always preferable. The problem, though, is that the 3/NV actually had more foostep variety. There were sounds for dirt, sand, water, wood, different kinds of concrete and metal... It's nuts. The reason I linked the soundset I did is that even though it needs to have tis volume lowered, it actually provides foostep sounds for all of those environments. If you pop them in, you can use the batch script I provided below to lower the volume, that way you can test for yourself. It actually does have different footstep sounds for all of the environments.
I tested all this before I released the mod. Which lead to me bouncing around on different surfaces, including on the tops of wrecked cars, and super-jump around via the FO4 Power Armor Features mod, all while Raul was looking at me as though I'd gone some kind of crazy. I was actually impressed that the soundset really did have sounds for different environmentds, kinda neat.
See, that's the thing. I need to find a mod that has all of those environment-related sounds. It does make a world of difference. Then, that mod either needs to have the correct directory structure, or it has to have permissions that allow modification and reupload so I can check the directory structure.
Again, I really do super-appreciate anyone trying to be useful, always, trying to be useful is the best. In this case, though, that mod won't fit the purpose needed. But again, the suggestion is appreciated. Like I said, most mod users would rather yell at mod authors, and sometimes you get mod authors who yell at users. I'm very tired of both, it's a silly tribal hostility that I am just done with. Everyone should just get to have fun, it's videogames.
As for me calling myself an idiot? Bad habit. I have autism, social anxiety, and other neurodivergent weirdness like object permanence issues. This particular brain configuration can mean that a.) I'm not very good at being succinct (hello post I'm writing right now!), and b.) I can be very scatter-brained and cause problems I feel the need to apologise for due to social anxiety. I want to think that no one who's smart enough to use mods would be shallow enough to judge me for that, buuuut... I can see why it would be upsetting regardless for a person with empathy. If you happen to be fond of someone's work, you probably don't like them calling themself an idiot. So okay, self-criticism is fine, but I'll try to stop using such abusive self-descriptors.
Edit: Oh! Right! About IsInAir. Yeah, I had a suspicion about that, but I couldn't be sure. I mean, see, there's a lot of actually really good reasons you'd design a function to fire one frame before the event occurs, a number of games do this and it's actually for similar reasons to what I utilised here. I couldn't be certain though, so what I did was I had spammy message boxes setup every frame to tell me what was going on. Sure enough, I'd get a message box telling me I'd landed one frame before I actually had! I got very excited and rapidly put together a sound test to confirm and... Wouldn't you know it?
It's the kind of insight you get after developing and modding for far, far too long. It made me feel kinda rad though as I'd seen other, far more skilled, talented, and experienced modders say that power armour landing sounds—even for the player only—simply wasn't possible. But apparently it is! Because this exists!
Well, it must be said that you've established quite high standards for your mod so far, so that even a FO4 mod doesn't satisfy your expectations anymore and you want to have PA landing sounds for all kinds of surfaces (even P.A.M.S lacks this feature). In this case I'd also suggest you to look at the DV's Footsteps Sounds overhaul mod for FO3, which was made by a German modder DeutscherVolker (who was also active recently in Nexus). That mod also contains landing sounds for all kinds of surfaces, but they are not for PA specifically, just common landing sounds in general. Perhaps, if you get DeutscherVolker's permission, you could mix them with parts of distinct PA footstep sounds in some audio editing software, get the desired result and release it as an optional version of your mod.
That's something I could look into! Oh boy, audio editing, which I'm not very good at. I'll definitely take a look, though.
As for a high-standard? I mean, I guess?? Not intentionally, though. The high standard is set by 3/NV, by having landing sounds designated for all kinds of surfaces. This just leads into how I'd feel disappointed if I knew that and diddn't provide it for power armour, which then leads into how I'd feel guilty for providing a sub par mod when I knew I could do better. I'm an empath with an overwrought sense of guilt and these things happen. I want to do the best I can.
The thing is, this is all about getting a game—that has a great story and gave me something to focus on through a hard point of my life—like this is one I wanted to share with my partner. I've been going down the vanilla+++ route, and I want to make it as good as I possibly can, within my means. In doing so, I've actually discovered a lot of bugs by testing and fixing various mods! I even found a bug with the ReloadModels JIP function used by ISControl and a bunch of other mods where it doesn't play weapon animations.
So, basically, I'm not just making this for me and you lot. I'm also making it for my partner. And P.A.L.S., right now, sounds really rad with the sounds I linked lowered by about 20 decibels.
Why do I lack succinctness like this? It helps me think. I'm like this. And then I don't know what's relevant for anyone else ot know. I mean, I figure it might be interesting to see? I don't know. Anyway... Something just occurred to me whiel I was rambling. I have an idea!
If I fail at audio editing, which I might, what if I turn to one of my strengths again? Scripting! I can script. I can code. I can program. These are things I can do. So, what if I provided a script that the player could just drop in the Data directory, run, and it'd result in lower volume sounds? Because those sounds are actually really good, just way too loud.
Minor code suggestion. You can use events (OnActorEquip, OnActorUnequip) and a GameLoaded condition to just set the sounds when the player equips, unequips power armor and when they initially load a game to set the sounds again if they have power armor on (or remove them).
Albeit due to how the AddItem command works, you should run some tests to make sure OnActorEquip fires properly, but this should make your code lightweight and event based instead of a constant GameMode loop.
Yeah, I'm aware of handlers. I use them in my other mods. I guess my thinking was that because it's going to be an OnUpdate for the entire time you're wearing power armour anyway, is it worth it? I then considered that if you load in with armour on, you'd need a script running anyway. So you'd need a script that runs at every game load regardless. Basically, I came to the cnoclusion that the best option was to just optimise the OnUpdate as much as possible.
Do you think it would be better to have a game load handler, equip handler, and unequip handler all turning on and off the OnUpdate? The thing is, it's only going to provide you any amount of performance when you're not in power armour anyway. I'm running on a potato right now (I'm poor, it's an old beast with an i3 and a 1050) and I've been doing some extensive tests, the variables that get polled don't seem to impact performance at all from what I've measured.
I guess what I'm trying to figure out is is it worth registering those three event handlers, and running StartQuest and StopQuest all the time to enable/disable the OnUpdate script? Will it yield any reward?
I'm genuinely looking for feedback here.
The way I look at it is that if it's going to cause you performance issues in power armour, it's a bad mod anyway. For me, it doesn't. It has no measurable impact at all. Would the impact of the event handlers and the use of StartQuest and StopQuest yield comparatively better performance?
Edit: If you're suggesting that I just set the sounds when power armour is equipped and leave the sounds like that until it's uneequipped? It doesn't work that way. Sorry. See, the sound effects are Universal. If I did that, every single NPC in the game would be making power armour footstep sounds. There's a reason I did this in exactly the way I did. I ask myself a lot of questions when designing and writing code, I also do a lot of testing.
I'm sorry I didn't think to mention this initially, my mind just automatically assumed knowledge on your part of how the sound replacement feature actually works, when that's unreasonable of me. It's a bad habit.
Nah kinda my own fault, I do have some knowledge when it comes to modding this game but I didn't consider NPCs.
And yes when possible event based handling is great and it takes away from the constant update loop. Even if the difference is minuscule. But I guess it depends on everyone's tolerance. I avoid using the GameMode loop as much as I can unless there's no choice of course, but I'm a sucker for the most minor iota of optimization.
I get that but if you look at the script of the game, both Bethesda and Obsidian use GameMode loops all the time. The trick of GameMode loops is variables. That's the thing. You shouldn't run expensive functions on every frame, that's really bad, but even an old 8-bit console could check a variable every frame without breaking a sweeat.
I get the push for optimisation. At one point, I was coding mods for WoW when they had that ridiculous memory limit, and I had to scrape and claw for every single byte I could. If I genuinely thought that what I was doing had any kind of performance impact? I wouldn't do it. GameMode OnUpdates are fine, you just have to use then sensibly and with respect. This is something, again, I learned from scripting WoW and its ludicrous limitations in those early days. An onUpdate won't mess you up, you just have to very carefully gate it variables. Thankfully, Gamebryo's OnUpdate handling is far superior to WoW's UI layer. That's really something, right? Actually it's kind of funny. Gamebryo as an engine is an absolutely incredible piece of software. It's just that, you know, Bethesda suck at using their own software on the design side of things.
I think this is what drew me to New Vegas so much. It showed in a scant 18 months what could be done with this crazy engine if anyone cared enough to. The same is true with the Creation Kit. Have you seen how absurdly and awesomely good the steatlh handling is in Skyrim? It's wild. It's Looking Glass-era level stuff. With a little tweaking, it's actually so good it could challenge the Thief games. And yet there are no thievery questlines in Skyrim to take advantage of it! It's wild. I mean, sure, you can join a bunch of Nordic Mafia thugs, but they're hardly thieves. None of Skyrim's base game quests actually take advantage of what the CK can do, Fallout 4 and '76 are the same way.
The engine's good, Bethesda just... It's an engine that deserves a better team. Sure, it's a hot take, but I know a lot of people blame Gamebryo and Creation Kit when actually it isn't the fault of either.
If you use it right, Gamebryo and CK are really great. Sadly, Bethesda when fixing up New Vegas's Gamebryo introduced some irritating bugs... I hope eventually the community can fix both, because they've already fixed one! The one was the 140 mod limit caused by doubling of file handlers, very silly. That's been fixed. The other is that they screwed something else up about file handling and memory, there's just something wrong there. Too many complex models and high resolution textures loaded can cause memory corruption, leading to game corruption. It's the very reason why I don't use HD mods, more mods that make meshes too precise. Well, that and HD mods tend to cause land seams and that destroys my hyperfixation.
Basically, sorry for the tirade, but I just wanted to talk about the engine a ibt. An OnUpdate like what this mod uses shouldn't cause problems. If it did, it'd be a bad mod anyway because you wouldn't want performance issues for the entire time you're wearing power armour. Still, when I do an upload next, I'll throw in the handlers for the hell of it. I know that sort of thing can help make one comfortable even if it doesn't improve performance. It's a brain thing, I get it. Even if an OnUpdate isn't actually harming performance at all, you just don't want one running all the time. So I'll do what I can for you.
Right now, I'm trying to solve the sound situation. When I do that, I'll upload a version that uses event handlers. Not for performance, just for peace of mind.
No I doubt your mod has any real impact aside from a few nano seconds (can't speak the same for the functions carried out within the ifendif which is my reasoning for suggesting events, your loop can be harmless but when fired it causes a processing spike and a delay. Probably still completely negligible I bet but I still consider it occurring every time the player hits the floor and those nanoseconds being wasted bugs me), but I personally wouldn't take Bethesda as an example given their atrociously bad code and optimization...
I'm well aware that you can use variables to skip loops or time OnUpdate (and save values for later use, yes), I've plenty of experience modding unity games. But I've always veered away from Update as much as possible even for the most minor operation unless I have no choice (yes even for the most insignificant nano second. Yes I know how long a nano second is). I believe it's good habit. Again this is just my way of doing things, your implementation is fine and you really don't have any choice. Don't mind me.
Do you know of a power armour landing sound mod with permissions that allow modifiication and reuploading, or do you know of a sound engineer who could help me out? The mod I linked to is ancient, the author is no longer around. I could just reupload, but... I don't want to get banned from the Nexus. I've already butted heads with them over accessibility site-related things as a disabled person, I don't want to push my luck. I'm not an audio person is the problem. I can script, I love to script, that much is probably obvious from my mods, but I'm no sound engineer.
I would appreciate your help. Thank you! I'll make sure you get fully credited too for any help you provide. I bet everyone using the mod would appreciate it. So, yes, thank you if you can help!
I'm not sure what you mean by clipping, I haven't actually heard any. I'm a little confused about how you're getting landing sounds to play fast enough to experience audio clipping. Um... Hm.
I know the sounds are loud. I'm working on it. I'm hoping I'll be able to find some sounds which have permissions. I can lower the volume myself quite easily on them then (I already do, using a ffmpeg script).
As for... Um... You've got me there, there are no vanilla power armour jump sounds... At all. They're regular foot sounds that don't have any relation to power armour whatsoever, and if you're using a footstep replacer they sound incredibly out of place.
Clipping this about armor FO4 not about this mod)) I mean this loud sound good for FO4 PA but I don't use it. On your side all works fine. I did for me all sound twice quieter and for vanilla PA sounds good.
Oh, I'm an idiot. I thought you meant you were getting audio clipping into audio. (I was confused, all I could think was how are they jumping so fast).
45 comments
Please make sure you follow the instructions in the description carefully, you only need the Sound folder and its subfolders, you don't need either the Power Armor Landing or Data folders.
The plugin is currently at the bottom of my load order.
The only place my brain can go to right now is mod confliiiict? I really have no other notions as to what could possibly cause that. Does it happen with only the default New Vegas and DLC ESMs along with PALS enabled? If it doesn't, then that's a conflict. If it is a conflict and you track it down, could you report back so I could mention it in the description? Thanks!
Will update more.
"The sounds working in third person seem pretty inconsistent" wording in my last comment probably should've read, "the sounds working in third person is practically never a thing that happens."
Could be something related an NVSE mod, but I dunno. Guess I'll just mess around some more.
I'm wracking my brain here, but I'm at a loss. For me, it just works. I've tested a whole bunch of power armors both vanilla and modded.
I too am completely at a loss, sorry.
The only other thing I can think of is that this is being caused by the dreaded memory corruption bug I've seen a few times, that not enough people talk about. Basically, if you use a lot of high-res (2K and 4K, or even 8K) textures, a lot of high-poly meshes, and a lot of texture/mesh loose/BSA files in general? It'll cause issues.
To check this, you could try temporarily renaming your textures/meshes folders, start a new game, add power armour, and see if it works. If it is this? Welp, the memory corruption issue has struck again. The file handle mod limit isn't the only bug that can cause memory corruption and bork saves, in my experience. There's certain other texture/mesh factors that can.
Aside from that, complicated meshes can move around a lot more and that can add to save bloat. I know, for example, Unnecessary Physics can cause huge save bloat issues.
That's the only other thing I can think of.
If it counts for anything, I put together a crusty video of the situation. Mainly to show that I'm not foolin' with you, but maybe you'll be able to pinpoint anything weird, I dunno.
Video is with all mods enabled, but I still get the same results with all unofficial plugins but yours disabled.
Renaming the "fst" folder to "pafst" finally has it working properly, I think. The sounds now only play in power armor.
Only issue I'm having now is that the sounds still don't play in third person. If it's already like that, I imagine that it might be the same reason NPCs can't produce the sound, but I'm just spitballing.
EDIT: Coming back here
one more timeto note that I had no idea the Volumizer step in the setup process was required. My bad. :0EDIT 2: I think it's worth noting that, while Volumizer correctly renames the "fst" folder to "pafst," I'm unable to get it to work with just the lone "landhard" folder it generates. I can only get it working when manually renaming "fst" to pafst" within the original Fallout 3 mod's files, making sure to use your plugin, of course.
Otherwise, would it be too much to ask for you to lower the sounds by a hefty 5db?
The truth is? I don't know what to do about it. The sounds I've found aren't set with permissions that allow me to upload, so I can't tamper with them. The end result is that I can either link to sounds with the wrong folder structure, or sounds which are too loud. If anyone wanted to provide me a link to sounds which are quieter which I could include in the description, or sounds which have editing permissions? I could do it.
I use this batch script in a command prompt to do the job, this one in fact:
@echo off
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%G IN ('dir /b *.wav') DO ffmpeg -i "%%G" -filter:a "volume=-20dB" "out\%%~nG.wav"
I have a utils directory full of weird batch scripts and other command line utils, and the full gamut of GNU utils too. Handy. I tend to be a scripter, I like to automate things.
I wish I had a better solution, I'm sorry.
That'll be up shortly.
The "land" you're seeing is a subfolder in each of the folders. %%A is one of the root folders, such as conc_broken, which has a subfolder land inside of them. All folders containing a land subfolder are processed, resources is then ignored because it doesn't have one (it isn't used by the mod).
I ran the script almost twenty times, testing different volumes, before I uploaded it.
Here's the folder structure after Volumizer has been run (pastebin).
Here's the folder structure of the decompressed 7z file (pastebin).
I just confirmed this again now, which is how I got these tree /f outputs.
I can only assume that the installation didn't go according to plan, did you extract the sound folder only from the Power Armor Landing SFX mod? Otherwise, I don't... I don't know what to tell you. I can't reproduce this, clearly. I've run it so many times from the Volumizer.lnk and from the Script.cmd and it always comes out right.
"Scanning the drive:
1 file, 882044 bytes (862 KiB)
Creating archive: Power Armor Landing SFX - Volumized.7z
Add new data to archive: 1 file, 882044 bytes (862 KiB)".
If it would help somehow to figure out the culprit, which I doubt. Maybe this is because I use not English but localized Windows 7 with localized cmd.exe.
EDIT: Ah, nevermind - it's not a big deal and I'm sure that I can easily lower the volume of the sound files by -15dB using Audacity and spend for it much less time than trying to make the cmd.exe to work. Sorry for bothering you.
EDIT2: Yep, did it. Btw, did you know that PA landing water sounds (fst_waterland_01.wav and fst_waterland_02.wav) don't contain any sounds at all, they are completely quiet?!
About "a power armour landing sound mod with permissions that allow modifiication and reuploading": there is P.A.M.S - Power Armor Movement Sounds mod for FO4 by ONIXer (who is active in Nexus nowadays), in which various good PA jumping sounds are also included. Perhaps, if you contact them, they would grant you permission to use/modify/upload their PA jumping sounds for your mod, although they've also credited BLUEZONE "for New Sound Effects".
Yet another little remark. "I'm an idiot and I forgot to flag the quest as already running." - Don't understand me wrong, self-criticism is always good and so on, but please don't ever put it this way, especially in download section: usually people don't like to download mods from "idiots", some of them could understand your self-criticism wrong and doing so you can potentially change their mind to download your mod.
I tested all this before I released the mod. Which lead to me bouncing around on different surfaces, including on the tops of wrecked cars, and super-jump around via the FO4 Power Armor Features mod, all while Raul was looking at me as though I'd gone some kind of crazy. I was actually impressed that the soundset really did have sounds for different environmentds, kinda neat.
See, that's the thing. I need to find a mod that has all of those environment-related sounds. It does make a world of difference. Then, that mod either needs to have the correct directory structure, or it has to have permissions that allow modification and reupload so I can check the directory structure.
Again, I really do super-appreciate anyone trying to be useful, always, trying to be useful is the best. In this case, though, that mod won't fit the purpose needed. But again, the suggestion is appreciated. Like I said, most mod users would rather yell at mod authors, and sometimes you get mod authors who yell at users. I'm very tired of both, it's a silly tribal hostility that I am just done with. Everyone should just get to have fun, it's videogames.
As for me calling myself an idiot? Bad habit. I have autism, social anxiety, and other neurodivergent weirdness like object permanence issues. This particular brain configuration can mean that a.) I'm not very good at being succinct (hello post I'm writing right now!), and b.) I can be very scatter-brained and cause problems I feel the need to apologise for due to social anxiety. I want to think that no one who's smart enough to use mods would be shallow enough to judge me for that, buuuut... I can see why it would be upsetting regardless for a person with empathy. If you happen to be fond of someone's work, you probably don't like them calling themself an idiot. So okay, self-criticism is fine, but I'll try to stop using such abusive self-descriptors.
Edit: Oh! Right! About IsInAir. Yeah, I had a suspicion about that, but I couldn't be sure. I mean, see, there's a lot of actually really good reasons you'd design a function to fire one frame before the event occurs, a number of games do this and it's actually for similar reasons to what I utilised here. I couldn't be certain though, so what I did was I had spammy message boxes setup every frame to tell me what was going on. Sure enough, I'd get a message box telling me I'd landed one frame before I actually had! I got very excited and rapidly put together a sound test to confirm and... Wouldn't you know it?
It's the kind of insight you get after developing and modding for far, far too long. It made me feel kinda rad though as I'd seen other, far more skilled, talented, and experienced modders say that power armour landing sounds—even for the player only—simply wasn't possible. But apparently it is! Because this exists!
As for a high-standard? I mean, I guess?? Not intentionally, though. The high standard is set by 3/NV, by having landing sounds designated for all kinds of surfaces. This just leads into how I'd feel disappointed if I knew that and diddn't provide it for power armour, which then leads into how I'd feel guilty for providing a sub par mod when I knew I could do better. I'm an empath with an overwrought sense of guilt and these things happen. I want to do the best I can.
The thing is, this is all about getting a game—that has a great story and gave me something to focus on through a hard point of my life—like this is one I wanted to share with my partner. I've been going down the vanilla+++ route, and I want to make it as good as I possibly can, within my means. In doing so, I've actually discovered a lot of bugs by testing and fixing various mods! I even found a bug with the ReloadModels JIP function used by ISControl and a bunch of other mods where it doesn't play weapon animations.
So, basically, I'm not just making this for me and you lot. I'm also making it for my partner. And P.A.L.S., right now, sounds really rad with the sounds I linked lowered by about 20 decibels.
Why do I lack succinctness like this? It helps me think. I'm like this. And then I don't know what's relevant for anyone else ot know. I mean, I figure it might be interesting to see? I don't know. Anyway... Something just occurred to me whiel I was rambling. I have an idea!
If I fail at audio editing, which I might, what if I turn to one of my strengths again? Scripting! I can script. I can code. I can program. These are things I can do. So, what if I provided a script that the player could just drop in the Data directory, run, and it'd result in lower volume sounds? Because those sounds are actually really good, just way too loud.
Albeit due to how the AddItem command works, you should run some tests to make sure OnActorEquip fires properly, but this should make your code lightweight and event based instead of a constant GameMode loop.
Do you think it would be better to have a game load handler, equip handler, and unequip handler all turning on and off the OnUpdate? The thing is, it's only going to provide you any amount of performance when you're not in power armour anyway. I'm running on a potato right now (I'm poor, it's an old beast with an i3 and a 1050) and I've been doing some extensive tests, the variables that get polled don't seem to impact performance at all from what I've measured.
I guess what I'm trying to figure out is is it worth registering those three event handlers, and running StartQuest and StopQuest all the time to enable/disable the OnUpdate script? Will it yield any reward?
I'm genuinely looking for feedback here.
The way I look at it is that if it's going to cause you performance issues in power armour, it's a bad mod anyway. For me, it doesn't. It has no measurable impact at all. Would the impact of the event handlers and the use of StartQuest and StopQuest yield comparatively better performance?
Edit: If you're suggesting that I just set the sounds when power armour is equipped and leave the sounds like that until it's uneequipped? It doesn't work that way. Sorry. See, the sound effects are Universal. If I did that, every single NPC in the game would be making power armour footstep sounds. There's a reason I did this in exactly the way I did. I ask myself a lot of questions when designing and writing code, I also do a lot of testing.
I'm sorry I didn't think to mention this initially, my mind just automatically assumed knowledge on your part of how the sound replacement feature actually works, when that's unreasonable of me. It's a bad habit.
And yes when possible event based handling is great and it takes away from the constant update loop. Even if the difference is minuscule. But I guess it depends on everyone's tolerance. I avoid using the GameMode loop as much as I can unless there's no choice of course, but I'm a sucker for the most minor iota of optimization.
I get the push for optimisation. At one point, I was coding mods for WoW when they had that ridiculous memory limit, and I had to scrape and claw for every single byte I could. If I genuinely thought that what I was doing had any kind of performance impact? I wouldn't do it. GameMode OnUpdates are fine, you just have to use then sensibly and with respect. This is something, again, I learned from scripting WoW and its ludicrous limitations in those early days. An onUpdate won't mess you up, you just have to very carefully gate it variables. Thankfully, Gamebryo's OnUpdate handling is far superior to WoW's UI layer. That's really something, right? Actually it's kind of funny. Gamebryo as an engine is an absolutely incredible piece of software. It's just that, you know, Bethesda suck at using their own software on the design side of things.
I think this is what drew me to New Vegas so much. It showed in a scant 18 months what could be done with this crazy engine if anyone cared enough to. The same is true with the Creation Kit. Have you seen how absurdly and awesomely good the steatlh handling is in Skyrim? It's wild. It's Looking Glass-era level stuff. With a little tweaking, it's actually so good it could challenge the Thief games. And yet there are no thievery questlines in Skyrim to take advantage of it! It's wild. I mean, sure, you can join a bunch of Nordic Mafia thugs, but they're hardly thieves. None of Skyrim's base game quests actually take advantage of what the CK can do, Fallout 4 and '76 are the same way.
The engine's good, Bethesda just... It's an engine that deserves a better team. Sure, it's a hot take, but I know a lot of people blame Gamebryo and Creation Kit when actually it isn't the fault of either.
If you use it right, Gamebryo and CK are really great. Sadly, Bethesda when fixing up New Vegas's Gamebryo introduced some irritating bugs... I hope eventually the community can fix both, because they've already fixed one! The one was the 140 mod limit caused by doubling of file handlers, very silly. That's been fixed. The other is that they screwed something else up about file handling and memory, there's just something wrong there. Too many complex models and high resolution textures loaded can cause memory corruption, leading to game corruption. It's the very reason why I don't use HD mods, more mods that make meshes too precise. Well, that and HD mods tend to cause land seams and that destroys my hyperfixation.
Basically, sorry for the tirade, but I just wanted to talk about the engine a ibt. An OnUpdate like what this mod uses shouldn't cause problems. If it did, it'd be a bad mod anyway because you wouldn't want performance issues for the entire time you're wearing power armour. Still, when I do an upload next, I'll throw in the handlers for the hell of it. I know that sort of thing can help make one comfortable even if it doesn't improve performance. It's a brain thing, I get it. Even if an OnUpdate isn't actually harming performance at all, you just don't want one running all the time. So I'll do what I can for you.
Right now, I'm trying to solve the sound situation. When I do that, I'll upload a version that uses event handlers. Not for performance, just for peace of mind.
I'm well aware that you can use variables to skip loops or time OnUpdate (and save values for later use, yes), I've plenty of experience modding unity games. But I've always veered away from Update as much as possible even for the most minor operation unless I have no choice (yes even for the most insignificant nano second. Yes I know how long a nano second is). I believe it's good habit. Again this is just my way of doing things, your implementation is fine and you really don't have any choice. Don't mind me.
Do you know of a power armour landing sound mod with permissions that allow modifiication and reuploading, or do you know of a sound engineer who could help me out? The mod I linked to is ancient, the author is no longer around. I could just reupload, but... I don't want to get banned from the Nexus. I've already butted heads with them over accessibility site-related things as a disabled person, I don't want to push my luck. I'm not an audio person is the problem. I can script, I love to script, that much is probably obvious from my mods, but I'm no sound engineer.
I would appreciate your help. Thank you! I'll make sure you get fully credited too for any help you provide. I bet everyone using the mod would appreciate it. So, yes, thank you if you can help!
I know the sounds are loud. I'm working on it. I'm hoping I'll be able to find some sounds which have permissions. I can lower the volume myself quite easily on them then (I already do, using a ffmpeg script).
As for... Um... You've got me there, there are no vanilla power armour jump sounds... At all. They're regular foot sounds that don't have any relation to power armour whatsoever, and if you're using a footstep replacer they sound incredibly out of place.
As for the volume? I'm trying to find something.