This guide also aims to answer some of the users' questions regarding mod building and help them create their own mods.
Sound library
This mod aims to create the most realistic experience based on my shooting experience. Also, I do not have a library with real sounds of 19th century gun shots. So I have built the sounds of the 19th century closer to modern sounds, of which I do have a varied library.
Within my sound library, I have video game sound files extracted directly from games such as Battlefield 1, Battlefield V, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Verdun, Postscriptum, Hell Let Loose among others. The advantage of having the sounds extracted from the same files of a game is that you can have access to individual low frequency sounds, distant sounds in first and third person, the echo in different environments such as desert, forest, urban environment, closed environment among others. So the possibilities of combining these sounds is immense to create new ones based on the type of weapon and the environment where it is fired.
In addition to this library, I have real gunshot sounds purchased online as well as good quality recordings taken from YT and Hickok45's channel.
Structure of game audio files
Like GTAV, RDR2 uses a bank-based sound system where a .awc file contains hash-based .wav or .ogg files (0x0....). I haven't been able to fully understand the audio engine of these games, I've only been able to edit what's editable. For example: the RPT_PUMPACTION_FINAL.awc file corresponds to the Varmit Rifle's sounds. It contains 20 files inside of type 0x0. Each of them is the first person R and L sound, dirty R and L weapon sounds, close third person sounds among other sounds. So, in order to edit each 0x0 subfile, you must replace and save changes in RPT_PUMPACTION_FINAL.awc.
Modding Tools
The main tools I used to build this mod were:
-Audacity: To record new sounds and to edit, combine and create new sounds. Each sound is saved as a project which makes it easy to modify the volume, duration, reverberation among other parameters.
-OpenIV: The quintessential modding tool for RAGE games. Because this tool does not allow direct sound replacement, it is only used to extract .awc files and convert them to editable formats such as .wav.
-RDR2 Audio Tool: This is the main tool to open awc file and internally edit each 0x0 hash subfile. It allows you to save changes or create a new awc file.
Replacing a hash (wav) file inside awc file opened with RDR2 Audio Tool.
Mod development
For the construction of this mod, it took me at least 3 months. In order for the mod to work as it does now, I had to fail many times when replacing sounds. Duration, frequency and file type must be taken into account. These same parameters of the original files must be respected. With OpenIV you can extract the hash files in wav format from the awc file to be modified and use these wav files as a reference to create the new ones to be replaced.
¡THIS GUIDE WILL STILL BE UNDER CONSTRUCTION AND I WILL BE ADDING MORE DETAILS OF THE MOD DEVELOPMENT PROCESS!
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