A Tutorial: changing what the Board computer has to say

[Argonaught.]

I've researched this extensively and have discover how to change almost every aspect of X2 sounds....except for repeat rates
as that info is hidden in inaccesable files of X2.

To start with, find these files in your unpacked dat/cat files:

X2/##.dat/t/44001.pck - This is the text that is displayed on screen for each soundfile.

X2/##.dat/mov/00044.xml - This tells the "Hidden script" where to find the relevant sound file in the 000144.dat and to play it.
it also holds the lenght of time for each soundclip.

To work out what belongs to what you need to search the 44001.pck for the text. and copy this info:
Here's an example of sector names:

[Example]

<page id="7" title="Boardcomp. Sectornames" descr="Names of all sectors (spoken by Boardcomputer)">
<t id="1020000">Unknown Sector</t>
<t id="1020101">Kingdom End</t>

[/Example]

Page id="7" - tells us that all sector sounds timings will be found in Page id 7 of the 00044.xml

Title - tells us what it is used for
Descr - tells us what is in Page id 7

t id="1020000" - gives us the exact location for the soundclip "Unknown Sector" in "page id 7" of the 00044.xml.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When you find the soundclip info for "Unknown Sector" in the 00044.xml it will look like this:

[Example]

<page id="7" stream="1">
<t id="1020000" s="20501618" l="1429"/>

[/Example]

Page id=7 is as above.
Stream=1 is not known as yet but not important for what we are doing.

Now comes the really relevant bit:
t id="1020000" - is the Id for Uknown Sector

s="20501618" - is the exact position in Milliseconds where the soundclip is in the 00144.dat

l="1429" - is the lenght of the soundclip in Milliseconds.

Note: always make sure there are 3 digits in the lenght, other wise you will CTD at startup....I don't know the reason for this but if you don't want a track to play then insert 001 as lenght, ie: l="001"
I haven't tried it with all 0's but I imagine it should work the same.
keeping a 1 at the end keeps me and game happy though.

You can also have different sounds play by altering the s="number" to whatever takes your fancy in the 00144.dat.
Always remember to double check for timings in the 00044.xml file or you could end up having some funny sounds playing ingame.

Doing this I can alter just about anything to do with boardcomp soundsclips and all without editing a very large soundfile.

Please note:
I am not responsible for you messing up your own game.
Have fun and remember to play around with copies of X2 files as an uninstall and reload is never fun.

[Kailric]

I just want to know if there is a way to make it so that you can here your engines from inside your cockpit..i miss that...it was comforting

[Argonaught.]

You can't do that by altering the boardcomp files...I think someone had a fix for engine sound by altering the Tships file.....it was way back when it was mentioned though and can't remember who posted about it.

[Thalass]

Is it possible to take the 144.dat file and recording extra bits on the end, then pointing the text files to that point along the file?

I can't seem to think of a reason why you couldn't. Especially if you could get a voice synthesizer to copy the shipcomputers voice

[Argonaught.]

Is it possible to take the 144.dat file and recording extra bits on the end, then pointing the text files to that point along the file?

I can't seem to think of a reason why you couldn't. Especially if you could get a voice synthesizer to copy the shipcomputers voice

I haven't tried that...but I don't see a problem doing that as long as your computer can handle the extremely large soundfile.
When converted to .wav I think it's over 1GB in size ... at the moment it's in wma format so is only 122mb.
The .dat file extension can be manually renamed to .wma.