Getting the Rolling Ball Sounds to Work

by Bedazzled

As a safety precaution please make a backup of your TRLE\sound and wads folder before making any changes to the sounds.txt file.


By default the rolling ball object does not make any sounds in game fortunately this problem is easily solved.

The default sounds.txt file contains the correct sound references.

BOULDER_FALL bouldlnd.wav

This is the sound of the object landing and bouncing along the ground.

ROLLING_BALL l_rumb.wav

This is the rumbling sound the object makes as it rolls along and can be used without the bouldlnd.wav for TR2 snowball sound effects.

However by default these sounds are not assigned to every wad, the default sound samples folder already contains the required wav files so we just need to assign these sounds to our wad. It’s at this point many people will run into problems.

If your levels wad uses one of the default wad names such as Karnak, Coastal ect. Then you can simply use the #g parameter in the sounds.txt file to assign the sounds to all wads, however if you have changed the name of your wad files to better match the name of your level ( which is not something I’d recommend beginners to do ) then assigning the sounds will be a little more complicated. But don’t worry it’s quite easy when you know how and you’ll be learning how in this tutorial.

Using A Default named wad
Open the sounds.txt file in windows notepad and locate the line starting with “BOULDER_FALL” the end of the line will look like this #p #B #J
Add a space then #g to the end of the line so that it becomes
#p #B #J #g

Add #g to the end of the line beginning “ROLLING_BALL” the end of the line should then look like this #c #d #i #p #u #J #K #Tu #g

Now save the modified sounds.txt file back on itself and close notepad.

Locate the SFX Example Batch file located in the trle\sound\LevelSfxCreator folder.

Right click on it and choose edit from the shortcut menu. Add the word “pause” to the end as shown below and save the file back on itself.

pcwadsfx settomb c
pcwadsfx tut1 d
pcwadsfx title t
pcwadsfx catacomb s
pcwadsfx city w
pcwadsfx cleopal r
pcwadsfx coastal p
pcwadsfx karnak h

copy *.sam ..\..\graphics\wads
copy *.sfx ..\..\graphics\wads

del *.sam
del *.sfx
pause

Now after it finishes running it will pause and display how many files have been converted you’ll see why it’s important to get this information a bit later on, simply press any key to end the program.

As you can see from the above batch file each of the default wads have a letter assigned to them, these letters correspond to the letters at the end of each line in the sounds.txt file which is how some sounds are assigned to only certain levels. The letter “g” in a line of the sounds.txt file means that related sound sample such as LARA_FEET: foot01.wav will be assigned to every wad.

If you now double click the SFX-Example Batch file icon to run the program the boulder / rolling ball sounds will be assigned to all wads.

Using a renamed wad.

This requires an extra line of text to be added to the SFX Example Batch file which will be for you renamed wad. In the example below I have add a new line for a wad called “mylevel” which I have called the wad files for my new level also I have assigned it the letter “m” note that the letter used must be different from any of the letters assigned to a default wad.


pcwadsfx settomb c
pcwadsfx tut1 d
pcwadsfx title t
pcwadsfx catacomb s
pcwadsfx city w
pcwadsfx cleopal r
pcwadsfx coastal p
pcwadsfx karnak h
pcwadsfx mylevel m

copy *.sam ..\..\graphics\wads
copy *.sfx ..\..\graphics\wads

del *.sam
del *.sfx
pause


The assigned letter “m” after the name of the wad is the letter which must be added to the sounds.txt line of any sound which I want in my level.

The end of the “BOULDER_FALL” line will look like this #p #B #J #m

The end of the “ROLLING_BALL” line will look like this #c #d #i #p #u #J #K #Tu #m


The letter “m” will need to be assigned to all sounds required in the wad except general sounds which will already be assigned to all wads.

After double clicking the SFX Example Batch file icon and running the program you should see a message that 9 files have been copied indicating that your renamed wad has been included in the new files.

If you find that any of the TR4 objects in your level have missing sounds it’s worth just checking in the sounds.txt file that the sound is assigned to the wad you are using or is assigned as a general sound.

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