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Cunobelin gets an "M" and We get to See How his Sound Mod Works
If you haven't, go ahead and give the embedded video a look. I used CamStudio to do the screen capture of a WoT replay. While doing the capture, I kept Pandora playing, which is how I play the game. I was trying for an authentic experience; however, both the sound and video quality are notably worse than I get while playing in HD. The Pandora capture is especially poor, probably because the volume is low. The crew voice mods, which is what I am really looking to highlight, come through much better.
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I am quite satisfied with my project results. I got everything I was looking for including pieces (e.g. editing/creating raw files) that I thought would be a stretch. The process was typical in that I would waste time in blind alleys and then hit on very productive streaks. I used Diigo to capture both my learning and sound capture sources. Feel free to browse through these links. Although my project was very specific to World of Tanks, both FMOD and Audacity have applicability beyond this game. Perhaps my project posts will inspire someone to look into modifying their game?
Another advertised aspect of 20% projects turned out to be true for me. This project was dangerous in that it was fun. I could easily get carried away tweaking or searching for new sounds. Creating these blog posts; however, often lagged the actual work. Maybe that's because the blogging/reflecting felt more like work than the learning/tweaking :P My 10 Original Questions |
It seems appropriate to reflect back upon my original questions and see how I learned from them, or whether they turned out to be relevant or not.
The first and third questions reflect my original anxiety that relatively deep programming skills might be required to enact the mod. As it turns out, FMOD and NoblePlatoon (with his template) took care of the messy difficult work. So XVM was seemless for me, and I did not need any coding skill. The second question I thought might be a stretch, but Audacity made this part easy. I did not anticipate the need to re-edit captures that others made, but this also was easy to do. In fact, Audacity makes it easy to layer sound effects, with full control of timing and effects like reverb or pitch changes individually controllable (by layer). I went through a lot of dead ends before I learned the answer to questions 4 & 5. NoblePlatoon, in the standard WoT forum was the right source. I have some additional threads available should I ever decide to break open other fsb files, or look to copy captures from others' mods (i.e. reverse engineer them to get one or more captures I covet). |
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I found sufficient scaffolding for everything I envisioned. I believe there is enough to successfully reverse engineer other sound effects (there are threads with modders working on custom engine and gun sounds), though I have little interest in these areas. I also imagine, but have not looked into it, that there is scaffolding for doing new screen mods (e.g. the damage given and received tables I mention in the game video narration).
All of it was fun to create. I think I had the most fun finding sound capture files and then matching them up to relevant events (e.g. "they killed Kenny" or "Bring out your dead" for dead/injured crew members). While writing this post, I asked one of my sons if he likes my mod, and got an affirmative response. After letting him know he could have it by just replacing two files, he didn't ask for them though. I suppose time will tell if anyone else ever tries it.
The last question is especially good. I have considered ways in which I could integrate World of Warplanes into a theoretical airplane design class; however, math class is a harder fit. Once I know the location and subject(s) I will teach in the Fall, I plan to think more on it. I expect that students will find the modifications, funny and interesting. If I can find a genuine connection to content, it should strengthen my connections with them and improve many students' learning outcomes.