Search the Community

Silencing/Modifying specific game sounds | Pt. I Revived from the archived forums: "How to silence specific game sounds" - By Impkin I pulled these posts from the archived forums. Impkin's instructions are largely intact and I cleaned and dredged through the thread down to the files identified up to the last post. I try to keep it updated with sfx files that others have managed to identify and if you are only interested in changing a few sounds, it'll do fine but if you plan on changing a whole host of sfx and more I highly recommend the tool below. UPDATE: If you intend on changing more than a few sounds then I highly recommend heading over to @The Philotic Knight modding tool thread, where you can change more than just game sounds. If you returning to the thread and just want to jump straight to the sounds: Sounds Location and file names | Pt. I - Bases and Emotes Sounds Location and file names | Pt. II - Enviro and UI Sounds Location and file names | Pt. III - Powers: Air Superiority - Hasten Sounds Location and file names | Pt. IV - Powers: Havoc - Psionics Sounds Location and file names | Pt. V - Powers: Radiation - Willpower Sounds Location and file names | Pt. VI - Systems User-Created Sound Mods The Philotic Knight's Short Visual Guide OK, OK! I get it. So how do I silence a sound? These instructions are meant for anyone with minimal Windows knowledge. I want to provide enough information so that every CoH player can improve their personal game play experience. Do not be daunted by the post's length. If you can play CoH you can do this. The way to kill any game sound is to put another sound file in the correct directory with the name of the sound file used to make that noise. This replacement file must be in the Ogg Vorbis format and it can not be of zero length. In other words, to kill a sound you replace it with one second of silence. Where do I get one second of silence in the *.ogg format? However you want to. How I did it was to use a free program called Audacity. Since Audacity has been bought and now has all sorts of privacy issues, I have removed the link. I recommend finding another suitable sound editing software. Run your chosen audio editor program. (The following instructions may very depending on the program.) Click on the "Generate" menu. Choose "Silence". It should have created 30 seconds of silence. Use your mouse and highlight about one second. This doesn't have to be exact. Click on the "Edit" menu. Choose "Trim". There is also a button following the "Cut", "Copy", "Paste" buttons called "Trim outside selection" that does the same thing. Click on the "File" menu. Choose "Export As Ogg Vorbis..." Call the file whatever you want and save it anyplace you want. I recommend calling it "silence.ogg" and saving it to the Desktop. You will be copying this file to folders you create and renaming it so keep that in mind when deciding what to call it and where to save it. Exit Audacity. You won't need to use Audacity again (for this) unless there is something wrong with that "silence.ogg" you just made. I have attached two files to this post: '_silence.ogg' and 'bloop.ogg'. I use the 'bloop' file to verify the sound I'm replacing is the one I'm looking for, since it's a lot easier to notice than silence. OK, now that I have a silent sound what do I do with it? You need to know where to copy it and what to rename it as so the game will use your silent sound file instead of the default sound file. The base location for all your silenced sound files is: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\data\sound\ogg\ This assumes that you installed the game to its default directory. If you installed it someplace else then you should know enough to adapt these instructions to fit your custom installation. *You are not making any changes to any files owned/installed by CoH*. Simply put: if any of the following folders already exist then you or a 3rd party put them there. If you do not see the folders, you or the 3rd party would need to create them as follows: Open the "City of Heroes" folder and create a new folder called "data". Open the "data" folder you just created and add a new folder called "sound". Open the "sound" folder you just created and add a new folder called "ogg". You now have your base file location set. The sounds will be grouped in sub-folders inside the "ogg" folder. Each sound you wish to silence will go in a sub-folder. The name of the sub-folder depends on the sound. The information provided for a specific sound assumes you have already created the above base folder. The "Folder name:" provided here is located in the "C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\data\sound\ogg\" folder. The name of the folder is where you copy your "silence.ogg" file to. The "File name:" provided here is what you need to rename that copy of your "silence.ogg" file to. That is all there is to it. The next time you launch CoH that sound will not be made. If CoH is running while you do this (not recommended), exit completely (quit to desktop, not the log-in screen) first. Example: Description: Targeting Drone loop Folder name: weapons File name: targetdrone_loop.ogg To silence this sound you copy your "silence.ogg" file to a folder called "weapons". If you have never silenced a sound that goes in the "weapons" folder then you will need to make a "weapons" folder first. Once you copy your "silence.ogg" into the "weapons" folder you then rename it to "targetdrone_loop.ogg". Just to give you an idea of what you should see, here is my data\ogg folder\sub-folders: Specific how-to: If you hold down the "Ctrl" key you can click on and drag the "silence.ogg" file to the "weapons" folder you created. It will make a copy. You can also right-click on "silence.ogg" and pick "Copy". You then right-click on an empty spot in the open "weapons" folder/window and pick "Paste". To rename the "silence.ogg" file you copied into the "weapons" folder right-click on the file and choose "Rename" (or highlight it and press the "F2" key). Type "targetdrone_loop.ogg". I did what you said, but now CoH doesn't work right! How do I undo this? If you followed instructions then it will work. If something isn't working as you expect then something was not done right. Try again. Go slower. Follow the instructions more carefully. If the sound you expected to be silenced is still making noise then either the description was misunderstood or the wrong folder/file name has been posted. The quickest and easiest way to undo this customization is to rename the "data" folder you made. I use "_data". Or just delete it. If you suspect that your customizations are causing problems playing CoH then undo them. What happens the next time there is an update or a patch? One of the great things about CoH is it keeps improving. Should the name of a folder or file change in a future patch the game would default back to playing the intended sound. If just the sound was changed (the folder and file name remain the same) a customized client would still play the silenced sound. If one wished to hear the changed sound they could either disable the "data" folder or the specific sound file by renaming it. A comment about courtesy. If you found the sound bothersome then most likely so do other people. This customization *only* affects your client. Other players will still hear the sound(s) unless they also customized their clients. Be courteous to your fellow players. Just because you aren't bothered by keeping a power running all the time now because you silenced it doesn't mean you should keep it running when you don't need it. You obviously didn't like hearing that noise. Why inflict it on others when there is no reason to? Turn off your powers when you are just standing around chatting, training, buying, etc. Giving credit where credit is due. This isn't my brain-child. Someone explained the concept to me over a year ago. I am sorry that I do not remember who they are. All I've done is come up with the format to present this information and the how-to steps for enabling all players to benefit from it should they wish to. A special THANK YOU! to the sound designers. A big concern of mine is that this thread might be taken wrong. What I hope y'all take from this is that setting the volume low or muting the sound entirely simply isn't an option. Different people are sensitive to different things. That's all there is to this thread. Half of the game experience is auditory. You have the most wonderful toy box. Thank you for sharing your toys with us! _silence.ogg Bloop.ogg Silence-Bloop_test.zip

So, instead of playing on my toaster of a PC, I decided to try my luck with my mid 2014 MacBook Pro, running BigSur. As much as I hate Apple, this thing does have much better stats than my ancient PC. Problem is, I'm experiencing several issues. I am using an HDMI cable to connect to an external monitor, which I believe is most likely besides the point, but there is that detail as well. Okay, here's the list of issues. Cell Shader does not appear to work. The options appear, but none of the sliders do anything, except for the outlines slider, which has a binary effect. If it is on at all, all vfx will disappear (auras, portals, etc) but otherwise does nothing. Occasionally the audio starts to gargle rather bad. Certain building textures appear transparent. Colors look really flat, even at higher gfx settings they look in some ways inferior to my ancient PC on lower settings. I'm guesing this one is a hardware/chipset issue with pos Mac. I have a feeling there is nothing to be done about any of those, but if anyone has any insights they would be appreciated.

Hi friends, posting about an issue I've had a couple of times on Mac where the audio is broken and begins crackling. In the past I've ridden this out and subsequent updates eventually resolved it; however it is currently still broken for me. For fellow mac users, I figured we can use this thread to provide more debugging information to help devs create a fix for this. System Details: macOS Mojave 10.14.6 2.4GHz Intel COre i7 16 GB RAM Audio Format: 48,000 Hz My strong suspicion is that this may be a wine issue, specifically the file "winecoreaudio.drv" which is the driver for wine. Beyond this I am a bit out of my depth. However, I found a solution that works for the time being for me: 1. Open "Audio Midi Setup" app on your Mac (this should be in utilities, but you can also just use finder) 2. Select "Built-in Input/Output" from the menu on the left in the app 3. Change the Output from 48,000 Hz to 44,100 Hz (48,000 Hz appears to be the Mac default--I checked 3 different Macs) So far I haven't noticed any audio degradation from doing this in game or other applications, but again if anyone else has these issues let me/devs know please! x DK

At the bottom of the post are two videos to both bugs being reported. Today I finally unlocked Flash Freeze in the Ice Control Powerset and was upset when I realized it didn't do anything. The mechanics work, but the visuals appear then disappear rapidly. They just kinda sit there doing nothing. Darkest Night in the Darkness Affinity Powerset does not have any sounds. When you use it, it'll just do the visuals. There doesn't seem to be any weird circumstances where it does work. It seems to just always be bugged. Videos; Ice Control>Flash Freeze https://streamable.com/voly6 Darkness Affinity>Darkest Night https://streamable.com/ek4zv [Edit - Temporary Fix] To fix these issues, change Flash Freeze to it's original color. Using Color Tintable will bug out the visuals. To fix Darkest Night, switch it from Soul Noir, to Color Tintable. This for some reason, will fix the audio.