A (Beginner's) Serious Question on Modding MBII

Slypear (DS2)

Slypear (DS2)

Posts
7
Likes
1
Hello there!

I'm very new to Movie Battles 2. I haven't played Jedi Academy in years. I've only spent about a day with MBII, but I've already fallen in love with the mod. Sure, I'm absolutely awful at it and the jedi v jedi mechanics warp my mind, but now I'm keen on modding it client-side for an even better experience.

I really enjoy working with sounds, specifically editing, mixing, and what-have-you-ing with them. I'd also like to get into recording and creating them from scratch, but I don't have any materials to do that. More importantly, I really like modding games to have new sounds. I've done work on Mount and Blade: Warband, and I'm currently creating new soundpacks for Insurgency.

So recently, for the past day and few hours, I've been trying to import my own, edited versions of Battlefront 2015's sounds into Movie Battles 2. Initially I thought it would be as simple as taking my new sound files and renaming them to what I wanted to replace, them popping them into a .zip/pk3 file and sticking them into the MBII folder.

I was terribly, terribly wrong. Somehow I broke my lightsaber textures so that they looked more like laser baseball bats, and all the weapons I had tried to give new assets to sounded like default E-11s (stormtrooper blasters). I was lucky enough to fix this by rolling back a few changes and replacing the MBII folder with its vanilla state.

So, now what? I've spent some good time searching for how to mod Jedi Academy's sounds, and regardless of how I follow them, I don't get any dice from MBII.

My process thus far has been:
1. Create new sounds. I export them at 44100 hz and 16-bit wav. I rename them to .mp3s so the game picks up the replacements.
2. Rename new sounds to what I want to replace.
3. Place new sounds in a .zip containing the same file structure as my source material. (weapons > A280 > fire.mp3)
4. Rename that zip as a .pk3 and stick it into the MBII files. (I've tried naming it MBAssets.pk3, Sounds.pk3, z_zcSounds.pk3, BattlefrontSounds.pk3, etc)
5. Launch the game. Nothing's changed. :c

Is there a specific format I should be following with my sounds? (memory limit, quality, etc)
Can anyone provide a walkthrough on how I should be doing this? (Do this, then this, etc)

This has been a really frustrating scenario for me to work with, so any help will be appreciated!

Thank you very much in advance! Cheers.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
ent

ent

Movie Battles II Team
Posts
848
Likes
390
If the game find mp3s, it reads them as mp3s, wav files cannot be read as mp3s and visa versa. Do not change file extensions unless you know what you are doing.
If you are replacing mp3s, then save as with 44100 Hz, 16 bit, mono (or stereo is it's a music replacement).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Slypear (DS2)

Slypear (DS2)

Posts
7
Likes
1
ent said:
If the game find mp3s, it reads them as mp3s, wav files cannot be read as mp3s and visa versa. Do not change file extensions unless you know what you are doing.
If you are replacing mp3s, then save as with 44100 Hz, 16 bit, mono (or stereo is it's a music replacement).
Click to expand...

Hey. and thank you for replying!

I've tried exporting as .wav and renaming it to an .mp3 initially.

Then I tried it once more, but instead exporting it at 44100 hz, 16-bit, and mono, as you said. (Still as a .wav, renamed to .mp3)

Most recently, I repeated the above (44.1 khz, 16-bit, mono), and then exporting it again, but this time as an .mp3 by default. Still no dice.

I packed all the recent results into a master .zip file named sounds.pk3, and then popped it into the MBII folder. Nothing's changed.

My initial file size was about 340 kb for each sound, each at 1536 kbps. After exporting, my file size is about 20 kb at 128 kbps.

I'm assuming that kbps doesn't matter since you didn't mention it, correct? Is there something I'm missing? I've followed every tutorial I've found and I still get no results. If you'd like, I can send you some of the sample sounds that I've exported recently.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Slypear (DS2)

Slypear (DS2)

Posts
7
Likes
1
Okay! Haha! Brilliant! Who would've thought there was such an easy fix?!

Thank you, ent! I can finally get to proper work on these sounds! Thank you for all your help, once again!

Some closing questions, if you don't mind:

1. Does the kbps at which I export matter?
2. Is there a size limit for the sounds? If I make my firing sound 300 kb instead of 30 kb, will it still read?
3. If I export as .wav and rename to .mp3, while following all of the guidelines above, will it work?

Thank you, sir!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ent

ent

Movie Battles II Team
Posts
848
Likes
390
1. No.
2. Theoretically 2 GB.
3. No. Extensions are made for users, programs read in 1s and 0s. If you rename your file (changing extension is actually renaming the file) You won't change the file's 1s and 0s. So it will still be the same file. If you remove the extension and try to open that file as MP3 - it will work, since its binary structre is still the same.
Actual MP3 files have different binary form comparing to WAV.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Slypear (DS2)

Slypear (DS2)

Posts
7
Likes
1
ent said:
1. No.
2. Theoretically 2 GB.
3. No. Extensions are made for users, programs read in 1s and 0s. If you rename your file (changing extension is actually renaming the file) You won't change the file's 1s and 0s. So it will still be the same file. If you remove the extension and try to open that file as MP3 - it will work, since its binary structre is still the same.
Actual MP3 files have differnt binary form comparing to WAV.
Click to expand...

That's all that I needed. A tremendous thank you for your help. May we meet again in the foreseeable future!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top