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How to make voicepacks for Unreal Tournament 2004 - a tutorial by Rainecloud.
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Version: 1.2 - this is the second version of the tutorial, with a couple of nifty revisions included.
Author: Rainecloud.
Website: http://voiceshrine.beyondunreal.com (The Voice Shrine).
Contact E-mail: rainecloud@beyondunreal.com - or - elenquende@hotmail.com (failing the first one).
Unreal Editor Version Used: 3.0
Construction Time: Approximately 118 minutes. Honest. Hey, I'm a fast typer.

Revisions: Sections III and VII of this tutorial have been revised. New information concerning little bugs in Unreal Ed were brought to my attention by numerous members of the BU community (who can be found lurking in the 'Other Credits' section of this tutorial), and so I decided to add a few notes concerning these blasphemous atrocities.

Note: This tutorial assumes no prior knowledge of Unreal Editor, Thermodynamics, Rocket Science or Mathematics.
Actually, scrub the last three things, you won't be needing them here. In actual fact, making voicepacks for UT2004 is as easy as stealing candy from a mildly-arthritic granny with no arms. Honest. So, don't be put off - have a go, you can do it.

Additional Note: Please excuse my sarcastic sense of humour. I'm sure it'll grow on you, though. Just a prior warning - 4,301 people who downloaded my previous tutorial committed suicide shortly after. I'm not quite sure why.

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Teh Spiffy Contentage (Contents):
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I) Deciding what to make.
II) What sort of sounds do I need?
III) Sorting your sounds out. - Revised section with added information.
IV) Importing your sounds into Unreal Editor.
V) Compiling the scripts and other unsightly nonsense.
VI) Curing the 'Sound Bug' and saving your 'U' file.
VII) Assigning the sounds and whatnot. - Revised section with added information.
VIII) A few little things to polish off your package.
IX) Configuring your INT file.
X) The finishing touches.
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I) Deciding what to make.

So, you want to make a voicepack, huh? Well, you've certainly come to the right place. I'm going to attempt to keep my sarcastic drivel to an absolute minimum during this fantastically constructed and well presented tutorial, so don't worry about going to bed in a depressed mood after reading this unbelievably sexy and ravishingly tasty piece of work.

Ahem. Anyway, before making a voicepack, you need to decide what to make. Simple, right? WRONG! Many voicepacks have already been made, and some have 'fallen on deaf ears', as the saying goes. So, make sure you have a pretty decent idea of what you want to do. Are you fond of cartoons? Well, go ahead and make a voicepack of one of the characters from Bugs Bunny or something. Not into Loony Toons? Well, go ahead and make a Lisa Simpson voicepack (or whatever).

So, the golden rule is - don't do something else someone has already done, unless your pack is significantly different to the previous one. Nobody wants to download a pack that's pretty much the same as the last one with the exception of a few mere taunt changes. The Mr. Burns package suffered from this problem back in the UT days - there were too many versions of it!

II) What sort of sounds do I need?

Look at the default voicepacks for UT2004. They have specific orders in (that you need), as well as taunts. Packs with taunts only are okay, but it's nice to have packs with all the orders, too. So, find some appropriate samples for each category before you go importing them into Unreal Editor. A basic pack would have a couple of order sounds (assault the base, etc), a few acknowledgement sounds (roger, etc) and a couple of friendly fire sounds, too (I'm on your team, idiot, etc).

III) Sorting your sounds out.

Please excuse my silliness during this section of the tutorial. I've been listening to a Donkey Kong Country Jungle trance remix from the excellent OCRemix site, and it's making me giggle with childish delight. Anyway, you've decided what you want to make, so let's get those sounds. There are plenty of places to get WAV sounds from on the Internet. Failing that, you could record your sounds from CD's, DVD movies or otherwise. If you have a fancy sound editing program, you'll know what to do. If not, simply use the built-in sound recorder that comes with Windows. You'll find it lurking in the depths of your Accessories > Entertainment folder.

Remember, Unreal Editor likes WAV files, so I'd advise you not to use anything else. I've been informed by members of the community that MPEG-3 format can be used, but others have reported experiencing problems with compression formats and whatnot. So, as I said, it's a hell of a lot safer and more reliable to use WAV files, but if you fancy a try at using MPEG-3 files, go right ahead, and don't say I didn't warn you. Once you've recorded a sound, I'd recommend that you convert the file into 11.025 kHz, 8 bit mono. You can do this by hitting File > Properties > Convert Now in your little sound recorder. 22.050 kHz, 8 bit mono is also fine, but your finished voicepack will be of a significantly bigger file size. However, if your sounds turn out totally CRAP in 11.025 kHz, go right ahead and save them as 22.050 kHz. Most people have broadband these days, anyway, so don't worry about it. Also, remember to make sure that your sounds are loud enough. If you can't hear them, simply up the volume a tad and save the files. Don't worry, you'll be able to raise the volume of them even more once you're inside the evil world of Unreal Editor. Finally, make sure that your saved sounds don't have any spaces or unusual characters in them. If your files contain any funny-looking squiggles or spaces, they won't import into Unreal Ed, and it'll cause you a lot of bother. Use letters and numbers only.

Once you have all your samples sorted and ready to go, remember to place them inside the UT2004 directory. You don't have to place them in a specific folder, just C:/Unreal Tournament will do fine. If you try and import them from anywhere else on your hard drive, Unreal Editor usually has a spasm and explodes.

IV) Importing your sounds into Unreal Editor.

Here be where the fun begins, sailor. Go into your Unreal Tournament > System folder. See that Green 'U' icon? That's Unreal Editor. Open it. Now, you may already have a window open. If you can see the 'Sounds' tab, click on it. If not, click the little icon in the bar at the top that looks like a little speaker. It's the one next to the picture of the musical note.

Once you're there, click on 'File' and go down to 'New Sound Group'. Click it, and you'll see a small window pop up in your face. Change the 'Package' field to whatever you want your pack to be called - IE - 'judgejudy' or 'judgejudypackage'. We're going to stick with Judy for the rest of this tutorial, because I love her so dearly. Don't put ANYTHING into the 'Group' field. If something is already there, get rid of it. Finally, change the bottom field (Name) to exactly the same as the 'Package' field. If your Package field says 'judgejudy', so should your 'Name' field.

Once you've done this, your package will be created. Right click on the sample that's already there (the one with the little star next to it) and delete it, because you don't need it. During the course of this tutorial, you'll notice Unreal Editor do some very strange things. I've attributed these things to the fact that Unreal Editor is a big, nasty, evil, sumbitch.

Now, go to 'File > Import'. You can select all your sounds at once if you wish, or you can do them individually. Some versions of Unreal Editor crash when you import numerous files, but *shock* 3.0 does not do this! I'm shocked, honestly. Remember, no spaces or unusual characters in your filenames!

Now, a little box will pop up. Don't change any of the fields. Just press 'Ok' to them all, or 'Ok to all' if you're importing numerous files all at one time. Walla, we're ahead on our way, cowboy.

Finished importing? Good. Click the floppy disc icon at the top of the 'Sounds' window (that you're already in) and a dialogue box will pop up. The name of your pack should already be there, so press 'Save'. The directory should have been the 'UT2004 > Sounds' folder. If it wasn't that, go back and change it, Captain. Well done, your UAX file is safe and secure.

V) Compiling the scripts and other unsightly nonsense.

Don't worry, this isn't difficult, either. Open the 'Actor Class' browser. You'll find a little icon for it at the top of Unreal Editor. Look for the icon that looks like a chess piece (a pawn). If you get lost (or if the only pawn you know of is in your computer's history folder), it's the icon next to the letter 'G'.

This is where Unreal Editor gets super-bitchy. And when I say super-bitchy, I MEAN super-bitchy. Not just regular-bitchy or slightly-bitchy, I'm talking - super-bitchy here. Ahem. In the actor class browser, make sure that View > Show Packages is selected. If it's not ticked, tick the sucker now. Also, there should be two boxes below that. One says 'Use actor as parent?' and the other says 'Placeable classes only?' If you can't see the latter, just go to View > Show Packages again and again until the sumbitch shows up. Make sure you keep your packages showing, though (Heh, that sounds quite rude). You'll know your packages are showing when you get arrested for indecent exposure. Seriously though, you'll know when your packages are showing when you can see lots of little boxes at the bottom of the 'Actor Class Browser' window.

Make sure 'Placeable classes only?' is unticked, because we want to see the classes we can't place. Or something. Go to the following section of the browser: Info > Voicepack > TeamVoicepack > xVoicePack. If you can't see them, keep scrolling down until you can. Right click on 'xVoicepack' and select 'New'. From there, put the same two lines of text into these fields as you did before (when you created the sound package). They should both be the same (for convenience, of course).

A large blue screen will now appear. This is your script. Simply add the following line to the script, underneath the information that's already there (you might want to return down a space or two before doing this):

#exec OBJ LOAD FILE=judgejudy.uax

Replace 'judgejudy.uax' with whatever you saved your UAX file as before. Remember? No? WELL GO FIND OUT! Once you've finished doing that, go to 'Tools' (in the same window) and click on 'Compile Changed'. Don't close this window, just minimize it, as we'll need it later. Just once, mind. Well done, you've compiled a script. Not bad, eh?

VI) Curing the 'Sound Bug' and saving your 'U' file.

Go back to the 'Actor Class Browser' (the chesspiece), and go all the way down to your voicepack, exactly as you did before when you were creating it. Make sure that Unreal Editor hasn't re-ticked the 'Placeable classes only?' box, as it likes to do to me all the friggin' time. You should see your voicepack somewhere in the list. Right-click that little beaut', and select the option for 'Default Properties'.

This looks complicated, but it's not. Honest. We're only going to enter two of the subdirectories here. First of all, you need to fix the nasty 'sound bug' volume, that seems to plague most UT2003 voicepacks these days. The bug can be fixed for our lovely new UT2004, see, and that's what we're going to do. Expand the 'Sound' section of this new window (by clicking it), and look for the 'TransientSoundVolume' option, which should be the last one. At the moment, it'll be on '0.300000', which sucks. You want to change this to somewhere between 75.000 and 95.000 depending on how loud your sounds already are. If you don't do this, you'll hardly be able to hear your voicepack taunts in-game. Don't worry, Unreal Editor has ANOTHER bug which plays up around about this time. Even if you change the number in the field, it appears to default back to the original number. Forget about it. Enter your number, and close the window. Right click your voicepack and select 'Default Properties' again, and it will now work perfectly. Trust me, I'm English.

Now, we're going to save our 'U' file, just in case. Close the 'Default Properties' box and go back to the 'Actor Class Browser'. In the 'Packages' list at the bottom of this browser (the ones with the little white boxes next to them), you should see your voicepack, tick the box and click on the floppy disc icon at the top of the window. Your file is now saved. Well done.

VII) Assigning the sounds and whatnot.

Right click on your package and select 'Default Properties' once more. Expand the 'TeamVoicePack' field at the bottom. This is where you assign your samples. It's best to have your Unreal Editor sound browser open on the left hand side of your screen whilst your doing this (that's the one you access by clicking the little speaker at the top of the screen, remember?), so if it's not already open, go and fetch it, Admiral.

This is where YOU do all the work. I can only describe to you what each field is for, and you have to add the sounds and type out the details. It's pretty self-explanatory, so you don't have to worry.

'AckSound' is where you put your acknowledgements (Roger, Cap'n butt head). 'FFireSound' is where you put your friendly fire sounds (when your team mates shoot you in the back, mercilessly and without prior thought as to how this will affect your emotional stability), 'OrderSound' is where you put your flaming flapjacks. Actually, it's not. Surprisingly enough, it's where you put your orders (assault the base you maggots). 'OtherSound' is for sounds that don't fit into the other categories, so take a look for yourself before you import the crap out of it. Finally, 'TauntSound' is for your lovely, insulting, sarcastic, witty tauntage.

Expand the taunt menu and click on the box that says 'None', which is located next to the number [0]. You'll now have three choices. Click on your chosen sound from the sound menu (which should be open on the left hand side of your screen), and click 'Use' in your chosen box. It's THAT simple. So, go right ahead and insert your sounds wherever you want to in each of the categories that I've already enlightened you on above. Remember though - when you're assigning sounds for the 'OrderSound' section of the voicepack, make sure the sounds are mildly appropriate. If you can't get anything decent, don't worry about it, but people bitch, whine and moan about it when the order sounds in a pack don't make sense. Well, it's better than leaving them blank, I guess (although if you really want to do this, I guess you can...idiot...)

Now, you'll need to configure the 'String' and 'Abbrev' sections of the pack. Above and below each of the aforementioned categories (order, ffire, other, taunt, ack), you'll see a 'String' and 'Abbrev' section for each. The 'String' section is where you can type out the taunt in full. For example, if you placed a taunt in field [5] that says "Aaaaah, Boogieman! Help me!", you would type out that entire sentence in the 'String' section. Now, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. Due to problems with spamming in the past, UT2004 doesn't display the taunt strings in the HUD menu at the bottom. So, even if you do type them in, they won't show up. So, there's no point, in my opinion. The only 'String' section that DOES show up is the 'OrderString' section, so you really should attempt to type that particular part out. People like seeing orders (whiners).

The 'Abbrev' section is next. You MUST complete this section, as you'll need it when selecting orders/taunts in-game. Whatever you type in this section will show up in the HUD menu during your UT2004 games. It's the menu that appears when you press 'V'. You know, the one that you can choose sounds from whilst fragging the opposition to the pit of hades and back. Whatever you do, don't type much in any of these boxes. IE - if your sample says: "That would be an ecumenical matter", just type "Ecumenical". Get it? "Assault the base" would be shortened to "Assault" and so on and so forth.

Once you've typed out everything you need to type out, go back to the previous screen and save your 'U' file again.

VIII) A few little things to polish off your package.

Go back into 'Default Properties' once more and select 'TeamVoicepack' again. See the section that says 'numAcks, numFFires, numTaunts?' You'll need to change the number to however many samples you have in each section. If you can't remember, go back into your 'Sound' section of the TeamVoicepack and take a look. REMEMBER - [0] counts as a number in this menu, so if your final sound is in box [18], you'll actually have 19 taunts. Understand? If you don't, just add 1 onto however many samples you have in each section. Again, UT2004 will default the number back to the original one immediately after you've typed the new number in, but don't worry, it will have saved the settings. Close the box and re-open it again if you don't believe me.

Go back to the 'Actor Class' browser and save your 'U' file once more. Also, remember that window you minimized earlier - the one with the script on it? Go back to step V if you can't remember. Click on 'Compile Changed' for the last time, and close that sumbitch down. Very good, you're almost there, choir boy!

IX) Configuring your INT file.

All voicepacks need an INT file in order to function, so to finish our splendidly succulent package of delight, we're going to construct one with our magical prowess and enormous wisdom. Ah, forget that, just do this...

Go into your UT2004 > System folder and grab an INT file. Any INT file will do, so long as you don't actually cut it, move it or delete it. COPY the file to somewhere else convenient and open the little blighter. If your PC asks you to choose a program to open the file, select the 'Notepad' program. Any text editor will do, though, I guess. Delete everything in the file, and paste this little lot in:

[Public]
Object=(Name=judgejudy.judgejudy,Class=Class,MetaClass=XGame.xVoicePack)

[judgejudy]
VoicePackName="Judge Judy"

Change all three of the 'judgejudy' references to whatever you named your voicepack (in the two initial fields), and change the VoicePackName= section to whatever you want your pack to appear as in the drop down menu in-game. You can change that bit to whatever you like. Save the file, and you're done. That's it. Your voicepack will now work.

X) The finishing touches.

You don't need the UAX file any more, so delete it (you'll find it in your UT2004 Sounds folder). Place the INT file in your system file, and your U file should already be in there. All you need when you've finished making your pack is the INT and U files. If these are placed in your system folder, then your pack will work. If it's not showing up in the menu, then you've probably not configured the INT file correctly. Go and change it, officer.

So, all you need when you're submitting a pack to the Voice Shrine (or some other inferior site) is the INT file, the U file and a readme. Your readme should contain your e-mail address, website details, etc. Also, please provide some installation instructions for the UT2004 newbies who've downloaded the pack and have no idea what to do with it. Remember, you just need to tell them to place the U and INT files in their UT2004 system folder. If you want a readme template, download one of my UT2004 voicepacks and build on that, if you wish.

Thanks for reading this tutorial. Any questions? Am I not making sense? UnrealEd being a bitch? Drop me a line at rainecloud@beyondunreal.com, and I'll do my best to help you out.

Credits: Me, of course. Aside from that, I'd like to thank Fraggin Phun for his excellent tutorial on how to make voicepacks for UT2003. Please note that UT2003 voicepacks do work with 2004, but they suck and they're bound to the characters in all sorts of silly ways. You DON'T need to follow the UT2003 voicepack making method any more. In fact, I'm not accepting packs that were created for UT2003. Also, thanks to Inker for inspiring me all those years ago, Ram2000 from my Planet Unreal Days, and last - but not least, QAPete from Beyondunreal for all his help and patience.

Other Credits: Jim Love, Sean Ballensky, Sam Giddings, Mad Monkey and all the staff at BU for their help, suggestions and praise. Thanks to everyone in the BU community for making the site such a big success. I love you guys/girls, I really do.