New structure of sound files / barking dogs

Pathfinder: WotR Discussions
#1

In a recent update - I don’t even know which, 1.2.x probably, the sound files were completely changed and many moved from *.bnk to *.pck.

I had a script to remove the irritating dogs barking all the time in the city and in villages, but now it’s pretty useless. Does anyone know

  • if there is an info somewhere on the original audio file names to identify which to replace? Before it was in .xml files but they are now obsolete
  • when the change was made? In the worst case, I can still play with an older version

It’s an unusual question but I just can’t stand these noises, and they’re as omnipresent as in Kingmaker. :frowning:

#2

I think it happened with the 1.2 patch.

Regarding the .xml file, I’m not sure, but is SoundbanksInfo.xml under
\Pathfinder Second Adventure\Wrath_Data\StreamingAssets\Audio\GeneratedSoundBanks\Windows
the obsolete one?

#3

I had linked the wrong thread above, I fixed that.

Yes, the SoundbanksInfo.xml was a good source to get the numeric ID of the sound within .BNK files. Now most of the sounds have moved into .PCK files under

Wrath_Data\StreamingAssets\Audio\GeneratedSoundBanks\Windows\Packages

And I see no information on the new IDs. I’m not familiar with this new format, I used what I found to extract the sound files, and the names were only numerical. So I can’t use the name to eliminate most of those sounds, I would have to listen to all the sounds to identify them, which is not really possible.

It’s a silly thing, but I had a bad experience with dogs when I was a kid, I’m not keen on hearing them so often in a game :wink: I don’t see the interest anyway, it’s not as if it were a nice sound, it’s annoying to many people.

#4

Apparently it’s not possible to find the specifications of those .pck and .bnk files, only wild guesses.

The only source I had is not correct, but after looking at the file content I could finally determine enough information about the .pck files to understand the structure and how to locate the .bnk files packed in it.

But to add a last nail to the coffin, the .bnk files themselves have a new type that I don’t know. So I can’t change them.

And of course, the version of Pathfinder that still had the good old .bnk files is not available anymore on GOG, which means it’s a no-go for me :frowning:

Why, but why do they have to put those most unnerving sounds in their games?

#5

Have you been able to get rid of the barking ambience sound?

I’ve been doing some modding lately and was actually able to replace some dialogue voiceover wems from pck files by using a Hex editor (basically to overwrite the wem’s bytes). If you can identify the relevant wem files using SoundbanksInfo.xml, I think you can replace the barks with silence.