Community Event / Creation Audio manipulation

ralfidude · Jul 22, 2014

Hello, I want to see if it's possible to change a few sounds like the interface by myself. I am familiar on how to do this in other games, but as far as Elite goes, I can't even find the audio files to replace anything with.

Could someone navigate me to where they all are?

Also, if I do change them, will I still be able to play online?

Sub · Jul 22, 2014

I'm Fanboying a bit here sorry
Hi ralfi! Love your videos

Okay, continue your business!

Iain M Norman · Jul 22, 2014

You'll find them all tucked away in:

\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1000\Win32\Audio\AudioGlobal.ovl

Not really bothered with deciphering ovl format much.

There do appear to be a one or more zlib streams packaged up into one ovl file but that's as far as we've got with any investigations.

ralfidude · Jul 22, 2014

gotcha, thank you.

ralfidude · Jul 23, 2014

After doing some digging, it seems that it's extremely hard to do much with OVL files... They are a very uncommon type of file used and as far as opening it to change some things... I am at a loss...

Ayo · Jul 23, 2014

ralfidude said:
After doing some digging, it seems that it's extremely hard to do much with OVL files... They are a very uncommon type of file used and as far as opening it to change some things... I am at a loss...

OVL was the filetype used for everything in Frontier Elite 2. I'm guessing it's specific to the Cobra engine.

Iain M Norman · Jul 23, 2014

I think traditionally in C++ it's just an overlay file. But yes many cobra games use .ovl.

The RCT3 format was well explored by the community, the format seems similar in the ED ones, but it's definitely not the same, cobra has moved on

We've had some luck expanding the zlib streams, I did once get some wav files out, found the RIFF headers okay, never managed to get anything to play them, didn't persevere with exploring the codecs, move onto hacking other stuff.

Or gave up in other words.

ralfidude · Jul 24, 2014

lmao.

My sentiments to you mate.

Gilbrilthor · Nov 24, 2014

Any updates?

Apologies for necroing, but I thought my topic was focused on this so much so that another thread would just dilute it during a google search.

Was there any progress made on this? I was looking to hooking into the tracks to determine when they were playing so I could trigger an external application.

Thanks!