VSoundEdit

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VSoundEdit in action.

VSoundEdit is a tool used by Valve to edit soundscripts, particularly in mass. It provides a user-friendly GUI to batch creation, and also supports editing individual soundscripts with a simple and comprehensive interface. It supports Dino D-Day Dino D-Day and Portal 2 Portal 2, and it can be made to support many other Source games, including Source 2013 Source 2013.

Note.pngNote:For all of its advanced features, it does not support playing back the soundscript!


Syntax

vsoundedit [options]

Options:

-game
Overrides the VProject. Needed if you want to use it for other Source games that don't have it.

The -game parameter expects a path to the subfolder of the game (where gameinfo.txt is located), and not the general game folder. Example:

vsoundedit -game "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Portal 2\portal2" 


History

VSoundEdit was used extensively in the development of Portal 2, being used to batch create sound entries from large numbers of WAV files. However, like many of the tools used in Portal 2's development, it was never shipped. The tool can be found in the Dino D-Day SDK, among many other unreleased tools.

Not starting up

VSoundEdit will silently close if it doesn't find any soundscript files. In order for it to find them, it reads GameInfo.txt in the specified directory and looks for this specific entry:

Game           |Gameinfo_path|.

If the above entry is read, it will look for soundscripts in the scripts folder. Remember that the first part Game should always be by itself. In other words, don't do this:

Game+Mod           |Gameinfo_path|.

This will cause the entry to be ignored. If however, you need to do this (for example, in a mod with specific SearchPaths), then you can add the first example below it.


Unable to edit scripts

VSoundEdit requires the Perforce Helix Command-Line Client (p4.exe) in the same directory as vsoundedit.exe in order to edit scripts. It does so automatically without user interaction with p4.exe, upon clicking the Save button. The Perforce client itself uses Notepad by default to handle text files (such as soundscripts in this case). The client itself can be downloaded here. You can copy p4.exe from the install folder directly into the directory containing VSoundEdit.

Scripts and sounds paths

VSoundEdit looks for the game sounds manifest, soundscripts, and sound files in based on relative paths from the directory chosen with -game. It reads /scripts/game_sounds_manifest.txt and looks for the scripts in the manifest in relative paths as mentioned above. For each soundscript, it will search the specified relative path within /sound in directory specified with -game. Additional SearchPaths within gameinfo.txt will not be read.

See also