Jailbreak Developer Network: Making Voice Packs

This is a tutorial on Making Voice Packs for Jailbreak 200x.

1  Recording the sounds

The first step you have to do to make a Jailbreak announcer is to record the sounds needed (see section "List of Jailbreak sounds" at the bottom of the page). How you do this is your choice, you can use a microphone and some recording software, a speech synthesizer, or just about anything with which you can record sound on your computer. You may also use a recording software of your choice; the whole palette from SndRec32 up to "Super Ultra Sound And Music Recorder 3000" will do. Just don't forget to save your files in the .wav format using the PCM codec – the one that takes up most space (but also keeps all of the sound information intact).

Once you have done that, save your files into a directory where you can retreive them quickly again.

If you are planning to use UCC for importing the sounds, make sure you create a subfolder "Jailbreak" in the directory of your choice and put the sounds in there. It is not mandatory, but it makes your sound package clear later on – and it is useful if you are packaging a classic UT2004 announcer as well (where the folder containing the announcer sounds must be named Generic for the announcer to work correctly).

2  Packaging the Sounds

2.1  The UnrealEd way

1. Start UnrealEd.
2. On the toolbar, click Sound Browser.
3. In the window that pops up, choose File → Import... and locate your .wav files. Select them all and click Open.
4. A new window appears. In the box labelled Package, type in a name for your package, for example JBVoiceZeus. Under Group, input Jailbreak. (Again, this is voluntary, but it simplifies a lot.) If you named your sounds as they should be named, you can just select OK All and wait a bit.
5. Go to File → Save and save your package under the given filename (e.g. JBVoiceZeus.uax).
6. Close UnrealEd and continue to the next section.

2.2  The UCC way

2.2.1  On Windows

1. Make sure your sounds are in an easily accessible folder on your hard drive. (I opt for C:\temp\annzeus\Jailbreak, in my case.)
2. Start the command prompt through Start → (All) Programs → Accessories → Command Prompt
   or by launching command.com (Windows 98/ME) or cmd.exe (Windows 2000/XP) through Start → Run....
3. Switch to your UT2004 System folder by typing cd /d path\to\UT2004\System, e.g. cd /d D:\Unreal\UT2004\System.

4. Enter the following:

     ucc pkg import sound ..\Sounds\JBVoiceSomething SoundsDirectory

   So, for example:

     ucc pkg import sound ..\Sounds\JBVoiceZeus C:\temp\annzeus

   Omit the "Jailbreak" part, because that will be defined as the group in the package!

2.2.2  On Linux or Mac OS X

1. Make sure your sounds are in an easily accessible folder on your hard drive. (I opt for /tmp/annzeus/Jailbreak, in my case.)
2. Open up a terminal of your choice, be it the Mac terminal, XTerm, Konsole or whatever else.
3. Switch to your UT2004 System folder using cd /path/to/ut2004/System, e.g. /usr/local/games/ut2004/System.

4. Enter the following:

     ./ucc-bin pkg import sound ../Sounds/JBVoiceSomething SoundsDirectory

   So, for example:

     ./ucc-bin pkg import sound ../Sounds/JBVoiceZeus /tmp/annzeus

   Omit the "Jailbreak" part, because that will be defined as the group in the package!

   Also note that Linux users with 64-bit processors use ./ucc-bin-linux-amd64 and Mac OS X users utilise ./ucc-bin-macosx instead of ./ucc-bin, as that binary is compiled and optimised for Linux on 32-bit architecture processors!

Congratulations, you have created your sound package. Now, it is time to code a bit. (Okay, not real coding in UnrealScript, but it also involves the keyboard and a text editor – and you are telling the game what you want it to do.)

3  Writing the definitions

First, open up a text editor of your choice. I don't care if it's Notepad, Emacs, Vi, Joe, or whatnot, just make sure it is a plain text editor so that you don't get unwanted formatting. Save the file in the UT2004 System directory, naming it just after your sound package, but with the .int ending. Input this:

[Public]
Object=(Name=*SoundPackageName*,Class=Class,MetaClass=Jailbreak.JBVoice,Description="*Name of your announcer*")

[Settings]
Volume=2.0
Pause=-0.150

[Macros]
LastMan="LastMan"
LastSecondSave="LastSecondSave"
TeamRed="(red: TeamSelf) (blue: TeamEnemy) (spectator: TeamRed)"
TeamBlue="(red: TeamEnemy) (blue: TeamSelf) (spectator: TeamBlue)"
TeamCapturedRed="$TeamRed Captured"
TeamCapturedBlue="$TeamBlue Captured"
TeamCapturedBoth="Tied"
TeamReleasedRed="$TeamRed Released"
TeamReleasedBlue="$TeamBlue Released"
ArenaWarning="ArenaWarning"
ArenaEndTimeout="ArenaEndLoser"
ArenaEndWinner="ArenaEndWinner"
ArenaEndLoser="ArenaEndLoser"
GameStart="GameStart"
GameOverWinnerRed="(red: GameOverWinner) (blue: GameOverLoser) (spectator: $TeamRed GameOverTeam)"
GameOverWinnerBlue="(red: GameOverLoser) (blue: GameOverWinner) (spectator: $TeamBlue GameOverTeam)"
AddonLlamaStart="LlamaStart"
AddonLlamaDisconnect="LlamaDisconnect"
AddonLlamaFragged="LlamaFragged"

Replace *SoundPackageName* with the name of your announcer sound package, e.g. "JBVoiceZeus". Also, replace *Name of your announcer* with a text that you want to show up in the Jailbreak HUD menu (where you configure the Jailbreak announcer, after all).

You might want to know what that Pause in the [Settings] section means. Jailbreak, instead of having to make sounds for everything, can sequentially combine files, and the Pause setting specifies how much pause to insert between the samples (or, for negative values, how much to overlap the samples – that comes in handy when using heavy reverb, for instance). The [Macros] section defines which samples to play in which order for a number of pre-defined events (or "macros"). See JBSpeechClient for more information on this topic.

That's it! Now, you can go listen to what you have been able to do!

4  List of Jailbreak sounds

Tip: you can let Jailbreak select from multiple sounds with the same content if you call them FileName_1.wav, FileName_2.wav, etc. This makes announcements less monotonous after a while.

Note: This list is made to comply with the .int file created in Section 3. You may experiment with both, but don't come crying after me if it doesn't work!