The Sounds panel lists every sound the open client carries, loose and inside its archives. You can play each one, see what plays it, and replace or tidy it up. Your changes go into the project, and Install puts them in the game.
Open it with the speaker icon on the rail, or View > Sounds. The first time, Studio reads through the client's sounds in the background, which takes a moment on a large client.
Finding a sound
Type in the search box to narrow the list, and pick a folder to see only that folder's sounds. Each row shows the file, its folder, its size and how long it plays. edited marks a sound the project already holds a changed copy of, and unsaved one you have changed but not saved yet.
Click a sound to open it. Below the list you see its format, where it comes from, and, on RF Online, the sound table rows that play it, so you know which monster, footstep or interface sound you are about to change. A sound keeps your changes while you look at others.
Listening
- Play plays the sound as you have edited it, and Stop stops it. Click the waveform to move the playhead; a playing sound carries on from there.
- Loop plays it round and round, which helps with music and ambience.
- Play the client's own switches to the original, to hear before and after.
- Preview volume sets how loud Studio plays it. It does not change the sound.
The upper waveform is the client's own sound and the lower one your edited version.
Changing a sound
- Trim the start and Trim the end cut seconds off either end.
- Fade in and Fade out ramp the sound up from silence and down to it.
- Gain makes it louder or quieter, in decibels.
- Normalize brings the loudest moment up to just under full volume, before the gain.
Each slider change is one step for Undo and Redo. Nothing is written until you choose Save.
Replace… swaps in your own WAV or MP3. Studio converts it to the original's rate and channels, so the game gets what it expects, and your edits start again on the new sound.
Export WAV… saves the sound as you have edited it as a WAV file, to work on in another editor and bring back with Replace….
Saving and putting it back
Save writes the sound into the project at the same place as the client's own, so Install copies it into the game. A sound that came from an archive needs that archive rebuilt; see Packs.
Studio saves sounds as WAV. Where the original was an MP3, as most RF Online sounds are, the saved file is a WAV with the same name and is several times larger.
Revert throws away the project's copy and goes back to the client's own sound. It is one step, so Undo can bring your version back until you save again.
Checking the project checks every sound the project replaces: one the game cannot read, one in a different format from the original, and one that clips or is silent.
Limits
- Studio does not play or edit OGG files.
- Only RF Online's sound table says what plays a sound. A sound with no row there may still be played by a map or a script, and no other game's tables are read.
- A WAV saved under an MP3's name has not yet been heard in a game client.