EA Sports WRC Better Crowd Atmosphere Audio 2024-05-06

[redsox78]

redsox78 submitted a new resource:

Better Crowd Atmosphere Audio - crowds

This is my first attempt to fix the games crowd audio. I like to use the external chase camera and I think crowd audio is far too quite and passive; people at the side of the track just mumbling!

To use this mod place the file into your .pak's folder, as with other mods. As a result you should hear a much more lively crowd! More cheering and horns like real WRC.

What did I do? With some help from Mengodriom I figured out how to extra the crowd audio. What I found when looking at the game...

Read more about this resource...

 

[redsox78]

redsox78 updated Better Crowd Atmosphere Audio with a new update entry:

Update coming

Update coming shortly, it'll be more dramatic, and without audio files that end in silence...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[redsox78]

redsox78 updated Better Crowd Atmosphere Audio with a new update entry:

Verison 1.0

This is a better version; more energetic crowds, no dead space and less sudden cut off. Just place the 'crowds_P.pak' file into your paks folder, like other mods.

Beyond experimenting with having a smaller range of crowd sounds that repeat, or creating my own audio to use (I'll post instructions of how I did this incase someone can make better sounds), this is about as good a version I can make.

Also, I think this sounds best if you use the TV balance dynamic range option (regardless of...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[redsox78]

If someone wants to try to do this yourself this is how, depending on if you want to use the included files, tweak them, or use your own (those bits are beyond me).

USING EXISITNG FILES (no audio file editing)
1. Using FModel (instructions elsewhere) extract the folder \WRC\Content\WwiseAudio\Windows
2. This will create a bunch of files. The crowd sounds are in crowds.bnk which is the only file you need.
3. Download BNKEditor (https://github.com/marieismywaifu/BNKEditor)
4. Use BNKEditor to open the .bnk file and extract the '.wem' files. There will be 250 files.
5. Download WWiseUnpacker (https://github.com/Vextil/Wwise-Unpacker)
6. Use WWiseUnpacker to convert all the '.wem' files to .ogg or .mp3 files.
7. Use any audio programme to access all the .ogg files. You'll find that all the files are in a random order, but are in sets of length, in groups of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 seconds (and a single 9 second file)
8. Figure out which files you want to swap. I found the boring files that were 4,5,6,7 seconds (assuming anything shorter was not a problem). The files I changed were
23522713
257384242
271649947
276351989
276514589
292052490
439051580
484625896
659111151
715072280
725056092
787618059
915760322
1022629896
(It might not be necessary to do all these, but it has worked for my mod).
9. Once you have found the better audio files, rather than mess around with converting, just use BNKEditor to extract other files that sound better, rename them to the ones you want to swap, and re-import them into the .bnk file, overwriting the dull files with the better ones. I have assumed you must use the same number of file, I have NOT tried using a different numbered file. YMMV!
10. Follow instructions elsewhere for how to make a modded .pak file using UnrealPak

OR...
EDITING THE FILES VERSION...
as above but jump to step 9
9. Use Wwise to edit the file you want to use (it will need to be in .wav format), using Wwise conversion to make the file into a '.wem file, then import the file into the .bnk again using BNKEditor.

The only editing I did is to try to increase the volume of existing files and that didn't cause any problems.

 

[Alberto Zanot]

Hi does this work with cockpit camera as well? thanks

 

[redsox78]

Hi does this work with cockpit camera as well? thanks

They are universal crowd sounds, so it should work, it depends how the developers have modelled the audio from the cockpit, but there is only one source of crowd in the game, so if you could hear the crowd in the cockpit in the past, you'll hear the new version now.

 

[skylinegtr34]

you have try to modified co-driver voice? yu say what is the file?

 

[Lebroncesto]

You know what it would be nice? Change the car sound from the outside view to onboard view. The engine and others car sounds ar really nice when the view is from capot or 3th person. It would be nice to have the same sound from the cockpit view.

 

[cacaracing]

The game complains I have corrupt files when I add the .pak to the pak folder unfortunately

 

[DanJuve2908]

Hi there - found this through Mengodriom's mod thread. I'm trying to do a similar file replacement but replace the soundtracks with the ones from DR2.0.

Do you know if following a similar process to what you did will work there? I'm not a modder in the slightest and have been struggling in Wwise before coming to look for help lol

 

[redsox78]

Hi there - found this through Mengodriom's mod thread. I'm trying to do a similar file replacement but replace the soundtracks with the ones from DR2.0.

Do you know if following a similar process to what you did will work there? I'm not a modder in the slightest and have been struggling in Wwise before coming to look for help lol

I actually think the DR 2.0 crow sounds are in WRC. But the game is just not triggering them, if you listen to them all there are very similar sounds, if not the same files.

But yes, if you can export files into the wwise format and give them the right name, and overwrite the files in the current .pak it will work. Getting files converted in Wwise is a bit tricky, but there is a good guide here:

 

[redsox78]

Update coming soon, the devs have finally fixed the crowd sound problem, but they are still using too many 'boring' sounds, so I need to redo the mod, bringing more variation back. If we can get past some of the (oddly dull) crowd sounds we can get something good. Hopefully I'll sort the new version ASAP!

 

[redsox78]

redsox78 updated Better Crowd Atmosphere Audio with a new update entry:

Final Version, three options

This is my final effort.

Since EA updated the Crowd sound volumes in 1.8 my first version was too loud (and too similar sounds; I used very loud sounds to be able to hear them).

This new version has a wider range of sounds, but also sounds more like a rally crowd (some of the EA ones even after they have improved it are a loop of a few people shouting and they still use the mumbling crowd). Now you'll hear shouts, whistles, some horns!

The problems with this are two things.

1. It is...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Doohie]

I tried this and it now sounds nice over the entire stage where there is public....Well done.
However...I would rather hear a lot more horns instead of people shouting during the ride.
Now a short stage is like riding in a cycling race, you know what I mean.
That's why I prefer horns.

 

[redsox78]

I agree totally!! Sadly, the sounds the game has built in don’t mix in many horns, there are a few horn only sounds, but they don’t have many where they mix with the crowd, and where they do it’s after a couple of seconds which is too late. Also, figuring out which sounds take priority is hard; if it was possible to figure out the frequency of the key crowd sounds, it would be possible to mix in horns only.

One thing is how much layering is going on, so I have two things to try (which I’m going to try this week):

1. What happens if you swap some of the horns only sounds with crowd? Will it still layer in crowd?
2. What happens if ALL crowd sound files are increased in volume, but with less large crowd sounds? I’ve never tried that, but that might be the best outcome as I do think it is layering stuff.

So I’ll try those two things, but without new sounds, or know what exactly plays when, I’ll have probably reached the limit of what o can figure out

 

[redsox78]

For anyone interested I thought I'd summarise where I am with the understanding of the 'crowds'bnk' which is the package I am editing. This is if anyone else wants to try.
- There are 253 different sounds in that .bnk file. Ranging from 1 to 8 seconds. There are fewer 6,7 and 8 seconds ones.
- The problem with the game (based on my first version) was that the crowd sounds were too low, so I swapped low sounds for louder ones and increased the volume of those I swapped in (I did this by converting the .wem files to .wav with a +10 db increase using foobar, then converting back to .wem with wwise).
- the game was then patched to make the crowd more obvious which made my first version too much.
- but since the most recent patch while you can hear more sounds, the game still uses far too may of the dull 'mumbling' crowd sounds (these tend to crop up in the 2,3 and most of all 5 seconds files). I have found that changing these are key. I have figured out that these files are:
81768998
9600544
138878941
235227713
257384242
271649947
276351989
276514589
292052490
343506289
439051580
484625896
655949873
659111151
715072280
725056092
767029275
787618059
915760322
1022629896
1072214015
- so you swap out that list with better more lively sounds (that have the same .wem file number).

But to get more horns, it's just a case of experimenting with different swaps from other sounds. Until my latest verision ,the range of what I have used has been too limited, but I am experimenting with expanding it.

Finally, I do think volume increases are still necessary, I think about 6-8db should work.

The devs could definitely have excellent crowd audio; they have great sounds in the files, they just need to make sure the dull ones are not triggering. But I'll keep working on the mod version!

 

[redsox78]

redsox78 updated Better Crowd Atmosphere Audio with a new update entry:

Now with more horn ;)

Folks!

I think I have finally cracked it. THIS is the version to get.

After useful comments this now sounds more like WRC than a cycling race

What that means is fewer shouts, more horns. There are three versions, one with some horns, one with more, and one with most. I find it hard to pick, based on the way the game triggers (I am probably between preferring 'some' and 'more' but YMMV)

Enjoy!!

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[redsox78]

redsox78 updated Better Crowd Atmosphere Audio with a new update entry:

Now with more horn ;)



Read the rest of this update entry...

This really is the best I can do, I am really pleased with this version

 

[Doohie]

Okay...
I have now tested this for about 30 minutes and it is slightly better, but the cheering masses of people have the upper hand...Can't hear any difference between other versions for the moment.

* Without the mod we don't hear anything when whe drive by people.
* With the mod we can hear people in places where we drive bye.
What was added or changed here to get this?
* It would be perfect if we could only hear airhorns while driving by.

Still, I appreciate it... thanks for the time you put into this...Will test it further

 

[redsox78]

IMHO I’m not sure it’s realistic to ONLY hear horns, but that’s very easily done. I just think that’s unrealistic, I think you’ll only ever hear airhorns instead of any other crowd sounds. I prefer the combination.

As for “what was added or changed go get this?” As I said in the thread, a series of calmer sound files were swapped for other files in the games ‘crowd’ sound bank. No audio files have been made, just ones built into the game (and not triggering) swapped around, to make the better ones trigger.

It would be very easy as I said to only have airhorns (or maybe a mix of airhorns and cowbells), but I think the mix of horns and crowd is more realistic.

But, I’ll try an ‘airhorn’ only version, my guess is it’ll sound wrong, clipping horn sounds repeating, or far too over the top (each section of crowd would sound like massive groups with airhorns).

If someone is good at making .wav files what’s needed is
5x 2 seconds crowd sounds
5x 3 seconds crowd sounds
5x 4 seconds crowd sounds
5x 5 seconds crowd sounds
5x 6 seconds crowd sounds
2x 7 seconds crowd sounds
1x 8 seconds crowd sound
if someone made those wave files, I know how to make them into files that would go into the game. But, I have a full time job so I’m not making new .was files until I’m off in mid June