No More Room in Hell: How to Create a Custom Voice Set

Learn how to create a custom survivor voice set!

Introduction

This guide is going to cover the basics of creating a custom voice set to use in game. Using a custom voice set is a fun way to make the game a bit more personal and if other people are using the same voice set as you they can hear the same voice lines!

To start you are going to need some software:

Audio editing software such as Audacity[www.audacityteam.org]
A text editing software that is not Word or similar document editing software. Recommended is Notepad++[notepad-plus-plus.org] or Visual Studio Code[code.visualstudio.com]

Folder Structure

Start by navigating to the nmrih folder that is inside the nmrih folder in steamapps (refer to image below).

Open, or create if it doesn’t exist, the custom folder.

Now create a folder that will serve as the root folder for you mod.

DO NOT USE SPACES OR SPECIAL CHARACTERS BESIDES AN UNDERSCORE OR HYPHEN IN THE NAME

From here refer to the image on what other folders you need to create.

Voice Sets Script

Each voice in NMRiH needs a Voice Sets Script. This file tells the game what your voice sets name is and which soundscript to use.

Example script you can download[pastebin.com]

As an example, if I was making one for myself it would look like

"Waz"
{
    "name"		"Waz"
    "script"	"scripts/voice_soundscripts/workshop/voice_set_waz.txt"
    "gender"	"m"
}

Save this as charactername.txt in the voice_sets folder.

Voice Soundscript File

The voice soundscript file contains all the entries for what sounds to play when something happens in game. Getting hurt, checking ammo, taunting, etc.

This is the default voice soundscript file[pastebin.com], it is recommended you start with it and update for your voice set.

It is also recommended you read up on how soundscripts work in Source. You can find an entire page on documentation here

As an example this is what Dysphie’s Bill voice soundscript looks like.[pastebin.com]

Be aware that for each of them that you need to replace the word “Default” with your characters name.

For example:

"Death.Default"
{
    "channel"	"CHAN_VOICE"
    "volume"	"1.0"
    "pitch"		"PITCH_NORM"
    "soundlevel"	"SNDLVL_TALKING"
 
    "rndwave"
    {
        "wave"		"player/pain/pain1.wav"
        "wave"		"player/pain/pain2.wav"
        "wave"		"player/pain/pain3.wav"
    }
}

becomes

"Death.Waz"
{
    "channel"	"CHAN_VOICE"
    "volume"	"1.0"
    "pitch"		"PITCH_NORM"
    "soundlevel"	"SNDLVL_TALKING"
 
    "rndwave"
    {
        "wave"		"player/pain/pain1.wav"
        "wave"		"player/pain/pain2.wav"
        "wave"		"player/pain/pain3.wav"
    }
}

Audio Recording

For recording audio Audacity is recommended since it’s free and open source and has been around for years. It’s also very easy to use.

Here are the settings you should use for recording VO for NMRiH:

Mono, it’s half the file size and spatial audio isn’t needed for VO. If you do use stero you will need to prefix the file path with a ). You can read more about it here
Project Rate of 44100 Hz
Wav or MP3, Wav is uncompressed and MP3 is compressed. We use Wav for VO normally

Press the big red record button to start recording and press stop when you are done. Trim it up and apply any effects you want then click File -> Export -> Export as WAV

Navigate to where you want to save it and make sure it says Signed 16-bit PCM at the bottom

Add metatags if you want then click Ok.

Go into your voice soundscript file then and update the file location for your voice lines. The soundscript does assume all audio beings in the sound folder so you only need to add folders following that.

As an example if I was adding a death sound I would put it in “D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\nmrih\nmrih\custom\waz\sound\waz” and it would be called “waz_death01.wav”

My soundscript file entry for it would be

"Death.Waz"
{
    "channel"	"CHAN_VOICE"
    "volume"	"1.0"
    "pitch"		"PITCH_NORM"
    "soundlevel"	"SNDLVL_TALKING"

    "rndwave"
    {
        "wave"		"waz/waz_death01.wav"
    }
}

Testing

It is recommended that as you are working on this that you test it from time to time. You can easily test it by starting up the game and selecting your voice from the normal drop-down list. If the name is missing that means you most likely have a typo in your scripts. Make sure you are not missing any quotes or brackets.

Uploading to the Workshop

Once you are done and ready to distribute it on the Steam Workshop you need to convert it to what is known as a VPK.

To do this open in file explorer one window to your NMRiH custom folder and another to “steamapps\common\nmrih\bin” and sort the bin folder by type.

In the NMRiH custom folder click and drag your mod folder onto the vpk.exe in the bin folder. This will then create a vpk named your mods name in your custom folder.

Launch No More Room in Hell and on the main menu click Add-Ons then click Workshop publisher and choose Upload New Add-On

Fill out the form and click browse for the content path and the VPK you just created for it along with a preview image that will be used as the thumbnail. Then click the I agree and publish it!

You can find the items you have published by going to the workshop and on the right-hand side look for the drop-down Files You’ve Posted

On your workshop page you can update the title, description, add/remove images and videos, add links to your social media and change the visibility of the add-on.

It is recommended that you first publish as Private or Friends Only to test and make sure the add-on works. You can do this by moving your original files out of the custom folder (including the vpk) and subscribing to your workshop item then playing the game.

Thanks to Wazanator and Felis for his great tutorial on how to create a custom voice set, all credit to his effort. you can also read the original guide from Steam Community. enjoy the game.

No More Room in Hell: How to Create a Custom Voice Set

Introduction

Folder Structure

Voice Soundscript File

Audio Recording

Uploading to the Workshop

Related Posts:

About Robins Chew

Leave a Comment Cancel reply