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Sound Overhaul Mod 2013 BETA 0.1 (Archive version)
                 by Triangulum
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             youtube.com/user/nomestic
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          Beta 0.1 Released May 3, 2013
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 Do not edit/post this mod without my permission.
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Contents:
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I. 	Some background on this mod

II.	Installation instructions

III.	List of sounds replaced by this mod

IV.	Known issues

V. 	Future versions

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I.	Some background on this mod
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When I started downloading mods for San Andreas, I was specifically interested in finding replacements for gunshot sounds. In my opinion, out of all of the game sounds in San Andreas, the gunshots seemed by far the least representative of their real-world counterparts. They more closely resembled short clicks or thumps that were incredibly bass-heavy, and low quality aside, they were not even consistent with each other. For example, the M4/AK and the Country Rifle/Sniper Rifle should have sounded almost the same due to the similarities in caliber type, barrel length, and action/firing mechanism, but the original sounds were very different. The same went with pistols and machine pistols such as the TEC-9, which sounded too different from each other.

Some of the replacements I found for gunshot sounds were significant improvements from the originals, but these were mostly sound effects converted from other games or from Hollywood movies, and I was more interested in a sound mod that could utilize high quality recorded firearm sounds that had grit. These gun sound mods also carried carried a number of technical issues, including muffled audio, sounds that abruptly end without fully fading out, background noise, high-pitched clicks, inconsistent volume, and incorrectly timed reloading sounds. 

However, the most severe problem with these sound mods was that they would result in various types of audio glitches with other game sounds. I found that using modified gun sounds was most closely associated with the "rain bug", where various other game sounds are substituted in place of the sound normally used for rain. This same type of bug would also occur with all other types of sound mods (cars, aircraft, sirens, etc.), each mod usually resulting in a different set of other game sounds sounds becoming bugged in the same way.

Upon closer examination of
 the individual audio files of various gun sound mods, I noticed that every one of them was several times longer than the original audio files, often with a higher sampling rate as well. The original gunshot sounds ranged from 0.1 to 0.2 seconds in length and had sampling rates of 22050Hz, while many of the modified sounds from other modders were more than one second in duration and had sampling rates of 44100Hz. After experimenting by shortening these to their original duration and sampling rate, they worked fine in gameplay without any bugs. It became apparent that almost every one of these modified sounds was not even properly edited to fit within the limits of the game engine.

In another experiment, I tried using silent 0.01 second audio files to replace all other audio files in the same sound bank as weapons (bank 137). These sounds include various clanging, punching, and swinging sounds used for melee weapons (also some of the sounds heard in the rain bug). The purpose of this experiment was to see if other reduced-size sounds could compensate for some of the long duration sounds used in other gun sound mods, allowing for the rain bug to be eliminated while still using higher quality gun sounds. It worked, showing that not individual sounds, but rather the sound banks (the folders) need to be kept at either their original size or lower to prevent audio glitches.

The only change I made to this compensation method was using shortened original game audio instead of completely silent audio, which still allowed for gun sounds to be extended by 2-4x their original length, and for their sampling rate to be raised from 22050Hz to 32000Hz without causing any bugs. This method of shortening other sounds to extend others can work with any sound bank, but it applies best to the weapon sound bank (bank 137) because it contains the most sounds (89), many of which have the potential to be reduced in size without any noticable difference in gameplay.

I spent quite a while converting gun sounds in this bug-free format, intitially converting sounds from other games (since this was easier), and later from combining various sounds from recordings of firearms. I released 8 succesive official versions of my gun sound mod, before switching my focus to modifying other game sounds. I decided to pursue modding additional game sounds after searching for replacements for vehicle sounds from other modders, and observing some of the same issues I experienced with the gun sound mods I initially used. It seemed that the majority of sound mods for SA were just using poorly edited audio that often didn't fit within the constraints of the game engine.

I found that converting audio for aircraft, trains, and various other sounds (sirens, tire screeching, footsteps, etc.) was quite easy due to the already high original durations, allowing for more flexibility thus rendering the compensation method unnecessary in these cases. Car/bike sounds were particularily challenging to convert, and I'm still working on improving them as a result. These sounds are divided into five separate audio files: Idle engine, first gear, accelerate, final gear, and deccelerate. Idle engine and first gear sounds are the only sounds used for AI vehicles, and they're looping sounds, so they require special attention to make sure that they represent consistent engine hums without any noticable "skipping". The acceleration and decceleration sounds are easy to convert, but the final gear sound is by far the most challenging. It uses a different type of loop where only the second half of the sound is the part that loops. Getting this sound to work properly requires extensive testing to make sure there are no "clicks" during the loop. These "clicks" are just sudden spikes in the waveform, resulting from not connecting in the same location when repeated. The only problem with the final gear sound is that the exact location where the loop starts again is unclear, since it loops again somewhere in the middle of the sound.

This mod is a work in progress (especially with car/bike sounds), and you can keep updated on various improvements on my youtube channel at youtube.com/user/nomestic.


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II.	Installation Instructions
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You must replace all three files in the GTA San Andreas/audio folder, as SFX/GENRL and SFX/FEET are both linked to CONFIG/BankLkup.dat. The rest of the archives in the SFX folder (including PAIN_A, SCRIPT, etc.) must also be the defaults.

This mod also utilizes Ryosuke's Weapon Limit Adjuster script to allow for the re-arrangement of weapon sound IDs for more consistent and realistic audio. It allows for the suppressed pistol to have it's own reverberation sound, for SMGs to have the same reverberation as pistols, and for pitch to be changed on gunshots, so that the M4 and AK can sound different.

This mod requires ASI Loader (can be downloaded here: http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=8321 ). When ASI loader is installed, copy the weaponlimit, weapons, and weaponsound files into your main GTA San Andreas directory.


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III.	List of sounds replaced by this mod
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GENRL:
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Gunshots
Reloading
Cars
Bikes
Planes
Helicopters
Train
Explosion
Fire
Supersonic bullet cracks/impacts
Siren
Car crashes
Garage door
Tire skid
Rain
Interface
Car doors
Car start

FEET:
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Concrete footsteps
Gravel footsteps
Grass footsteps
Metal footsteps


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IV.	Known issues
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***For any issues that are not listed here, please report them to me by sending me a message on YouTube (youtube.com/user/nomestic) so that I can look into fixing them for the next release. Thanks!***


1. The game sounds become distorted sometimes.
This occurs with the original sounds too, and it is an issue with how the game engine renders sound. Whenever the source of a sound moves with respect to the position of your camera view, it will become pitch shifted. This effect can be easily heard with moving your view around while aiming and shooting your weapon, or when another AI character (such as a cop or gang member) is shooting while moving around. The pitch shift effect is also very noticable with camera movement near emergency vehicle sirens. Currently, there is no solution.

2. The fire extinguisher and/or spray can has no sound.
This is not due to any audio modification, but is a bug resulting from the weaponlimit.asi mod, which enables more realistic audio for some guns through customization of sound IDs. Currently, there is no solution or alternate version of this script. You can remove the .asi script to fix this bug, but it will cause some weapons to use audio files that they are not intended to.

3. The gun sound durations are shorter in interiors.
When not in an interior, each gun sound plays a main shot sound and a reverberation sound. The reverberation sound adds to the duration of the main shot sound, and can be heard from longer distances, but it does not play when in interiors.

4. Some car engines don't sound right.
GTA SA uses a lot of shared audio for types of vehicles that normally shouldn't be grouped together. This didn't really matter much for the original sounds since none of them accurately represented their real-world counterparts anyway, but it becomes an unavoidable problem when trying to produce a single shared realistic sound for both a sedan and a sports car.

5. Some sounds are too quiet.
Certain sounds such as the 9mm pistol reload (slide rack) and the RPG/missile appear to have volume limits, and can't be made any louder during gameplay.

6. The minigun sounds different from the rest of the gun sounds.
Unlike other gun sounds, the minigun sound is rendered as a loop (and limited to only around 0.2-0.3 seconds long), and it is also rendered without any far shot/reverberation sound. Currently, there is no solution to this.


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V.	Future versions
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***I do take requests for individual custom sounds, and I'll be happy to include them as alternates. I'm more famililar with gun sounds than anything else, so I'll always be able to convert those. If you have a specific request, let me know and send me a message: youtube.com/user/nomestic.***


Here are some changes/additions I plan to make for future versions:

1. Include alternate sounds for suppressed weapons.

2. Improve final gear sounds on cars (to ensure a correct loop on the final gear sound, I mixed in the original sound at around 25% volume for some cars. For future versions, I'll plan on not using any of the original sound). 

3. Include replacements for pedestrian pain/screaming sounds.

4. Include replacements for the 5 vehicle sounds not covered in the beta version (Faggio, Combine Harvester, Baggage, Kart, Sweeper).

5. Include alternate sounds for different types of jet aircraft (there is only one type of jet sound used for the Hydra, AT400, Shamal, Andromada)

6. Include alternate siren sounds.

