---------------------- GTA Wave - Version 4.0 2 June 2002 ---------------------- by Adrian Grucza gtawave@hotmail.com GTA Wave is freeware -------------------- WHAT IS GTA WAVE? ======================================================================== GTA Wave is a program that lets you listen to, modify, and save sounds from the game "Grand Theft Auto" and its sequels, "GTA2" and "Grand Theft Auto III". ********************************************************************** PLEASE NOTE: GTA Wave 4.0 cannot modify GTA3 sounds - it can only play and export them. ********************************************************************** INSTALLING GTA WAVE VERSION 4.0 ======================================================================== If you have an earlier version of GTA Wave, it is recommended that you uninstall it before installing version 4.0. To uninstall it, open the Control Panel and choose Add/Remove Programs. Please make sure you complete the Backup Wizard(s) that appear when you first run GTA Wave, even if you have already made backups. Read the next section for more information. New features in version 4.0 are listed at the end of this file. RUNNING GTA WAVE ======================================================================== To run the program, click on GTA Wave, under Programs in the Start menu. The first time you run GTA Wave 4.0, the GTA Backup Wizard and/or the GTA2 Backup Wizard will appear. You should complete these Wizards even if you have already made backups of the GTA/GTA2 sound files. It enables you to restore the original sounds individually or all at once. There is no Backup Wizard for GTA3 since editing GTA3 sounds is unsupported in GTA Wave 4.0. HOW TO USE GTA WAVE ======================================================================== Opening a GTA sound file ------------------------ Click the Open button (or click Open in the File menu). To open a GTA sound file, navigate to the folder where GTA is installed, look in the GTADATA\AUDIO folder, and open one of the SDT files. To open a GTA2 sound file, navigate to the folder where GTA2 is installed, look in the DATA\AUDIO folder, and open one of the SDT files. To open a GTA3 sound file, navigate to the folder where GTA3 is installed, look in the AUDIO folder, and open the SFX.SDT file. Playing a sound --------------- If Auto Play is switched on, then sounds are played when clicked. Auto Play can be turned on by pressing the toolbar button with a picture of a cassette. Sounds can also be played by clicking Play or Play Loop from either the Sound menu, the right-click popup menu, or the toolbar. Clicking Play will play the sound once; clicking Play Loop will play the looping part of the sound repeatedly (see Changing the loop start/end points, below). Editing a sound --------------- Editing a sound opens it in either your default Wave File editor (usually Sound Recorder) or an editor of your choice. You can specify which editor to use in the Options dialog box (see Options, below). When you have finished editing the sound, close the editor and you will be asked if you want to keep the changes. Clearing sounds --------------- Clearing a sound reduces its size to zero. It does not remove the sound from the list, so you can still modify the sound later. You can clear multiple sounds at once by selecting more than one. Changing pitch -------------- Changing the pitch of a sound just changes its sample rate. The actual sound data does not change. You can change the pitch of multiple sounds by selecting more than one. For some sounds, changing the sample rate has no effect on that sound in the game. For example, car engines and the GTA radio vocals will not sound any different. This is because for these sounds, the game disregards the sample rate in the file and uses its own sample rate. In this case you must use a sound editor to change the pitch. In Sound Recorder this is done by choosing Increase Speed or Decrease Speed. Changing pitch variation (GTA2 only) ------------------------------------ Many sounds, such as car collisions, bullets hitting objects, and footsteps are all played at slightly different pitches during the game. In GTA, the extent to which the pitches vary is hard-coded into the program itself. In GTA2, this information is included in the sound files, so you can control the pitch variation range of each sound. The pitch variation range is specified by a ± (plus or minus) value, in Hz. The playback pitch could be anywhere within the range defined by the sample rate of the sound and this ± value. For example, a 22,050 Hz ± 1,000 Hz sound could be played back at a sample rate anywhere between 21,050 Hz and 23,050 Hz. If the Random Pitch Variation option is turned on (look in the Play menu or on the toolbar), then GTA Wave will playback sounds at a random pitch within the pitch variation range. Changing loop start/end points (GTA2 only) ---------------------------------------- In GTA sound files, looping sounds are always played from start to finish repeatedly. With GTA2 sounds, you can specify the start and end points for looping. For example, the electrocution sound starts out with a loud electrical buzz, which turns into a softer sizzling sound. Only the latter sizzling part of the sound is looped, so as not to repeat the loud buzz every time the sound loops. When GTA/GTA2 plays a looping sound, it plays from the start of the sound until it reaches the loop end point, then plays the sound data between the loop start and end points repeatedly. The loop start and end points are specified by numbers (measured in bytes from the start of the sound) which represent the start and end points of the looping section. For example, the electrocution sound is 56,576 bytes long, has a loop start point of 30,206 bytes, and a loop end point at the end of the sound. When a person is electrocuted, the first 30,206 bytes will play first, followed by the remaining 26,370 bytes looping repeatedly. The Play and Play Loop commands allow you to play the sound through once, or play just the looping part of the sound repeatedly. Importing a sound ----------------- You can only import a sound if its sampling size (8-bit/16-bit) and number of channels (mono/stereo) match those of the sound you are importing into. In GTA, all the sounds are in 8-bit mono format, except for those in LEVEL000. The sounds in this file are 16-bit, the first three being stereo. In GTA2, all the sounds are in 16-bit mono format, except the cop radio sounds, which are 8-bit. The sounds in FSTYLE come in pairs, one ending in 'L' and the other in 'R'. In the game, the two sounds are played simultaneously through the left and the right speakers respectively. A quick way to import a sound is to drag the file onto the sound you want to replace, from an Explorer window or the desktop. Exporting a sound ----------------- You can export sounds as Wave Files. A quick way to export a sound is to drag it into an Explorer window or onto the desktop with the mouse. You can export multiple sounds by selecting more than one and dragging them. Restoring sounds ---------------- Once you have completed the appropriate Backup Wizard, you can restore the original GTA or GTA2 sounds individually by choosing Restore. You can restore multiple sounds by selecting more than one. To restore all the sounds in the current file, choose Restore All. Options ------- You can change the GTA Wave options by choosing Options from the Edit menu. Here you can change which action a double click performs, your sound backup folders, the GTA/GTA2 program files, and which sound editor to use. You should not need to change the backup folder entries. If one of them is empty, run the appropriate Backup Wizard from the File menu. TIPS ======================================================================== GTA2 sound files ---------------- The four SDT files in GTA2 contain the following sounds: FSTYLE.SDT - menu sounds WIL.SDT - area 1 sounds STE.SDT - area 2 sounds BIL.SDT - area 3 sounds Extra GTA2 sounds ----------------- In GTA2, there are extra vocal sounds in WAV format inside the DATA/AUDIO/VOCALS folder. These WAV files can be opened and modified in any sound editor, but not from within GTA Wave. Therefore, GTA Wave doesn't backup these sounds, so it's up to you to do so if you wish to restore them later. Sorting the sound list ---------------------- You can change the order in which GTA Wave displays the sounds by clicking on the column headers. To sort the list in ascending order, click on the category name you want to sort by. For descending order, click again. Playing sounds -------------- You can control how GTA Wave plays sounds using the Play menu or the corresponding toolbar buttons. For example, click on the AutoPlay button to play a sound whenever it is clicked. File size limits ---------------- Grand Theft Auto will exit with an error if the size of one of the LEVEL???.RAW files exceeds 1 MB (1,048,576 bytes). In GTA2, RAW files will not load if they exceed 6,100,000 bytes. You can keep an eye on this file size and how much it is under/over the limit by looking at the status bar. If you are over the limit, first sort the sound list in order of descending size, by clicking on the Size column header twice. There are two things you can then do: * Look for large sounds which you don't mind clearing. Some sounds are rarely or never heard in the game. * Reduce the sample rate of large sounds. This is done with your sound editor (not with the Pitch command), and reduces the quality of the sound. In Sound Recorder, this is done by choosing Properties from the File menu, and clicking Convert Now. Make sure you only change the sample rate, and not the sampling size (8-bit/16-bit) or the number of channels (mono/stereo). Using Sound Recorder -------------------- If your default Wave File editor is Sound Recorder, you may notice that it adds noise to the end of some sounds when you edit them. This is not a bug in GTA Wave. You will have to trim off the noise manually, import the sound directly into GTA Wave, or specify an alternative editor in the Options dialog box (see Options, above). UNINSTALLING GTA WAVE ======================================================================== Open the Control Panel, go to Add/Remove Programs, select GTA Wave, and click Add/Remove. CHANGES IN VERSION 4.0 ======================================================================== * GTA3 support (modification of sounds is unsupported) CHANGES IN VERSION 3.0 ======================================================================== * GTA2 support * Change pitch variation (GTA2 only) * Change loop start/end points (GTA2 only) * Random pitch variation (GTA2 only) * External editor support * Added "Scale pitch variation range(s)" option to the Change Pitch dialog box (GTA2 only) * Removed Loop from the Play menu and added Play Loop to the Sound menu * Added another GTA Wave URL in the About box * Changed the Backup Wizard picture * Changed the GTA Wave icon CHANGES IN VERSION 2.01 ======================================================================== * Fixed a bug which crashed the program when trying to open the Options dialog box once a double-click action other than Open Sound was chosen * Created a Help menu with an item to view the ReadMe.txt file * Moved the About box from the File menu to the Help menu * Changed the GTA Wave URL in the About box * Changed the background colour of the Backup Wizard picture to blue instead of the current desktop colour CHANGES IN VERSION 2.0 ======================================================================== * New Explorer style interface: sound descriptions from DMA Design and sound information shown sound list sorting drag and drop importing/exporting right-click pop-up menu multiple selections show/hide toolbar sizable window Select All/Invert Selection * Backup Wizard * Restore original sounds * Change pitch (sample rate) * Run GTA from within GTA Wave * Options: double click behaviour file locations * Close current file * Stop playing current sound * Preferences saved to disk: last open/import/export folder options show/hide toolbar sound playing settings window position and size ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please send any comments, suggestions or bugs to: gtawave@hotmail.com