Audio in TweakDB

Description of how audio is linked in tweaks

Summary

Created: Feb 23 2025 by Zhincore Last documented update: Feb 23 2025 by Zhincore

Tweaks can contain CName fields related to audio, these CNames refer to entries defined in the cooked_metadata.audio_metadata file, entries there have a name field that's used in the tweaks, multiple entries can have the same name. Fields of these entries can be numbers, objects, lists, but most importantly CNames, those can refer to other entries in the file OR event names defined in eventsmetadata.json (and searchable in SoundDB).

This page is probably incomplete and only contains a dump of findings. If you find a discrepancy or know more, please edit it.

Vehicles

Vehicles have two audio fields, playerAudioResource - settings for player-driven vehicles, and trafficAudioResource - settings for NPC-driven vehicles. A vehicle tweak can have both, none, or just one of these defined. Their values refer to complex cooked_metadata structures, which define various settings including engine sounds, wheel sounds, bump sounds for each side of vehicle, sounds for detaching doors, etc. etc. Traffic audio resource is usually simpler than player one.

Weapons

Weapons have also two audio fields, audioName - probably the main audio settings, and audioWeaponConfiguration which seems to be base settings, usually in melee weapons, where audioName overwrites some of the base settings. The cooked_metadata entries they refer to contain separately settings for player and for NPCs, but also for body types and material types for bullet impacts etc. They can get deeply nested and even recursive infinitely, watch out for that when processing them programatically.

Additionaly, weapons can have audioSwitchName and audioSwitchValue, both of which are defined in eventsmetadata.json. This is used to tell the audio engine what weapon type this weapon is, so that maybe different sounds are played. For example Items.Preset_Burya_Default has audioSwitchName: w_pistol_type and audioSwitchValue: w_pistol_power, which means in the engine the switch w_pistol_type gets assigned the value w_pistol_power when playing the weapon's sounds.

Radios

Radios are defined in RadioStation.* tweaks, those contain displayName, icon and an index. That index refers to an item in radioStations array of cooked_metadata entry named radio_stations_config, that item then contains name of other entry within cooked_metadata, which then contains the tracks (event names) and blips (also event names).

Names of all radio tracks are defined in the radio_tracks_metadata entry of cooked_metadata, mapped by trackEventName.