SA [GTASA:DE] - Audio Modding Guide

[Havi]

 

 

Looking to modify Grand Theft Auto San Andreas: The Definitive Edition audio files?
This guide will walk you through the entire process from Start to Finish

Beginners Friendly!

 

Tools
These are all the tools you will need.

Unreal Engine 4
UModel (2.02MB)
Path Creator (220B)

 

Replacing Audio
Grand Theft Auto The Definitive Edition uses Unreal Engine 4.26.2
You can confirm this by going to AppData/Local/UnrealEngine. The game has to have ran once for it to show.
 

UModel
1. Download UModel and open up umodel_64.exe.
2. At Path to game files, click on the ... on the right and navigate to the San Andreas directory.

3. Enable Override game detected and put it on Unreal engine 4 following by Unreal engine 4.26.

4. At the middle-right Export-only types, make sure you have Sounds checkbox enabled since we will need this to export sounds.

5. Optional: You can leave UE3 package compression and Platform on default if you wish and press OK.

This is how it should look like once you've completed the steps above:

 

1. Click on Tools at the bottom-middle and select Options.

2. Optional: Change the Export to this folder path to any location you desire.
3. You can tweak and play around and set it to your preference or keep it as is and press OK.

This is how it should look like once you've completed the steps above:


UModel - Extracting
We are going to extract the Ah sh#t, here we go again dialogue audio file.

 

1. Navigate to Game/SanAndreas/Audio/SFX/SCRIPT/VO and search for S_000.uasset.
2. Right-click on S_000.uasset and click Export.
3. The exported sound file can be found at your export folder you set up earlier.

4. Grab your custom audio file and rename it exactly as the one we just extracted, so in this case S_000.
5. Make sure that your custom audio file has the .OGG format. You can use tools such as Convertio or Audacity to convert.

We need to check what Audio Class the game is using for the audio file we just extracted.
I will save you the time and provide a list of what Sound Classes are being used.

Sound files located within the SFX folder will have the Sound Class of SA_SFX.

SanAndreas/Audio/SFX = SA_SFX

Sound files located within the Streams folder will have the Sound Class of SA_Music.

SanAndreas/Audio/Streams = SA_Music

Our extracted sound file came from SFX so we are going to use SA_SFX as the Sound Class.
We are now going to create a Sound Class in Unreal Engine 4.26.2.

Unreal Engine 4.26.2

We now need to open up Unreal Engine. Make sure that you have the Engine version 4.26.2 installed.


1. Click on the Launch Unreal Engine 4.26.2 button.
2. Click on Games and then click the green Next button.

3. Select Blank and click the green Next button.
4. At Project Setting, make sure you set it to No Starter Content.

5. Select a location for your project to be saved and name your project. Name is something like GTADEMods.

6. Click the green Create Project button.

This is how it should look like:

 

We need to create a specific folder structure in our Unreal Engine project.
San Andreas their Sound Classes are located at Common/Audio.

1. At the bottom of Unreal Engine at Content Browser, drag and drop your custom .OGG file(s).
2. Now right-click and select New Folder and name it Common.
2. Inside the Common folder, you create a new folder called Audio.

Final path should look like: Content > Common > Audio inside your Content Browser.


3. Inside the Audio folder, right-click and select Sounds > Classes > Sound Class and name it SA_SFX.

 

4. Go back to the root folder of your project (you can also tap on Content folder) and double click on your audio file(s).

(Note: If you have multiple audio files, you can click on the first file and then hold shift and click on the last item to select them all).

5. Under the Sounds section, click on Master and select Sound Class SA_SFX.

6. Click the Save button and close this popup.


7. Click on Save All first before you go to the next step otherwise it wouldn't cook these files.


8. Navigate to the top left and click on File > Cook Content for Windows.
Note: This process can take a while depending on your system.


9. Once it's completed cooking, head over to your project folder.
(Mine was C:\Users\Havi\Desktop\GTADEMods)

10. Navigate to Saved\Cooked\WindowsNoEditor\GTADEMods\Content and there you will see your Audio files and a bunch of other files.
You only need to grab the ones related to the files you imported earlier, in this case S_000.uasset and S_000.uexp


File Structure
It is very important that we maintain the original game's file structure. We got our file from Game/SanAndreas/Audio/SFX/SCRIPT/VO but the root folder is incorrect. We need to change this.

Wrong Path:  Game/SanAndreas/Audio/SFX/SCRIPT/VO
Correct Path: Gameface/SanAndreas/Audio/SFX/SCRIPT/VO

We need to make a new folder with this exact structure. I have created a batch file which easily does this for you without you having to create each and every folder. You can download the Path Creator that was mentioned at the beginning of this guide.

1. Open the Path Creator.bat file and enter in the following path if you followed this exact guide with the same audio files.
2. Press Enter and then press Enter again. Do not click the X button because that won't create the path.


3. A folder is now created following this exact path. Open it all the way up and place your custom audio files in there.


4. Go a few folders back and copy the SanAndreas folder and then go to your game's directory (Default: C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\GTA San Andreas - Definitive Edition).
5. Open Gameface > Content and paste your SanAndreas folder in there.

The game is able to read unpacked files because we put them in the exact folder how the game reads them.
San Andreas original Content folder should end up looking like this:


And there you go! There is your custom Audio file.
Here is the end result

 

Edited November 18, 2021 by Havi

[Papayamamba]

Thanks for this tut. Can you tell us how / where can we edit what sounds are used for a certain event? Let's say I don't want the M4 to use AK sound; how can I configure it a unique sound path?

Edited November 18, 2021 by Papayamamba

[MrGTAmodsgerman]

Do you have a tutorial for editing models? I already see people fixing model problems (there is a GTA 3 DE mod that fix house enterance for ex.)

[OliverMahdi]

tnx but i have a problem 
i wanna port an sfx audio mod to the definitive version but the folder names are difrent  

 

[Havi]

On 11/18/2021 at 10:14 PM, OliverMahdi said:

tnx but i have a problem 
i wanna port an sfx audio mod to the definitive version but the folder names are difrent  

 

If you have a .PAK file from a mod that someone made you can simply head over to your game directory
(Path: C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\GTA San Andreas - Definitive Edition\Gameface\Content\Paks)

Create a folder named ~mods and drop the .PAK file in there.

If that's not the case, could you please provide a screenshot so I can try to help you?

 

On 11/18/2021 at 5:56 AM, MrGTAmodsgerman said:

Do you have a tutorial for editing models? I already see people fixing model problems (there is a GTA 3 DE mod that fix house enterance for ex.)

 

I will soon make a guide about this too. My schedule is a little busy at the moment so if you don't want to wait I'm pretty sure there are guides out there

 

[Havi]

On 11/18/2021 at 5:37 AM, Papayamamba said:

Thanks for this tut. Can you tell us how / where can we edit what sounds are used for a certain event? Let's say I don't want the M4 to use AK sound; how can I configure it a unique sound path?

Are you asking on how to edit the M4 sound and replace it with a custom one or are you asking something different?
I apologize if I'm misunderstanding

[Papayamamba]

1 hour ago, Havi said:

Are you asking on how to edit the M4 sound and replace it with a custom one or are you asking something different?
I apologize if I'm misunderstanding

Yes, the former one. How can I config a unique sound for a given weapon? Some weapons (and cars, explosions etc) use shared sounds: M4 - AK, 9mm - Desert Eagle, Sniper - Country Rifle - these pairs use the same files, but with a different pitch. How can I seperate their sounds? For example, how can I tell the game engine to use a different sound for the Desert Eagle, and not the 9 mm sound?

Edited November 20, 2021 by Papayamamba
tüpoix

[MrGTAmodsgerman]

On 11/19/2021 at 11:50 PM, Havi said:

I will soon make a guide about this too. My schedule is a little busy at the moment so if you don't want to wait I'm pretty sure there are guides out there

No problem. In time i already figured it out! Thanks. But point out that the cooked files should be copied from the "WindowsNoEditor" folder, not the normal project content folder. That took me 2 days of useless game crashes without knowing what i f*cked up.

[Kilowog01]

It didn't work for me. I tried with these two at the same time
\SanAndreas\Audio\SFX\GENRL\HOTROD_D

\SanAndreas\Audio\SFX\GENRL\HOTROD_P

and this is the result when the game loads my car in the garage:

 

EDIT: I thought the problem might be the audio. So I tested it with the original audios extracted as .ogg and the same error appears.

EDIT2: The issue was this Saved\Cooked\WindowsNoEditor\GTADEMods\Content

I opened the folder, viewed some .uasset files and thought I was done. But I was in the wrong folder and also without the .uexp
It works now!

Edited November 22, 2021 by Kilowog01

[jlee90]

Thanks very much for this great guide. I just had a quick question, if I am modding GTA 3 or VC, what are the names on the sound classes? You just mentioned SA sound classes. Thanks.