ACCEPTED IHSS - Improved Horse Step Sounds (by Crystan)

[TechAngel85]

Discussion topic:

IHSS - Improved Horse Step Sounds by Crystan

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[Mousetick]

Posting this in case it may be useful and relevant for inclusion into STEP CR Patch, as the STEP Guide now includes Immersive Sound Compendium (ISC). If already known and addressed, please disregard.

I gradually became annoyed by the too loud horse step sounds and looked for a way to decrease their volume. I noticed the presence of a 'Horse Steps' volume slider in the Audio settings menu, however it appeared to be ineffective. This slider is added by ISC, but it's unused when IHSS overrides ISC. In vanilla, horse step sounds are assigned to the 'Ambience' sound category, ISC reassigns them to its own 'Horse Steps' category, and IHSS reassigns them to the 'Footsteps' category.

In order to make ISC's 'Horse Steps' slider work with IHSS, the Sound Descriptors of IHSS need to be patched in xEdit to use ISC's 'Horse Steps' Sound Category. As shown in this example:

(above needs to be done for each record under 'Sound Descriptor')

This simple change makes the 'Horse Steps' slider functional, avoiding user confusion and improving equalization of horse step sounds.

[z929669]

3 hours ago, Mousetick said:

Posting this in case it may be useful and relevant for inclusion into STEP CR Patch, as the STEP Guide now includes Immersive Sound Compendium (ISC). If already known and addressed, please disregard.

I gradually became annoyed by the too loud horse step sounds and looked for a way to decrease their volume. I noticed the presence of a 'Horse Steps' volume slider in the Audio settings menu, however it appeared to be ineffective. This slider is added by ISC, but it's unused when IHSS overrides ISC. In vanilla, horse step sounds are assigned to the 'Ambience' sound category, ISC reassigns them to its own 'Horse Steps' category, and IHSS reassigns them to the 'Footsteps' category.

In order to make ISC's 'Horse Steps' slider work with IHSS, the Sound Descriptors of IHSS need to be patched in xEdit to use ISC's 'Horse Steps' Sound Category. As shown in this example:

(above needs to be done for each record under 'Sound Descriptor')

This simple change makes the 'Horse Steps' slider functional, avoiding user confusion and improving equalization of horse step sounds.

Good find. This is a problem only discovered by the immersive player and is inevitably missed in cursory testing. Furthermore, said immersive player must perceive the inconsistency and investigate above and beyond that which most people would ever do.

Such reports are a great benefit to us all

Now, I'm assuming that this is true of ALL of those "NPCHorse*" editor IDs, even where ISC isn't involved so that all horse steps from any mod are impacted by the slider. You mention this, but I just want to be sure this is what you mean, so:

[Mousetick]

27 minutes ago, z929669 said:

Now, I'm assuming that this is true of ALL of those "NPCHorse*" editor IDs, even where ISC isn't involved so that all horse steps from any mod are impacted by the slider. You mention this, but I just want to be sure this is what you mean, so:

Correct. Same change applied to all 20 Sound Descriptor records in IHSS.esp.

[CorneliusC]

Thank you for this. Since i've already altered my STEP patch, i'd like to add this myself.

Using each the full ('Sound Descriptor') record from ISS, 'Copy as overide into ...' the STEP patch and there, in each (new) record, change only the 'GNAM Category' record into the one from ISC, which in my case is 'AudioCategoryFSTHorse "Horse Steps" [SNCT:20181700]'.