Hack 85. Remove Sound

Remove various sounds from Halo 2 maps to eliminate distractions and bring new surprises.

Various sounds in Halo 2 can affect game play for example, the sound of a Sniper Rifle zooming in [Hack #66] is a heads-up that it's time to look for cover while others may simply be a distraction. Whatever the reason, this hack allows you to remove your least favorite noises from Halo 2.

In this hack, you will silence the air vents on the Foundation map by nulling out the sounds associated with the air vent meta tag. First, open the Test map in ADI [Hack #50] and navigate to the [lsnd] Looping Sound tags (see Figure 11-9). The two tags that you will alter are sound\ambience\device_machines\cyclotron_activate_lift\cyclotron_activate_lift and sound\ambience\device_machines\cyclotron_grav_lift\cyclotron_grav_lift.

Figure 11-9. Finding the tag for the air vents

The tags are named this way because the air vents are reused from the Ivory Tower map.

Cyclotron was the working name for the Ivory Tower level.

The sound dependencies for these tags are normally sound\ambience\device_machines\cyclotron_activate_lift\track1\loop, sound\ambience\device_machines\cyclotron_grav_lift\grav_lift\loop and sound\ambience\device_machines\cyclotron_grav_lift\details\sizzle_drip.

To remove these sounds, choose Nulled Out from the drop-down menu and then use the Swap Dependency option to switch the normal sound with silence (see Figures 11-10 and 11-11).

Figure 11-10. Altering the sound dependency

Figure 11-11. All the sounds are Nulled Out

When you are finished removing the sounds, sign the map [Hack #53] and FTP it back to your Xbox [Hack #54]. Now you can enjoy the sounds of silence.