The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Enhanced Sounds Mod

Here is a pack that enhances the sounds in your RPG title, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

TYPE:
-tweaks, miscellaneous

DESCRIPTION:

Adds 29 new region-specific ambient sounds
-Including birds, crickets, and swamp life
-Some of the wind sounds recreate that rustling-in-your-ear effect

Stereo Ambient Loops for different types of weather and sound IDs for all thunder sounds (requires editing of Morrowind.ini)

Improves dynamics and quality of current feet, environment, combat, and magic sounds...
-Most sounds that came with the game but weren't used for whatever reason are now implemented
-Unique footstep sounds for EACH Atronarch and Undead creature, new flapping sounds for winged creatures
-More intense magical bolt sounds, improved sfx for magics commonly used to cause damage to a target
-New high quality swooshing and punching, more foley effects for armor hit sounds, and various samples of gore added to damage and critical hit sounds

This is my first mod for Morrowind (although I have a lot of experience elsewhere) so feedback would be nice.

INSTALLATION:

1. Extract the files into your Morrowind/Data Files folder, with the Use folder names option in WinZip checked. This should replace a few of the default sounds.

If for any reason you want to go back to any or all of them and you don't have a personal backup then you can extract them from the first CD's data1.cab file using a program called i6comp.exe, which you can find on the internet.

2. To enable the weather-specific Ambient Loops and make use of the other thunder sounds, you'll have to edit your Morrowind.ini file in addition to be willing to follow these not so simple (but worthwhile IMO) instructions. Once opened, goto the sections that start with [Weather ...]

-There are 3 new and 2 default sound IDs you can place at each Ambient Loop Sound ID= line:

Wind Very Light - Just some nice and airy spatial brown noise. With some imagination it can sound like any natural noise.
Fog Noise - A soft rumbling wind, gives a foreboding ambience to foggy days
Low Wind - A very detailed but very subtle low wind sound, designed for overcast weather

Wind Light - I don't think they ever used this loud (definitely not Light) sound in the game, anyway I made it stereo to match the new sounds
ashstorm - The sound that plays during an ashstorm or in blighted weather, also improved

"Audition" these sounds in-game. I used various softening volume parameters in their sound IDs so they will sound way too loud if simply played outside of the game. If you know how to use TESCS or a sound editor go ahead and edit them to your liking. They will most definitely not sound the same between various sound systems anyway.

-There are 4 new sound IDs I referenced to the other thunder sounds included in the game but were previously not used:

Thunder4 - SoundFxenvrnthndr_cls2.wav
Thunder5 - SoundFxenvrnthndr_cls.wav
Thunder6 - SoundFxenvrnthndr_far.wav
Thunder7 - SoundFxenvrnthndr_far3.wav

Here are the default ones:

Thunder0 - SoundFxenvrnthndr_cls3.wav
Thunder1 - SoundFx_Thunder0.wav
Thunder2 - SoundFx_Thunder1.wav
Thunder3 - SoundFxenvrnthndr_far2.wav

Just listen to them outside of the game, and pick 4 that you most like. Place one of them at each Thunder Sound ID x= line, where x = 0 to 3 only.

As an example, here's what I personally use in my Morrowind.ini file:

[Weather Clear]
...
Ambient Loop Sound ID= (none by default)

[Weather Cloudy]
...
Ambient Loop Sound ID=Wind Very Light

[Weather Foggy]
...
Ambient Loop Sound ID=Fog Noise

[Weather Overcast]
...
Ambient Loop Sound ID=Low Wind

[Weather Rain]
...
Ambient Loop Sound ID=Low Wind
...

[Weather Thunderstorm]
...
Thunder Sound ID 0=Thunder0
Thunder Sound ID 1=Thunder4
Thunder Sound ID 2=Thunder5
Thunder Sound ID 3=Thunder7
...
Ambient Loop Sound ID=Wind Light
...

(The rest are default.)

3. As usual goto the Data Files section of the Morrowind Launcher to activate. Read the DESCRIPTION section above and the NOTES below so that you'll know what sounds to look out for once in-game, or you can just immerse and surprise yourself.

NOTES:

-I couldn't make some of the sounds as long as I wanted to. Morrowind seems to have trouble playing multiple instances of the same sound. So fiece battles with multiple Dremoras would often result in explosions making no sound if the sound of a previous explosion was still playing.
-Morrowind uses 3D positional audio (with doppler effects and configurable dispersal ranges), which is nice and something that so many other games (even those made by respected developers) have not adopted. You'll appreciate this when that electric bolt sizzles right past you.
-The Critical Damage sound may become annoying to characters that regularly do critical damage. I meant it as a satisfying reward for the rest of us.
-Regional ambient sounds can play at any time of day. So you may hear lonely crickets at noon and happy birds at midnight. Also if you haven't noticed yet all the regional ambient sounds play in fixed position mono. I could have made mine in stereo but that would make them twice as large (a lot of the other types of sounds were given the stereo treatment anyway.) Limitations, limitations.
-The Water Layer sound when heard inside caves is too loud. It's just right for the seashore though which IMO has a higher priority. Just edit it if you disagree.
-I have used some basic script editing to implement the two flag sounds. During good weather all banners will play a very low, almost inaudible flag2.wav rustling sound. In bad weather (when the banners shake a lot) they will play the flag.wav sound at it's standard pitch. I also wanted to create a sound for the swinging signs and lamps (they use the same script), but for some reason the lamps played the sound in an unexpectedly annoying fashion.
-The Ascended Sleeper apparently makes absolutely no sound at all even though sound files were provided for it, while the Hunger wasn't provided with any files at all and thus used the default creature sounds (Alit.) So I made the Hunger use the Ascended Sleeper's sounds. Seemed quite appropriate.
-I have reduced the bit and sample rates of most of my files to lower-than-default values to decrease the filesizes. There is some degradation in sound quality (most notably the noise created by the 8-bit dithering algorithm) but most people shouldn't notice.

DISCLAIMER:

I can't take full credit for all the samples used in this work so please feel free to do as you please with it, as long as you don't make money out of that.

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