Too much profanity?

Patriot

Patriot

Active Member
So I enjoy saving the world from excessive numbers of zombies without having the game spit out a string of profanities every time one of my teammates steps in some acidic spit.

Because of this I began to search for a method to remove the cussing from the game. Google was worthless. I would have to come up with my own solution. First I tried changing the game language to German. No such luck. . .it resets itself for inexplicable reasons. I needed a better solution. I ended up browsing the steam folder and finding the sounds contained within.

My grandest effort yielded initially promising results but ultimately failed. I renamed the "Player" folder within the sounds which effectively shut off all computer survivor voices. Other than the eerie silence as I was fending off countless hoards I was quite pleased. Unfortunately, Steam must have realized that the sound folder was missing and downloaded a fresh copy for my gaming enjoyment.

My next experiment is actually several weeks in progress at the moment without any intervention by Steam. I'm going to declare it a success and continue with full scale deployment. The only downside to the method I have discovered is the tediousness of it. It involves running through the sound files one at a time and listening to the sound to determine if it contains a profanity. If it does, I copy the filename then rename the current item (I just change the extension to .old). Then I create a new text file, change the name to the name I just copied which creates a blank sound file. Now, unless Steam checks file sizes it won't know that the file has been replaced (which I'm pretty sure it doesn't since my blanks are still there). Even better, some of the sounds had comparable counterparts which can be copied and the name changed to reflect the replaced sound.

I haven't quite finished running through all the sounds as it was quite tedious and I wanted to be sure Steam didn't interfere.

Some might consider it a waste of time or a futile gesture given voice chat. Some might even consider it a psychotic hangup with not enjoying listening to a constant stream of profanities. Be that as it may, I enjoy the game more without it and if you think you might as well I would be more than willing to give a more detailed explanation of the process.
 
I agree.

In fact, I posted a thread on the Steam forums asking Valve to add a character profanity toggle in Left 4 Dead 2 just now.

The thread will inevitably devolve into an Internet argument, but I have some small hope that Valve employees see the post and consider adding the feature. Unfortunately, I sincerely doubt Valve will consider or add such a toggle to the game.

On a side note: Epic included toggles that effectively took UT2004 gameplay from a M rating to a T rating, but Valve neglected to include similar features in a game that followed 6 years after. Though I'm still a bit sore over my overall disappointment in UT3, I respect that Epic allows its customers to customize the gaming experience.

Valve's unlikely intervention aside, I think our best bet is to rally like-minded talent on a Left 4 Dead modding community. Left 4 Dead Mods and L4D Maps immediately come to mind.

I don't think Valve is going to provide its customers with the option to turn off character profanity, so let's see what we can do about creating a mod to do it ourselves.
 
Tek7 said:
In fact, I posted a thread on the Steam forums asking Valve to add a character profanity toggle in Left 4 Dead 2 just now.
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Minutes after I posted the thread linked above, Steam forums posters did exactly what I expected them to do. It's like clockwork.

I've created two new threads, one on L4D Maps and one on Left 4 Dead Mods, asking for advice on creating a profanity filter/toggle. Chances are good we'll see more of the same inflammatory posts, but there's also a decent chance that someone with modding knowledge will give us some helpful advice.
 
That's why I've taken it upon myself to construct my own solution. I don't expect the world to conform to my convictions. And after doing a little admin'ing of my own on a "clean" server, I hardly expect the gaming community in general to appreciate my efforts. I've had too many of the age old discussions about profanity in a game where people are "killing" each other. . .

I don't hold much hope that Valve will respond, but there is always a chance.
 
Could e-mail them directly. Tons of the fan e-mails DO get replies.
 
At one point there was an edited version of the voices for L4D 1 that removed the cussing. However I looked at the site it was on just now and could not find it. All well at least you know you aren't alone in your efforts.
 
I know it is yet more hard work, but it seems like it would be a good idea to open the wav's in a sound editor and blank out the offending words, or find replacement sound files where applicable. As a programmer who looks at the insides of applications all day, I like the more elegant solutions to these problems. If a file is missing or in the wrong format an exception or other error handling code has to kick in. Fortunately it looks like it doesn't cause the game to crash, but exceptions aren't good for performance and stability. Your current work sounds like a good temporary solution, which is also a good step towards a full mod. If you have all the problem files identified then more people could bit-by-bit modify them. I don't own the game to have access to these files currently, but if I do get it I'll drop back by here and see how it is going.
 
I tried the L4D1 mod, Gerbil, but Steam thought the language files were borked, so it redownloaded them and overwrote the mod. xD
 
Keero said:
I tried the L4D1 mod, Gerbil, but Steam thought the language files were borked, so it redownloaded them and overwrote the mod. xD
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Ah bummer :( . Though there has to be a way to do it or all the custom sounds available would not work at all. I helped uh I think Darkbot with his Johnny Bravo Tank mod at one point and it worked so there is hope.
 
DannyMeister said:
I know it is yet more hard work, but it seems like it would be a good idea to open the wav's in a sound editor and blank out the offending words, or find replacement sound files where applicable. As a programmer who looks at the insides of applications all day, I like the more elegant solutions to these problems. If a file is missing or in the wrong format an exception or other error handling code has to kick in. Fortunately it looks like it doesn't cause the game to crash, but exceptions aren't good for performance and stability. Your current work sounds like a good temporary solution, which is also a good step towards a full mod. If you have all the problem files identified then more people could bit-by-bit modify them. I don't own the game to have access to these files currently, but if I do get it I'll drop back by here and see how it is going.
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Being a programmer by trade myself, I'm fully aware that these programs often check for file format, etc. On the other hand, if they kept to good programming practices then they would have built in some sort of error handler when it tried to play an invalid sound file. And I had tested a blank file with another sound program to see what would happen. Nothing happened, so I guestimated that it was entirely possible that Valve had a similar setup and it would attempt to play a zero length sound file. That's one reason why I kept the old sound files and just renamed them to .OLD (if something blew up I could just replace them). Of course, there is little need now that I know Steam will simply re-download the folder if I delete it - if I mess something up I can just delete and start over.

I still have a ways to go. I just finished up with one of the characters. There are a lot of sound files. . .

EDIT: Oh and L4D2 is obviously not checking file sizes on the sound files as I replaced one of the intro songs with a song of my own. It's been there for 3-4 weeks now. I'm pretty sure it just checks for the existence of the file name.
 
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I still have the files for the L4D1 no swearing mod, but haven't run them in a while to see if they still work.
 
I think our solution will need to involve compiling a .VPK, copying it to the proper directory, and activating the add-on in-game.

Maybe our next step should be compiling a .VPK with an edited sound file or two (plus the remaining unaltered files) and test it?

EDIT: Here's the text from the readme that came with the sound pack I downloaded last night:
Yoshi Smoker Soundpack for Left 4 Dead 2 by Kim-Kim

Changes the voices and music for the Smoker to Yoshi.
Voices from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Music from Yoshi's Island.

To install: Double click the vpk file or drag it to the Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2\left4dead2\addons folder.
To uninstall, simply remove the vpk file from the addons folder.
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:D Tek Yoshi's tongue sound for the Smoker's tongue that's epic :p. That reminds me of the Teletubby mod for L4D1 :p.
 
The Mighty Gerbil said:
:D Tek Yoshi's tongue sound for the Smoker's tongue that's epic :p. That reminds me of the Teletubby mod for L4D1 :p.
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Well, as much as I'd like to take credit for the sound pack, I can't. ^^;;

I found the link to the Yoshi/Smoker pack and other packs here.
 
I just finished up Coach's voice set. He had just over 2000 different sound files and I ended up replacing about 300 of them. If applicable I copied a similar item, otherwise I just put a dummy file in it's place.

With each of the characters having close to 2000 sound files this is going to take me a while. . .
 
Is it possible to customize the files like it in is counter-strike? as long as you have the proper file names you could just use other sound files from like, cs or anything else. just replace the offending files with the CS death groan. then you can laugh at how silly it is

:D
 
blackgravity said:
Is it possible to customize the files like it in is counter-strike? as long as you have the proper file names you could just use other sound files from like, cs or anything else. just replace the offending files with the CS death groan. then you can laugh at how silly it is

:D
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Yes. That is essentially what I have been doing, except when applicable I'm replacing with another phrase provided by the game that gets the same point across.
 
Just finished up the last set. The total size of the replacements is about 40MB (with Coach being about twice as much as any of the others at 17MB). If I have time tonight I'll run a test to see if Steam decides to overwrite any of my changes - though I expect it won't.

I know nothing about creating a vpk, so if anyone wants one they'll have to get someone else to do it.
 
Patriot said:
No issues. I'm going to call this problem solved.
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Awesome!

I don't know what the rules governing the distribution of a modified digital work would be, though. If I knew for certain it was perfectly legal, I'd ask you to post a link as soon as you can upload it to a file hosting site.

Anyone know if a modified sound pack would be legal to distribute?

It makes sense since the file would be in a proprietary format (.VPK) that would be useless for people who didn't already own a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 (and thus the files that were modified in the first place).
 
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