Audio file management.¶

SCICompanion handles audio file management mostly transparently so you don’t have to think about it. However, an explanation of how these files are stored and updated may be useful.

Overview¶

Audio files take up a lot of disk space (in Sierra’s CD-ROM games, they can typically take up 400-500MB of data). As a result, unlike other resources, SCICompanion doesn’t save them directly to the resource packages (resource.aud and/or resource.sfx) whenever you add an audio resource.

Instead, they are placed in folders in the audiocache folder of your game. If you look there, you might see a folder structure like this:

audiocache\
    0\
        @0000m00.001
        @0000k00.001
    15\
        @00f0b05.001
        @00f0d00.001
        @00f0c03.001
    65535\
        1.aud
        7.aud
    0.map
    15.map
    65535.map
    uptodate.bin

The numbered subfolders contain the audio36 and sync36 resources for that particular module (room number). 65535 is special, as this is the main audio sound effects from the game (accessed by the Audio tab in SCICompanion). In all cases, these are the actual patch files that would be used.

As you add, edit or remove audio resources, it is these files and folders that are updated. When you start the game from within SCICompanion, we check to see which files/folders have been updated, and then repackage them into the resource.aud or resource.sfx which are used by the game. For this reason, if you have been adding lots of audio there may be a slight delay the next time you run the game.

The first time you edit audio for a module (room number), if the audio file cache folder for that module does not exist, SCICompanion will pull the necessary resources out of resource.aud (or resource.sfx) and place them into the audio file cache folder.

These folders are also where the audio negative .wav files are stored for recordings you have made from within SCICompanion.

Managing the audio cache¶

You can force the audio files to be re-packaged into resource.aud or resource.sfx by using Tools->Repackage Audio. You’ll need to do this if you’re running the game externally (i.e. not from within SCICompanion) and you want to be using your latest audio changes.

From Tools->Audio Preferences, you can also force a repackage of all audio files (instead of just those that SCICompanion thinks are out of date).

You can also clear out the audio file cache completely. This means you will lose any new audio files that have not been repackaged. You will also lose the audio negatives for any recordings you have made in SCICompanion.