Mute Mechromancer's screams

Small tweak guide to help you remove Gaige's screaming.

AEEAEAAAAEAEAGHEA!! AEEEAGHEEEAAAAAAGH!!!!

I'll be honest. I love Gaige. I already have one mechro at op8 and I'm running around with my trusty fibber slaughtering whatever comes my way. But oh dear God if I step on a small pool of acid or slip into an oil slick or I see a butterfly - the screaming begins. My props to Gaige's voice actor, but that ... screaming ...

I actually took a break when I hit about level 45 because I just couldn't stand the sound. Getting hit by the smallest of elemental guns got the Mechro yelling like her hair was on fire (well this one time, her hair was on fire but it was mainly my fault, I used the customization station and didn't check the hairdye chemicals of the custom head I selected so when flynt shot me the hair kind of .. well, .. anyhoo...)

I scoped around the interwebs to try and find a solution to this and got nothing. Lots of people asking about this and bumping their precious threads on the issue. Making it worse was the fact that the options setting of disabling player callouts works for everyone else except our Peppy little redhead. So, I started poking around and I found a solution. Kinda. It's a very very ugly hack and I'm not that proud of it, but it's an emergency, because I know that many of you have been to the doctor's for acute ear bleed.

So let's get started.

The Soundfile

The main culprit for the ol' yeller is a file called

Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck

It contains all of Gaige's voiceclips and among them are the six "oh-why-did-my-jump-cut-so-short-in-caustic-caverns-oh-crap-here-we-go" -screamtracks. They are called

Tulip_VOBD_Mechromancer_GEN_React_Pain_DOT_01_

numbered from 1 to 6. But, they are indeed contained within the soundpack and that's our first problem. I tried extracting the voice files and putting them into the user folder but if the game finds the .pck file, it prefers that. So, here's what we're going to do.

We are going to destroy the file headers of the voiceclips _within_ the .pck file. The audioengine will load them, but as the header is corrupt it will dismiss them. There's a strong possibility of memory leaks, game crashes, affecting the general consciousness of mankind in a negative way, but hey, I said it was an emergency.

So, head over to your steam folder and find the sound file:

\steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck

At the same time make a new folder into your user folder (this is on Windows 7, not entirely sure where Borderlands user folder is on other platforms):

\Documents\My Games\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\

Most likely "DLC" folder does not exist, so you'll have to create the folders to get that path. When you have it done, copy the "Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck" there, so you will have:

\Documents\My Games\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck

Now, rename the original file to

\steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck_

so the engine won't find it. It will also serve as a backup if you accidentally type in a wrong character into the binary and create a temporal vortex with an event horizon that spans 3.8 AU and sucks in the entire Kuiper belt (which would be epic!).

Then it's time to start destroying some headers.

Hex edit the headers

Grab yourself a hex editor, lots of them out there, I used Notepad++ with a hex editor plugin, but a standard editor will do, like XVI32.

Open the soundfile in your user folder

\Documents\My Games\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck

and find the files. You can search for

pain_dot

and it will lead you to the first file. What it will find, is the label inside a .wav file inside the .pck file, editing this label won't do anything, it's just a textstring. Look above it, there is the WAV header and it starts with a word

RIFF

Destroy that header, minion, change it from RIFF to BIFF (or anything you like, just don't add or delete characters, the file length needs to stay the same)


Section from the soundfile, showing the WAV header along with the file identifier label.


Do this to all six audio files and save it. If everything went well, Gaige will speak her normal stuff but when you get that fire in your hair or acid in your pants, mayhaps she will stay mute and you will be more happier playing with her, mayhaps.

Or your computer crashes to BSOD.

TL;DR

- Copy

\steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck

to your user folder

\Documents\My Games\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck

- Rename

\steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck
to
\steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck_

- Hexedit

\Documents\My Games\Borderlands 2\DLC\Tulip\Compat\Audio\English(US)\Audio_Streaming_tulip.pck

- Seek and destroy the WAV headers of 6 soundfiles
- The files are called Tulip_VOBD_Mechromancer_GEN_React_Pain_DOT_01_
numbered from 1-6 like

Tulip_VOBD_Mechromancer_GEN_React_Pain_DOT_01_1

- A quick search for "pain_dot" will find them, the header starts above the file label

- Just change the header start "RIFF" to anything like BIFF or 1234, just make sure the character count stays the same

RIFF   -->   BIFF

- Save the file and start the game, Gaige's screams are now history.

Teabag my corpse

Let me know, if you get errors or crashes or the edit doesn't work for you. But most of all, let me know if it DID work for you and you can take off your earplugs.

Remember, we at Hyperion take no responsibility of added limbs, breasts or destroyed audiocards so implementing these changes will be entirely on you.

Unless you are Handsome Jack.

[ich]

AAAAAEEEGEGHEEHHHHHHH

[Astro_80 (WASH YOUR HANDS!)]

Or you can just, you know, turn off the sound IN GAME?

[Abusive Plague Doctor]

Great guide, I was looking for a way to put gaige's scream on other characters thanks!

[Saaguen]

Thanks you so much for this !
I couldn't stand anymore her slaughtered pig screams, and this tweak works great !

You should detail in the future how to install the HEX plugin on notepad++ and how to activate it for unexperienced users like me.
I managed to do it, but it would have definitely saved me some time ^^

[supermonkeyCL]

Magnificent, thank you for showing this...

[Kaian]

It works perfectly, thanks!

[Stevie BLOWJOBS]

Many thanks.

[Emulai]

Thanks Bonsaipanda, this worked a charm!

For anyone playing multiplayer, you need to edit this file on everyone's computer. My partner and I play together in the same room; editing my file stopped the screams on my laptop, but not her desktop. Editing both fixed it!

[marndt93]

Just a heads up for anyone else doing this when you open the .pck file in notepad++ it won't let you search for any letter that isn't part of hex(eg. a,b,c,d,e,f). This is because by default you are searching for hex characters. You have to change the search to ANSI string. Just something I ran into, hopefully it helps others.

[God Of Succ]

Shh... No moar words...