How to Make Custom Hitsounds/Killsounds for TF2

A brief guide with finished examples, sample files and images. Includes how to edit the audio files in Audacity and package them into a VPK for easy installation.

Things you'll need

• An audio editor of your choice. I personally use Audacity[www.audacityteam.org], specifically version 2.1.0 plus the LAME MP3 encoder[manual.audacityteam.org], so that's what I'll talk about here.
  
  
• Sound files you want to use. Here we'll go with the Heavy saying "BABY" for the hitsound, and "BIGGEST BABY" for the killsound. For your convenience, you can download a bundle here[drive.google.com] that has the base audio files, folder structure already prepared, and the finished VPK for you to check.
  
  
• Hitsounds and killsounds enabled in your game settings, set to "default". The option can be found under "Advanced Options" in the main menu. Here is how it should look.
  
  
  
• GFCScape[nemesis.thewavelength.net] if you'd like to check your finished VPKs later, or unpack them for further editing. I personally use version 1.8.6.

Editing the audio with Audacity

1. Launch Audacity and open your audio file. You can either use File -> Open, or just drag-and-drop the file in question into the large dark grey area. Work with one at a time just to make sure things don't get messed up. The imported file should look like this.


2. To avoid having an awkward pause between you actually hitting someone and the sound playing, we'll remove the little bit of silence at the beginning. Simply left-click where you want the trimmed area to start, hold, and drag the pointer until you cover everything you want to remove, and release. Then press your Delete key. Easy-peasy!


3. Now the most important part - selecting the correct bitrate. This can be seen in the bottom left corner of the screen.


Our MP3 file's current bitrate is 48000 Hz. The game, however, prefers the files to be 44100 Hz in WAV format. The bitrate can be changed easily by clicking the dropdown menu and selecting the correct option.


4. Make any other changes you may want, such as changing speed or pitch.

5. Once finished, it's time to export. Go to File -> Export Audio..., and save as type WAV (Microsoft) signed 16-bit PCM. You can leave the metadata info blank. Then close Audacity.


6. The file is ready for packaging now! If you'd like to make sure the bitrate is correct, launch Audacity again and open your file. The bitrate shown in the corner should be 44100 Hz. If you have any other files to edit, feel free to do it now.

IF YOU DO NOT MAKE SURE THE BITRATE IS CORRECT THE SOUNDS WON'T WORK.

Packaging files into VPK

1. Create a new "root" folder on your desktop with a descriptive name. This will be the name of the finished VPK file later.


Inside, create a folder named sound, and inside this, another one named ui. The download bundle at the beginning has these folders ready for you to simply place on your desktop and rename to your heart's content. You can have one VPK containing both killsounds and hitsounds (which is what we'll do here), or separate VPK files for each - in which case, simply create two "root" folders and work on them separately.

2. Place your custom sound(s) inside ui. Rename your killsound so it is now named killsound and your hitsound to hitsound (duh!). You should end up with this.



3. Navigate to your Steam\steamapps\common\Team Fortress 2\bin folder and locate an executable named vpk.exe. This is the VPK creator program we'll use.


Leave the explorer window open (and not maximized!) so you can see both your desktop and the bin folder at the same time.


4. Drag-and-drop the folder on your desktop that contains your files into vpk.exe.


A command prompt window will show up for a moment and close automatically. Then, the finished VPK will be placed on your desktop. Repeat if necessary. Packaging done!


5. If you wanna make sure the file structure inside the VPK is correct, open the file with GFCScape. It should look like this.


If you'd like to unpack the file, right-click the "root" folder and select "Extract".

Installation and testing

1. This is easy. Navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\Team Fortress 2\tf\custom. If the custom folder happens to be missing, just create it.

2. Place your VPK file in there, like so.


3. Launch the game and test it out! I'd recommend going into a match with bots (Play -> Training -> Offline Practice) and choosing Pyro, as the afterburn effect is a great way to hear hitsounds constantly.

And that's it! Hopefully it'll work as intended. If it doesn't, make sure you gave sounds the correct bitrate, the sounds are enabled in your advanced settings, and verify your game cache if you must.

Enjoy!

[individual numera 11]

this doesn't work in the slightest, nothing works at all. I'm doomed to have an annoying fucking ring everytime i hit somebody

[BeanyBen]

is this the same for other custom clouds?

[Jurttu]

I had a strange issue where the custom hitsound would have a very low pitch (enough that I initially mistook it for other noise). I was able to fix that by adjusting the pitch way up in the advanced settings tab, so anyone else having trouble might want to try that as well.

[Nero's Daddy Issues]

Alright, followed this step by step, triple checked my work and does not work in game. I can play the sounds with the console and nothing is corrupted. The game is actively reading my path but decides to not play the sounds. And yes, my settings are correct because in game, whenever I get a hit or kill, nothing plays. Literally nothing. So my game is changing the files but something is going wrong with that process. I've verified the files and all that jazz, deleted the sound.cache to generate a new one, instead of making my own I even went and downloaded a few of the most popular community made files and they still don't work. All of this work just to have a death sound from Celeste.

[ruhfuhquh]

thanks for this guide. i've been wondering why my soundfiles weren't being played in the game - turns out their sample rates were different.

[Eliana ツ]

thanks! this works a lot but I have an issue, my kill sound is very broken for some reason it only plays part of it and it seems backwards sorta

[Vi<3]

Shit I love you, I've been trying to make this work for months, and here is the guide I always needed. Infinite love

[Ozman]

Why is this the only guide I see that ever mentions VPK?
Seriously, every video guide just ignores it.

[thomas]

Worked for me, thanks!

[1986 Corolla Hatchback DX]

i just said fuck it MW2 hitmarker sfx lets go