SPCH

SPCH, or Speech Data, is a format used in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to make in-game characters speak specified voice clips, either in enemy soldier conversations, prisoner carrying monologues or unique story characters’ monologues. It functions when called by commands CallVoice, CallMonologue, CallRadio, CallConversation or other with a label string, making the specified in-game character play a voice clip part, with the option for the character to play unique body or face animations while doing so. The format is Little-Endian on PC, meaning bytes are written in reverse order of significance.

These files can be decompiled and compiled with SpchTool into XML files.

Header

0x00-0x03 - "spch" signature

0x04-0x05 - 00 on PC, 01 on PS3

0x06-0x07 - (uint16) Amount of sequences in the file

0x08-0x0F - Padding - 8 bytes of padding per label. Pointer space?

Sequence definition

0x00-0x03 - (uint32) StrCode32 hash of the sequence's label name

0x04-0x07 - (uint32) FNV132 hash of the Dynamic Dialogue Voice Event name from the soundbanks

0x08-0x0B - (uint32) Number of voice clip parts in this sequence

The Voice Event name hashes can be found inside the HIRC sections of .sbp soundbank files, separated into HIRC.dat if extracted by SecaProject’s SBP_Tool. The Voice Event is always followed up by 0x6402, and the Voice Ids used in the label are usually from the same list specified here. Sometimes, the Voice Event in the label entry definition is null, specifically in CpRadioSeqCommon.spch.

In Wwise, the Voice Event parameter will be the name of your custom Dynamic Dialogue event. You can have only one per seequence.

Part entry

0x00-0x03 - (uint32) StrCode32 of the speaker's voice type

0x04-0x07 - (uint32) FNV132 hash of the "condition" Voice Parameter from the .sbp soundbanks 

0x08-0x0B - (uint32) StrCode32 hash of the body action animation

0x0C-0x0F - (uint32) StrCode32 hash of the facial animation

0x10-0x13 - (float) Pause before the next voice clip is played, in seconds

As previously mentioned, the Voice Id can be found in a list in the HIRC sections of .sbp soundbank files, after the label entry definition’s Voice Event. The entries in the list are separated with 0x32006400. The first four bytes of the entry are the Voice Id, and the other is HIRC object name to another much earlier object where .wem sound file names (as extracted by SecaProject’s SBP_Tool) are usually listed twice in a row, of course, in Little-Endian, twelve bytes after the link mentioned in the Voice Ids, however this manual method of locating sound files’ Voice Ids doesn’t always apply.

In Wwise, the “chara” state in your related Dynamic Dialogue event will be decided based on the speaker hash. The “condition” state will be the exact string value of the Voice Parameter given in the .spch part entry.

Animation act ids for each entity are listed in Metal Gear Solid V’s .exe, as Little-Endian StrCode32 hashes.

SpchTool Usage

With SpchTool, it’s possible to edit .spch files by decompiling them into simpler XML documents and compiling them back. However, values from .sbp soundbanks still have to be acquired manually.

Decompiled label entries are represented like this:

<sequence label="CTF0000_0030" voiceEvent="dd_vox_ene_conversation_gz">
  <part speaker="ene_b" voiceParam="ctg0010_0030" action="Greeting" facial="greet" intervalNext="0.5" />
  <part speaker="ene_b" voiceParam="ctf0000_0030_1" action="1081228083" intervalNext="3" />
  <part speaker="ene_c" voiceParam="ctf0000_0030_2" action="Relax" />
  <part speaker="ene_b" voiceParam="ctf0000_0030_3" action="AskQuestion" facial="chuckle" intervalNext="3" />
  <part speaker="ene_c" voiceParam="ctf0000_0030_4" />
  <part speaker="ene_b" voiceParam="ctf0000_0030_5" action="Conversation2" facial="smile" intervalNext="3" />
  <part speaker="ene_c" voiceParam="ctf0000_0030_6" action="Watch" facial="storm_lp" />
  <part speaker="ene_b" voiceParam="ctf0000_0030_7" action="GiveOrder" facial="desperate" />
  <part speaker="ene_c" voiceParam="ctf0000_0030_8" action="Damn" facial="irritated" />
</sequence>

The labels are be used by Lua Commands RequestRadio, CallRadio, CallMonologue and CallConversation, and with some cases like CP radio conversations, by the .exe. Sometimes they’re hashed in StrCode32. The sbpListId FNV132 hash can be found in .sbp files’ HIRC section. You can divide .sbp into .wem files and data sections with SecaProject’s SBP_Tool. From there, you’ll need to find the hash in hexadecimal Little-Endian format on top of arrays at the bottom of the HIRC section, and they’re usually followed up by the bytes 64 02. In CpRadioSeqCommon.spch, this is not specified, as the voiceType is not specified either.

The voiceClip entries will all be played in order, and the soldier first listed will begin the conversation, the second one will be the “friend” specified by CallConversation, and any more will be the third parties in given order. The voiceType will specify which voice the soldier should use, however CpRadioSeqCommon.spch only specifies soldiers as enemy to make it open to what voiceType should be used based on what the soldier’s voiceType already is. The sbpVoiceClipId FNV132 hash can be found in the .sbp files’ HIRC section, in the arrays at the end, which area headed by the sbpListId used in the label, and there they are paired with values that can also be found in a much earlier section in the HIRC section with eight bytes after them, names of the .wem sound files written twice in a row. However, this doesn’t always apply. The animationAct is the name or hash of the animation the speaker will play

• there’s descriptions and names of them later down this page. The afterPause is a float value representing how many seconds long the pause between the end of the current voiceClip and the start of the next one will be. The beforePause value is never used in-game, and it might possibly not be the inverse of afterPause.

Voice type dictionary

This is a list of some voice types that can be used by SPCH files.

Actions

This is a list of some animation act ids that can be used by SPCH files.

Common

Loop actions

Single actions

Special character actions

Ocelot

Skull Face

Prisoners

Paz

Mantis

Mob

GZ .mog states

Facial animations

This part of .spch is entirely unused, but it works perfectly well in custom .spch files. This uses a facial animation to play under the lip sync animation of the voice clip.

Soldier/Prisoner

Radio callsign param wildcards

These are the values used in the .exe to stand in for the callsign voice clips during radio communcation speech labels.