The chilling musical sting used for the burglar, El Bandito, and the missing work notice always spooked me as a child and frankly, still does.
It got even worse with Unleashed where it seemingly happens at random for no reason! (although I'm under the assumption that it plays because El Bandito wanders onto the lot and then immediately leaves...)

I figured someone else would probably have the same issue. Replacing the SoundData file (in the Directory/SoundData folder) with this file replaces that sting with silence. As usual, the game will still switch to normal speed and briefly lower the volume of the rest of the audio when it's meant to play the sting. Apart from the lack of that specific sound file, everything else should work regularly. I'm sure there's an easier way to do this, but I know for sure this works, so...

This has only been tested with Complete Collection & if you use it, make sure you make a backup of the original SoundData file. I might do the same with the flies sounds if anyone would be interested.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/jpad...urglar.zip/file

Thank you for this! I actually muted my game during night because of this sound jajajaj

What? You don't like THE MOST TERRIFYING stinger in all of gaming? LOL... :D

You can also download the zapper from Simlogical: https://www.simlogical.com/simlogic...sims-1-zappers/

"No Scavengers. Gets rid of roaches, flies (not plate flies), skunk, raccoon, Claire the bear, rabbits, and gophers. They’ll still appear briefly and you’ll get a message for the skunk but then they’re dematerialized."

IIRC, that still plays the stinger. So you get the scare for nothing, basically.

At least that's what it always did for my game.

...Would you need to replace or modify the ENTIRE far in this situation? Or could it work like any default replacement would, and you could just make a folder in SoundData named Stings with wav files in it named the same as that sting's noise? (sting_danger1.wav and sting_danger2.wav are capable of producing that noise and are inside the stings folder in the far.) Doing it the default replacement way is more revertable too because you can just remove the custom wav files and the original ones from inside the far will load up next time.

Would that work or does the game load wav files differently than iff in such a way that it wouldn't?

(Completely unrelated side note: I set up alerts for Twitch streaming I'm trying to do and I MIGHT have made a rare raid alert chance of the alert sound just being the burglar noise. XD)

Aww, geez... asking me to remember STRINGS HACKING?

Lemme see... going from memory so HUUUUUUUUUUGE grain of salt... but I think it would just need to be a BHAV modification in the zapper. The call to STR called something like 'play sound' (?) would need to be modified/removed.

In theory.

And I LOVE the idea of that stinger being an alert tone!

...Perhaps I should have been clearer because even I misread stings as strings in my own message before sending it.

Inside SoundData.far, there is a stings (NOT stRings!) folder. sting_danger1.wav and sting_danger2.wav are the sound files in there that correspond to the DUH-DUH. DUH-DUH. noise. I'm wondering if the SoundData.far file didn't itself have to be modified, and if it could just work like default replacements for objects do, but with wav files. Or if the game doesn't operate the same way with wav files so it won't load the noises from outside the far in the same way that it might, say, load the Maxis stairs with Gnohmon's 2way hack from over at SSOW.

I'm wondering if the far HAD to be modified, since the link in the original post is a modified SoundData.far.

...I suppose replacing or removing each area where the game could play the sound would also be another potential way to solve it... though likely more convoluted, depending on what controls the sound...

(The call *is* "play sound", though, yes--I've become more familiar with that one than I want to be in pursuit of trying to make a replacement for the missing object on House11. It's an old object from beta builds, Outside.iff, which has the sole job of playing bird and dog noises at certain times of day (something I'm presuming they moved to another object and/or made the engine itself do), and attempting to make it work right with the beta sounds (when I COULD just make an object with the same GUID that doesn't do anything, or one that uses the same sound IDs as the beta which makes it play... very funny noises in the final game) has been... interesting. XD)

The game is gonna load whatever sound (or texture or animation, etc) that the guts of the object call for. If it can't find it, then it will play nothing.

Its the way some folks made custom instrument sounds (albeit those were more complex, needing HIT and HOT files).

That being said, you shouldn't need to touch SoundData at all if you just want to remove the raccoon stinger. Just have that call point to another noise or remove the reference to it. Keep in mind of course that there may be more than one call, so every BHAV would have to be checked (which I know you already know, but for others reading this). And sometimes those calls can be in the most illogical places. I found that out when apartment hacking the C&C ala carte fridge. That was... fun?, but like in 'fun'eral... lol.