Shaddap Already - No Annoying Sting Sounds for Pets thru Into the Future

The 'Positioning Statement' Section

You're just sitting there, minding your own business. It's a cold, dark winter night in the Seasons expansion and the snow is falling, and you're counting the minutes until dawn. You stare admiringly at the sleeping beauty/hunk in your Sims' house like a total creep when all of a sudden
BAM!



...Some musical cue blindsides you out of nowhere to let you know that it's Snowflake Day, or the Summer Festival, or that there'll be a full moon, or who-knows-what.


WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE MUSICAL CUES?! I THINK THEY'RE PRETTY NEAT!
(alternative subtitle: "How I feel when a musical cue hits me out of nowhere like a big floppy tuna")

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As per jonha's excellent "No more annoying sounds" disabler, this is a series of packages that disables the musical stings that play when various events occur in the later expansions Pets, Showtime, Supernatural, and Seasons, as a companion to jonha's earlier work for the previous four and the base game. Things like having won a game of Whack-a-Gnome, having the weather stone appear, having a pet pass away with dignity of old age, or winning a SimFest will no longer produce musical cues -- they kinda just happen now. Which is how things kinda just happen in The Reals too (although I do have to admit that having a dramatic musical cue strike up in real life whenever something significant happens would be pretty neat).

This is distributed as individual packages for each expansion, just in case (for whatever reason) you want to retain the sting sound effects from one expansion or the other. A merged package is also available if you have most of the expansions but you want a tighter load order (you can still use this package even if you're missing one or two of the expansions -- it will just have a little bit of unused content).

Update! After way too much effort, I have now uploaded a romantic attraction sound disabler!

The 'Updates' Section

• 31 December 2014: Added sting_attraction disabler as a separate package! This is not present in the merged package.
• 27 October 2014: Version 2 (Sting disablers for University Life, Island Paradise, Into The Future, plus a merged "All" version)
• 19 March 2013: Version 1 (Sting disablers for Pets, Showtime, Supernatural, and Seasons)

The 'Technical Details' Section

This was extremely easy to make. All that one has to do to disable a sound in The Sims 3 is to locate the AUDT (audio tuning) resource that corresponds to the sound and convert the file to contain four null bytes with a hex editor (unlike other Sims 3 files, these are in binary rather than XML). In most expansion packs that have small "FullBuild" files, this is all contained in the single FullBuild package in the expansion's "GameData/Packages/Shared" folder -- I simply targetted all "sting_*" files. In some (like Pets) that have multiple "FullBuild" files, it's found in FullBuild1 rather than FullBuild0, but is otherwise exactly the same.

If any of that sounds like Greek, don't worry: the only real difficulty arises in knowing what hex editing is in the first place, and how to export The Sims 3 files in S3PE, hex edit them, and then re-import them into the game. Fortunately, Google is your friend (or DuckDuckGo if you value your privacy) if you want a primer on hex editing, and there are plenty of S3PE tutorials to get you started too.

If you disagree with any of the sting sounds I've disabled (which was all of them from those expansions), just open up the corresponding file in S3PE, locate the resource that seems like it's the one that you want to hear again, and click on it then hit the Delete key and then save the package file in the File menu. The override will be disabled, going back to the original sound, meaning that you'll hear the musical cue again.

AUDT Resources Modified:

The 'Compatibility and Known Issues' Section

• Having suffered long enough from prolonged Sims withdrawal, I went ahead and updated this for all remaining expansion packs. Happy simming!
• You can safely install any of these packages without breaking anything even if you don't have the expansion in question, although obviously without having the expansion there's no need to do so.
• This should be compatible with all The Sims 3 versions from 1.00 through infinity, since it simply overrides binary resources. I have tested patch 1.50 and patch 1.67 with no issues.

Additional Credits:

• jonha, for the original "No more annoying sounds" mod and the "four null bytes" method
• Peter L Jones, for S3PE
• EditPad Pro, my favourite plain-text editor/hex editor