Issues, Workarounds & Localization

There were some people a while back wondering if this were possible, and it was for some time but the file structure of EVE appears to have changed since then. So here are new instructions for anyone wanting to hear Aura (the voice narration in EVE) in another language but leave the UI in the current language. For me, I don't like the Japanese UI (text is too small) but I love the Japanese Aura voice, so that is what I use this for.

In short, all this involves is 1. using an index to find the file that contains the audio that EVE currently uses and the file for the audio that you want, 2. backing up both files somewhere else (for safety), and 3. replacing the current audio file with the audio file of the new language. EVE does not appear to check file sizes or hashes when loading (I think), so as long as the filename is the same it will work.


Steps:
1. Make sure EVE is not running. Go to your EVE install folder (where the cache is stored, which may be different than the main install location if you changed it in the launcher settings.) By default it's something like C:\Program Files (x86)\EVE

2. Navigate into the SharedCache folder

3. Decide which server you want the changes to apply to (each server has separate data files and must be edited individually). Probably for you this will be Tranquility. Open the index file for that server (Tranquility = index_tq.txt, SIngularity = index_sisi.txt, Duality = index_duality.txt)

4. This is a very long text file. Do a search for "voice.bnk". There will be 6 results. The results look something like this:

res:/audio/english(us)/voice.bnk,91/910c629bce572150_d6e72c31395fbb3048fef971710162f7,d6e72c31395fbb3048fef971710162f7,43753779,43361314

The "english(us)" part obviously indicates this is for English. The first number here (91 in this case) indicates the folder. The long string of text after the slash but before the comma is the filename. This is the file that contains all the English voice data.

5. The next part is simple replacement. Back in the SharedCache folder, navigate into ResFiles. Find the folder for the audio language of the language that EVE is currently set to (in this example 91), and inside that, find the filename that was specified in the index (ex. 910c62...) and copy it somewhere as backup. Then do the same process for the audio language that you wish to use in its place (for Japanese, this was folder 49 and filename 495701...), and back it up somewhere too. It's important to keep backups.

6. Paste a copy of the audio file for the language you want (ex. 495701...) into the folder of the audio file of EVE's current language (ex. 91).

7. Copy the filename of the audio file for EVE's current language (ex. 910c62...). Then delete that file.

8. Rename the audio file of the new language (that you pasted in in step 6, in this ex. 495701...) to the filename of the file you just deleted in step 7 (ex. 910c62...).

9. Open up EVE and try it out! In my example, the whole game is in English, but the voice narration is now in Japanese.


This will probably break after an update though, so you will have to redo it when that happens.

It would be great if CCP could include an option for which Aura voice we want to use, but alas. I can confirm that this workaround works.

As this does not affect gameplay in any way, and does not involve reverse-engineering or editing of game files (aside from the replacement of a single file with another unaltered game file), I do not expect that this violates the TOS or EULA, but if I am wrong I would like to know. Of course I don't take any responsibility if this breaks your game or if CCP takes action against you.