Battle actor sound table

Battle actor sound table

Battle actor sound table

The sound effects an actor makes in battle (a monster’s growl, an attack impact, a character’s weapon swing) are not stored in the monster .dat file. The .dat Section 9 and Section 10 hold AKAO sound data that the PC engine parses but never plays.

Instead, the sounds come from a table baked into FF8_EN.exe, BattleActorSoundTable, indexed by the actor’s com_id (the same enemy id stored in each scene.out encounter, offset 0x38). Each com_id owns up to 7 sound slots; the battle animation picks a slot by number, and the table turns that into a global sound.

Lookup chain

An actor sound plays through this chain:

The animation-sequence VM (Section 5) runs a sound opcode (0xB5/0xB6 for an actor-local sound, 0xB8 for a global one). The opcode carries a slot number (0–6) and a flags byte.
BdPlayActorSE takes the running actor’s com_id and the slot number and reads BattleActorSoundTable[com_id][slot]. That value is a world-sound id.
PlayWorldSound passes the world-sound id to GetSoundID_ForWorld, which decodes it into an audio archive sound id (an index into audio.fmt).
PlaySound plays that id through DirectSound.

So the answer to “how does the game know which sound to play” is: the actor’s com_id selects the row, and the animation’s slot number selects the column. The .dat file only decides when to fire a slot, not what the slot sounds like.

World-sound id encoding

The values stored in the table are “world-sound ids”. GetSoundID_ForWorld splits each id into a category (id / 10000) and an index (id % 10000), then adds a per-category base:

Category (`id / 10000`)	Base	Used for
1	2150	—
21	150	Character (party) battle sounds
22	180	Monster battle sounds (the common case)
24	370	—
30	710	—
35	980	—
40	1230	Shared battle-effect sounds
41	1510	Shared battle-effect sounds
42	1920	Shared battle-effect sounds
50	2784	—
69	—	Special case: `690000` → `2060`, otherwise `id − 688040`
any other	0	`index` used directly

Final audio id = base[category] + index.

Worked example: world-sound id 220037 → category 22, index 37 → 180 + 37 = audio id 217 (the first slot of com_id 0x11).

The decoded audio id is the entry index into the audio archive (audio.fmt / audio.dat). This is verified against the retail archive: e.g. index 217 is com_id 0x11 (GIM52A) and indices 158/159 are Squall’s — each an MS-ADPCM, 44100 Hz mono sound. The table below lists the decoded audio ids directly.

The table (`BattleActorSoundTable`)

160 rows (com_id 0x00–0x9F), 7 slots each. Empty cells are unused slots (value 0). Rows with no entries are silent actors.

0x00–0x0A are the playable characters — in com_id order: Squall, Zell, Irvine, Quistis, Rinoa, Selphie, Seifer, Edea, Laguna, Kiros, Ward. Their sounds are category-21 movement/weapon effects.
0x0B–0x10 are silent (unused actor slots).
0x11–0x9F are monsters. For most, slots 0 and 1 are the actor’s own voice pair (category 22) and any further slots are shared battle-effect sounds (category 40+) such as impacts or elemental hits.

com_id	Slot 0	Slot 1	Slot 2	Slot 3	Slot 4	Slot 5	Slot 6
0x00	158	159
0x01	151	152	153	154
0x02	168
0x03	160	161	162
0x04	155	156	157
0x05	165	166	167
0x06	163	164
0x07	176	179	1783
0x08	174	175
0x09	169	172
0x0A	170	171	173
0x0B
0x0C
0x0D
0x0E
0x0F
0x10
0x11	217	218	1691
0x12	288	289	1395
0x13	211	212	1346
0x14	191	192	1346	1356
0x15	213	214	1346	1350
0x16	207	208	1285	1348
0x17	229	230	1356
0x18	255	256
0x19	185	186	1250	1259	1277
0x1A	181	182	1257
0x1B	253	254
0x1C	253	254
0x1D	193	194	1309	1453
0x1E	187	188	1233
0x1F	195	196	1423
0x20	197	198	1328
0x21	215	216	1346
0x22	199	200	1346	1376
0x23	267	268	1230
0x24	203	204	1346	1799
0x25	231	232	1346	1425
0x26	205	206	1325
0x27	209	210	1311
0x28	201	202	1294	1311	1476
0x29	251	252	1346
0x2A	219	220
0x2B	225	226	1356	1401
0x2C	249	250	1346	1348
0x2D	247	248	1346
0x2E	243	244	1356
0x2F	304	305
0x30	221	222	1261	1401	1407
0x31	233	234	356
0x32	306	307
0x33	223	224	1559	1561
0x34	269	270	1303
0x35	245	246
0x36	273	274	1844	1850
0x37	265	266
0x38	265	266	1409	1411
0x39	227	228	1394
0x3A	263	264	1230	1348
0x3B	271	272
0x3C	235	236	2011
0x3D	237	238
0x3E	290	291	1303	1311	1500
0x3F	308	309	1346
0x40	296	297
0x41	239	240	1532	1699
0x42	302	303	1679	1682
0x43	275	276	1366	1367	1370
0x44	241	242	1356	1682
0x45	292	293	1356	1393	1701
0x46	265	266	1384
0x47	278	279
0x48	282	283	1713	1786
0x49	310	311	1346
0x4A	286	287
0x4B	314	315	1356
0x4C	358	360	361
0x4D	277	1385
0x4E	335	365	1532	1684
0x4F	336	366	1684
0x50	1255	1261
0x51	332	1572
0x52	343	1682
0x53	300	301	1682	1703
0x54	1686
0x55
0x56	344
0x57	1230
0x58	1255	1261
0x59	1230
0x5A	1255	1261
0x5B	345	1346
0x5C	1230
0x5D	341	342
0x5E	1230
0x5F	339	340	1230	1723
0x60	1796
0x61	1796
0x62	334
0x63	324	325	1713	1714
0x64	280	281	1710
0x65	334
0x66
0x67
0x68	346	1783	1783
0x69	257	258	1230	1255	1261	1691	1693
0x6A	352	1900
0x6B	183	184	1348	1356
0x6C	189	190	1245	1381
0x6D	261	262	1356
0x6E	312	313	1689
0x6F	316	317	355	1356	1706	1708
0x70	318	319	1356
0x71	257	258	1230	1255	1261	1691	1693
0x72	257	258	1230	1255	1261	1691	1693
0x73	259	260	1964
0x74	346
0x75	294	295
0x76	294	295
0x77	320	321	1348	1691
0x78
0x79	322	323	1794	1957	1959
0x7A	1792
0x7B	1792
0x7C	1230
0x7D	298	299
0x7E	326	327
0x7F	257	258	1230	1255	1261	1691	1693
0x80	354
0x81
0x82	353	1897
0x83	348	349	1894
0x84	350	351	1894
0x85	347	1914
0x86	359
0x87	1230	1697
0x88	1789
0x89	357	1691
0x8A	2038
0x8B
0x8C	362	363	2041
0x8D	2036
0x8E	367	2044
0x8F
0x90
0x91
0x92	284	285	1532	1699	1701	1967
0x93	337	338	1691	1792
0x94	328	329	1682	1703
0x95	330	331	1679	1682
0x96	1230
0x97	1255	1261
0x98	1230	1697
0x99	1789
0x9A	364
0x9B	364
0x9C	364
0x9D	364
0x9E	334
0x9F	1230

Notes

Bounds. BdPlayActorSE only reads the table when com_id < 0xA0 and slot < 7; anything outside is ignored (no sound).
3D variant. BdPlayActorSE3D reads the same table but positions the sound in the battle scene when the 3D-sound capability flag is set; otherwise it falls back to the same stereo path as BdPlayActorSE.
Global sounds. The 0xB8 opcode path (BdPlaySy) does not use this table; its operand is already a world-sound id and goes straight to PlayWorldSound.
Shared rows. Several monster rows are identical (e.g. 0x69/0x71/0x72/0x7F share the same 7 sounds), so a family of related enemies reuses one sound set.
Editing the sounds. Changing an actor’s battle sounds means editing the referenced entries in the audio archive (e.g. with the Julia tool in FF8UltimateEditor). Changing which sound an actor points to means editing BattleActorSoundTable in the executable; the .dat sound sections have no effect on either.

Reference (names & addresses)

FF8_EN.exe:

Name	Address	Role
`BattleActorSoundTable`	0xB8A418	Actor sound table: 160 × 7 DWORD world-sound ids, indexed `[com_id][slot]`
`BdPlayActorSE`	0x5015A0	Reads `BattleActorSoundTable[com_id][slot]`, plays it (stereo)
`BdPlayActorSE3D`	0x501640	Same lookup, positional (3D) playback
`BdPlaySy`	0x501740	Plays a world-sound id directly (global sounds, no table)
`linkedToSoundAnimSeq`	0x505AB0	Section-5 opcode handler that supplies the slot number and flags
`PlayWorldSound`	0x46B2A0	World-sound id → channel/panning → `PlaySound`
`GetSoundID_ForWorld`	0x46B120	Decodes a world-sound id into an audio-archive id
`PlaySound`	0x4699A0	DirectSound / ADPCM playback