# Help with JSON editing?

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-with-json-editing/4811>\
**Category:** The Toolbox\
**Created:** [January 20, 2014, 7:57am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-with-json-editing/4811 "2014-01-20T07:57:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![The\_Lone\_Badger](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/the_lone_badger/32/8063_2.png) [@The\_Lone\_Badger](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/The_Lone_Badger)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 7:57am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-with-json-editing/4811/1 "2014-01-20T07:57:11Z")

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I’m trying to get started on editing JSONs, and while most of it is self-explanatory sometimes I just can’t figure it out. Two from my early explorations into weapon creation:

- How do you control how much noise it makes? I know noise is ammunition based and calculated based on damage but there are exceptions like the 12mm railgun and I can’t figure out how to invoke them - there’s no flag on the ammo or anything. Is it just hardcoded?

- How do you determine how much UPS charge something uses per shot? Some weapons have USE\_UPS\_20 and the like which is pretty self explanatory, but others are just USE\_UPS .

Thanks for any enlightenment you can offer, and I’ll almost certainly be back with more questions 🙂

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**Author:** ![i2amroy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/i2amroy/32/909_2.png) [@i2amroy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/i2amroy)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2014, 8:57pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-with-json-editing/4811/2 "2014-01-21T20:57:05Z")

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Loudness is always calculated based on damage (with a possible exception for gunmods, which I believe have their own “loudness” values). The reason the results might seem strange is because there is a spike right at 7 damage, where the noise amount shoots up by around 20 or so. At the moment there is no way around this.

Currently there are three different UPS flags. USE\_UPS (5 regular, 3 advanced), USE\_UPS\_20 (20 regular, 12 advanced), and USE\_UPS\_40 (40 regular, 24 advanced). In order to add other values you would need to change some of the source code, and is beyond the scope of json modding.