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Indoor Sound effects


Majestic

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Being able to build underground, in space etc, obviously there will be different environmental sounds. What about inside your constructs, in the cockpit of your ship for example, exterior sounds would be muffled, This will probably be part of the cockpit element.  But what about inside large player made buildings?  Perhaps a positional sound effect as a tool on a very basic level?

 

Hall

Crowd

Windy  etc.

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Well, I don't see the point. If the devs want to, they may add a sound effect playing when people are congregated. I say let all sounds be organic. Noone should be able to emulate crowds without crowds actually existing.

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... why would you need an element to emulate a crowd. That's like... very very oddly specific.

Thats tricky twerk.

Ambient sounds are actually very important for immersion as you know, I'm sure.

 

It would be really jarring to stand in the middle of a crowd and not hearing anything but the wind. I'm not sure how to solve this in an intelligent way.

 

But the aspect of sound design is something I have been thinking about for a while now. I wonder who will make all the sounds. Maxime Ferrieu does the music but not the actual sound design I think.

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Thats tricky twerk.

Ambient sounds are actually very important for immersion as you know, I'm sure.

 

It would be really jarring to stand in the middle of a crowd and not hearing anything but the wind. I'm not sure how to solve this in an intelligent way.

 

But the aspect of sound design is something I have been thinking about for a while now. I wonder who will make all the sounds. Maxime Ferrieu does the music but not the actual sound design I think.

I can't thinkg of anything less immersive than a crowd on the background when there's no crowd at all.

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I can't thinkg of anything less immersive than a crowd on the background when there's no crowd at all.

 

Same here, but in places where large numbers of players congregate it's equally as weird to me with so many people standing in one place and not hearing any crowd noise.  There must be some way arouind it other than music.

 

Ofc as you said, this is being very specific, the main idea is sound effects in general.

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Thats why I said 'an intelligent' solution. ;)

Since everything in the game is an object, everything should emit a sound when it executes a given method and if you're in range of that particular sound you'd hear it.  For Example, when your character takes a step, it could include a call like

 

PlaySound("step.mp3", 3, 0)

 

Where step is the file being played, 3 is the volume and 0 is the direction (0 meaning omnidirectional, 1 meaning forward, 3 meaning right etc.)

 

It may also be that a step in a corridor sounds different than a step on grass, snow or dry leaves, so it may check where you are stepping before it plays the sound:

 

switch(self.location.terrain) {
case 'corridor' :
PlaySound("StepCorridor.mp3", 3, 0);
break;
case 'grass' :
PlaySound("StepGrass.mp3", 2, 0);
break;
case 'water' :
PlaySound("StepWater.mp3", 4, 0);
break;
...
default :
PlaySound("StepDefault.mp3", 3, 0);
}
 
This file will play on your computer but it will also play on the machine of everyone in range to hear it.  For most sounds the range would be limited, say a dozen meters.  For very loud sounds like:
 
PlaySound("SpaceshipCrash.mp3", 12, 0);
 
People could hear that sound for kilometers.  It would be interesting to allow that to propagate at the speed of sound so when the ship gets blown up 4 km above your head, you see it about 12 seconds before you hear it.  Imagine you're in your lab working on a robotic limb and suddenly you hear a muffled explosion in the distance.  You look up from your desk and out your window in the distance is a smoking hole where a building used to be, emergency crews already swinging into action.
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There's probably going to be some kind of environmental sound effects or ambiance.   We can all agree on that right?  

 

So the problem is this is a building game.  So an area that might have been a dense wooded area with fog and crickets might later become the middle of someone's stark white labratory or cozy livingroom.  This is something that they never solved in Landmark.  One of the things that drove me nuts in Landmark was ending up with the border between two different environmental areas in the middle of your build.  It would basically ruin an otherwise perfect spot for a project.

 

I think it would be excellent for them to give us ways to control any environmental ambiance or sound effects.  Even background music.

 

Eventually.  Not exactly a top priority.  

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You could have some sort of system checks going on for an area depending on elements detected. 

 

Examples:

 

If a lot of trees are in an area, an ambient sound of a forest could be played. 

 

If there's a lot of grass but not much else, perhaps things like crickets or some similar (alien?) ambience. 

 

When the game detects a lot of structures, make it play a windy, more spartan ambience. 

 

These are just examples, but you could probably tweak it so the game detects what to play fairly reasonably.

 

 

As far as people go - you could have ambience based on how many people are in a particular area, or several factors.  If a lot of buildings are nearby and the area goes over a certain threshold of people, play an ambient crowd or marketplace sound.  Beats people just standing around silently.  But on the flipside, if a player found themselves in that same space by themselves, like late at night, they'd only hear the wind.  Other factors, such as whether or not combat is taking place nearby could determine which, if any, sounds would be played.

 

Just some ideas.

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It would be nice to have that feeling of actually being in a crowd.

I also like the idea of being able to control things like music in your own structure. (Of course, the next question is; can you upload music or will you be stuck with their music Library?)

 

Either way, I would hate to feel like I am walking through a Minecraft town where there is no ambient crowd sound when I go to the biggest market on the planet!

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