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Proposed sound range?


Xplosiv

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Anyone have any ideas for how far sounds should travel in-game?

I'm thinking ships should be able to be heard from pretty far away, couple hundred meters at least.  I'm fine with there being no sound in space, but on planets this should be the case. 

Say your head is down and you are mining away, you should be able to hear a ship coming, or is close by. So you can prepare yourself.... :ph34r:

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This is actually a really interesting question I hadn’t thought off before. The handling of sound within an atmosphere seems more like a technical detail to me (I presume it will fall off with the inverse square of distance, or something like that). But due to DU’s nature the devs might actually need to make some tweaks for massive amounts of players – nobody wants a mess of white noise or broken sounds if they are in a room filled with players.

 

What I think is more interesting though is sound in space – this has gameplay and atmosphere ramifications, depending on the level of realism the team at NQ is going for. Personally I would prefer no sounds in space – but there are reasons for why one might opt against that.

Does anybody have info from NQ about this?

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This is actually a really interesting question I hadn’t thought off before. The handling of sound within an atmosphere seems more like a technical detail to me (I presume it will fall off with the inverse square of distance, or something like that). But due to DU’s nature the devs might actually need to make some tweaks for massive amounts of players – nobody wants a mess of white noise or broken sounds if they are in a room filled with players.

 

What I think is more interesting though is sound in space – this has gameplay and atmosphere ramifications, depending on the level of realism the team at NQ is going for. Personally I would prefer no sounds in space – but there are reasons for why one might opt against that.

Does anybody have info from NQ about this?

I think sounds in space should unrealistically be dulled... a lot. By about 90% a lot.

And have a filter that makes sounds more deep.

Better than having no sound, but slightly more realistic than having normal sound.

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I think sounds in space should unrealistically be dulled... a lot. By about 90% a lot.

And have a filter that makes sounds more deep.

Better than having no sound, but slightly more realistic than having normal sound.

Alternatively go a lore route and say that the cockpits or enclosed spaces simulate sounds so as to not hinder the sanity of a pilot or crew or to allow for indicators or something along those lines. There is a few ways around it but there hasn't been an official statement as to how this is going to work. 

While realism is nice, I prefer having sound.

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Alternatively go a lore route and say that the cockpits or enclosed spaces simulate sounds so as to not hinder the sanity of a pilot or crew or to allow for indicators or something along those lines. There is a few ways around it but there hasn't been an official statement as to how this is going to work. 

 

While realism is nice, I prefer having sound.

Good idea! In addition, what do you think of some kind of sound sensors? Different from microphones, since they pick up sound waves, which don't exist in the vacuum of space as you pointed out. Something that senses motion that would normally become sound, then recreates that into sound for the pilot.

 

Also, some of what you are looking for was discussed in this forum: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/user/2041-kytheum/

 

Try typing "voice", "chat" etc. into the forum search, a few threads came up when I did this, although I haven't read all of them yet.

I realize you weren't necessarily looking for anything related to voices, but it does fall within the realm of sounds that would have a range limit.

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As ccp puts it: space would be boring without sound. Their explanation is what anasasi posted.

I would prefer to hear whining of metal as two ships went by each other and the sound of reverberations as weaponry operated, possibly having a way for materials to reduce sound volume behind them given the direction the sound originated, this way, you won't be in a ship and listen to ships flying on the outside, like there are no hulls or armors on a ship to begin with. That's quite immersion breaking. It worked in EVE, because your pilot was one with the ship via sci-fi magic and EVE logic, but in DUAL it would simply make it a hassle if a fleet of ships was to fly together and the only thing you could hear as a crewman was

 

 

"FFFFFFFFFFFFFFZZZZZZZZZZZZZZGGGGGGGGGGGGGZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZRRRRRRRRRRR"

 

 

just because there's no sound insolation. 

 

 

 

There will be sounds in the game in space, from machinery whining as it operates to reverbs of engines and inertia dumpers barytones as they go on their tasks. It won't be silent inside the ship, it's just you won't be hearing what's happening outside. The pilots or navigators can have some weird explanation, of the Sensors and Radars creating sounds for situational awareness, same goes for the Gunners on a ship, but the crew should not be able to hear what's happening outside.

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Yeah twerk that's exactly my interpretation. Pilot/gunner should be able to hear outside sounds, every other member of the shipcrew should only hear what's going on inside the ship. It's really annoying hearing something.from the outside with a 2m thick armor plate in between.

 

On the surface, you could just use simplified rl mechanics - that's what I was referring to

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I think hearing anything other than your own ship is cheating the people who buy the game.  Hearing another persons ship implies that their is atmosphere which is incorrect; even if that other ship is right next to you.  You should hear your ship and your weapons and nothing else.  

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I think hearing anything other than your own ship is cheating the people who buy the game.  Hearing another persons ship implies that their is atmosphere which is incorrect; even if that other ship is right next to you.  You should hear your ship and your weapons and nothing else.  

Pilots should have that luxury, think of Sensors as the ship's eyes and Radars as its ears (sorta). It's about providing the people operating the ship with situational awareness.

 

 

And it's not cheating if the game has sounds in space for pilots or gunners.  In fact, it provides tactics in PvP of going after the senros and radars and it makes builders having to come up with new tricks to hide sensors and radars without limiting their line of sight.

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Pilots should have that luxury, think of Sensors as the ship's eyes and Radars as its ears (sorta).

Maybe I dont understand it but wouldnt the beebs and bloops from your radar and instruments be enough sound to have awareness?

 

Beyond that sounds could include weapons going of, impact sounds from combat and if the engine is close enough to the pilot the roar of your engines.

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Maybe I dont understand it but wouldnt the beebs and bloops from your radar and instruments be enough sound to have awareness?

 

Beyond that sounds could include weapons going of, impact sounds from combat and if the engine is close enough to the pilot the roar of your engines.

Well, it's FutureSpace. They got the technology to emulate sounds for gunners and pilots :| 

 

It also saves computational power on server and client from having to analyse the materials and their speed of sound until the reverberation of the hit reaches you on the bridge. :| 

 

And it's a spaceship, not a sub-marine in the 1970s to have beeps and bloops :|

 

This way of "Situational Awareness" of having Sensors and Radars provide vision and sound can also explain a Third Person View when piloting a ship. Take a ship's sensors and radars away and they are forced into First Person View piloting.

 

Which incidentallly, given SMART people will build bridges at the center of the ships, would also be the key reason why a large battleship would have to have a Third Person View. Heck, that gameplay mechanic may even be tied to an Element in the game that is a form of powerful Sensor, with it being destroying demanding navigators to actually look in a screen in-game to fly the ship properly.

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And it's a spaceship, not a sub-marine in the 1970s to have beeps and bloops :|

Fair enough, I guess I'm a little bit stuck, I blame Star Trek the original series.

 

All good points btw. And I agree sounds are very important.

 

But in a capital ship would that still be a good solution? I dont think a capital ship will be piloted in a cockpit. Would you still want that type of sound in such a setting?

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Fair enough, I guess I'm a little bit stuck, I blame Star Trek the original series.

 

All good points btw. And I agree sounds are very important.

 

But in a capital ship would that still be a good solution? I dont think a capital ship will be piloted in a cockpit. Would you still want that type of sound in such a setting?

Why not? The Devs can have "ship hails" that are propagated that way. A faction may have a very certain audioclip playing as their hail, therfore you know the other person is of that faction. Think of space sounds a certain channel that you can only hear as a player only if you operate a ship in Third Person view. Then replace "ship hail" with a foghorn on a traditional ship, that is a sound only audible when a ship has the partcular sensor set up.

 

 

In a ship, they did demonstrate a chair you seat on and drive the ship. You can have three seperate screens tied to that chair, with information set into them. One of those screens can be the screen you engage the "third person view" virtual mode and your POV is replaced that way. Another screen can be the fuel and consumption rates with info being related there from each engine seeing how many got blown up, another can be your ship's speed and acceleration while another can be for chatting with the enemy ship (as VoIP has not yet been confirmed).

 

You might ask " but how will I know if I got hit hard?"

 

Operations Watch. It's a bridge, it needs specialists :| I would take an actual person relaying info to me as a navigator on what parts of the ship the enemy is going for so I can adjust my approach to them.

 

You might say " but that sounds not fun. I want flying a warship to be easy".

 

Welp, it's not. It's about tactics. Unless you fight a suicidal badguy NPC, doing the same thing every time won't save you or your ship.

 

Also, Star Trek had shaking bridges as well, like they're on a watership :|

 

 

Thing is, if and when VoIP is added, the same Sensors can be used for Voice-To-Voice communications between captains of a ship, so yes, the sound part in space is going way beyond "Realism". It's about functionality.

 

 

The crew won't hear a thing, they will only hear shots when they connect to the ship. They would certainly hear explosions and will have too deal with alarms if an area's hull is being ready to collapse to evacuate. They don't need listening to 10 ships' engines roaring, so they don't need to have access to the channel that the ship sounds operate. 

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The crew won't hear a thing, they will only hear shots when they connect to the ship. They would certainly hear explosions and will have too deal with alarms if an area's hull is being ready to collapse to evacuate. They don't need listening to 10 ships' engines roaring, so they don't need to have access to the channel that the ship sounds operate.

Yea I get that.

You make a convincing case for it. And I'm never one to call for realism in a game. It should be about a fun and engaging enviroment.

 

And on a little side note, yes I know Trek science/realism is wonky. But it never intended to be about realism. I think The expanse rates better?

 

And I dont think it should be possible to fly a cap ship solo. That doesnt make sense to me, I expect big ships to require multi crews.

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Yea I get that.

You make a convincing case for it. And I'm never one to call for realism in a game. It should be about a fun and engaging enviroment.

 

And on a little side note, yes I know Trek science/realism is wonky. But it never intended to be about realism. I think The expanse rates better?

 

And I dont think it should be possible to fly a cap ship solo. That doesnt make sense to me, I expect big ships to require multi crews.

Yeah, and I did say that on my previous reply. A ship has a Navigator, a Weapon Systems Watch, an Operations Watch, an Engineering Watch and a Commanding Office (Captain) and for safety reasons, an Executive Officer (the captain may log out, or his power may go out on his area, shit happen :P ) . All those people are a simple xample of a multicrew.

 

A C.O.'s job is to keep track of the battlefield and communicate with the rest of the fleet on what to do. The Executive Officer is the second in command in case something happens.

 

The Navigator is the ship's driver (and yes, ships have drivers >.> ). The Navigator's job is to drive the ship and keep track of different variables.

 

The Weapons System Watch is keeping track of how many turrets got knocked out, what turrets are underperforming and may or may not, depending on how much the Scripts can go, send automated commands for which turrets should engage the enemy. Your ballstic turrrets may be useless against a certain shield, so why let them fire or count on the Gunner's judgment? It's a warship after all. Hierarchy and chain of command and all that. The Weapons System Watch is the one to tell them what weapons to fire, after the Captain gives the order "lasers only" for example.

 

Engineering Watch is to coordinate the repair efforts and operate the automated repair units outside of the ship as you turn to reengage the enemy on a turn. Engineers will be busy enough within the ship if a machine overheats or a turrets gets hit and they have to repair its "HP" levls to a certain point of it to be functional again.

 

Operations Watch is for keeping track of the fleet's condition and / or if someone in the fleet asks for aid. The same person keeps track of who is on the system, in a sense, Ops Watch is the radar guy.

 

 

All of those people, take a particular task of the ship's functions in their side of the screen IRL. The Commanding Officer is the one to ACTUALLY take the decisions on what to aim for, unless the ship itself is given a direct order to focus fire on a particular target. The Captain may have a screen that can switch between the various watch stations, to monitor the situation himself when one of the watchstanders relays something to them.

 

The Navigator and all of the Operations Watch, both utilise the Sensors in a different way. 

 

 

Last part of the deal, is the Communications Watch, who is a person that deals with the messages with another ship, either text or VoIP.

 

So yeah, a battleship can't be run on its own. I hardly believe any sort of large ship can run on its own, aside from a single-seater bomber. There are too many things that run on one's screen for a single person to have a million windows or tabs open.

 

And on the topic of sounds, the Captain can elect to listen to the battle, or can elect to tap into the Operations' Watch or Communications' Watch lines, as a second pair of ears in case the navigator misses something and even though some people may think that Navigating is the job of the Captain, well those people, are the same people who think it's smart and safe to drive while texting.

 

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I want a star trek bridge.

I get what you are saying CaptainTwerkMotor...and I understand the urgency of being able to hear ships in space to be able to target them or avoid them.  But I think using sound is the wrong way to go about it.  I think ships, as modern fighter jets do, should have computer based targeting systems that would show up on a HUD.  Fighter jets (modern) don't hear the tanks that they are about to wreck...they don't hear the jets they are about to squash.  In fact, if you hear another jet in a jet you are way to close to them or they just burst the sound barrier.  

I know you don't want it to be a silent game and I don't either which is why i suggest hearing your own ship and guns...which I find to be palatable and plausible.  

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I know you don't want it to be a silent game and I don't either which is why i suggest hearing your own ship and guns...which I find to be palatable and plausible.  

Uhm... that's what I said. The sounds won't be audible in space. Only the people on the bridge hooked up to their Control Units and the certain Element items would be able to listen to those sounds O.o . For everyone else those sounds would be "muted". The crew would hear only hits on the ship and that sound could be muffled if the Devs make it so enclosed spaces reduce the volume. The humming of Inertia Dumpers can be utilised for the ship's crew to undertand the ship is accelerating or decelerating and such, as well as alamrs ringing, something that would be possible, if the sounds of lasers and guns and engines from other ships was to be non-audible to them. 

 

The whole "listening to sounds" is more of a feature tied to a particular machinery in the game and who knows, maybe there's a certain gameplay bonus of not having the ability to hear things in space, like, having more wattage for more weaponry or something ,who knows. And again, it would be something only the navigator who flies the ship in the Third Person View can actually listen to, so he can coordinate with the bridge's crew on whos if firing on them.

 

 

The crew and the rest of the bridge won't hear anything but humming of Inertia Dumpers and certain kind of weaponry damaging them, like Kinetic Damage weaponry, or the buzz of the shield generator as the shield absorbs Energy Damage. Which I am fine with. The guys at the bridge would have to communicate via Teamspeak or Discord or w/e they may be using, so they should be fine with one of them actually having situational awareness. It's about player convenience more than anything.

 

 

 

 

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Even the big boys of MMOs have trouble with sound...

 

In SWTOR NPCs you walk past are only supposed to be heard within a short distance.  There's bugs in the system that I saw in Beta that are still present all these years later.  Namely... you run past an NPC and hear part of its conversation... and then it trails off as it should... but as soon as you get out of what should be the hearing range... the entire conversation sound file plays over again at full volume.

 

Though I did notice they switched the NPCs who had Male models but spoke with Female voices out for the correct gender finally...

 

 

So anyway... even the big expensive MMOs have trouble.

 

 

We don't have NPCs per se but it's still important that vehicles, animals, and our own voices if that gets in... have appropriate effective ranges and volumes.  

 

For vehicles... even very loud ones... IRL can't be heard as far away as you might think.  Jet fighters coming straight at you have a shorter sound projection than behind them before they even get past Mach 1... at which point all the sound they generate is behind them and you can't hear them coming.

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As has been stated before, make everything hard.

 

If you're on a ship in deep space, you only hear the whirring of your engines, the firing of your guns, other crew members, and some creepy music composed by NQ. A few thousand atoms per cubic metre is not enough to carry any information.

 

Navigators would be those with access to elements that are connected to various electromagnetic sensors on the outside of the ship. You can generate strong signals if you want to easily find others, but they'll be able to find you without difficulty too. Turn off the engines if you don't want infrared sensors picking you up, scan across all ranges to detect regularly travelling ships, dead ships, and those flying towards you (FTL shouldn't be a complete surprise if you invest in some high powered sensors to pick up the tachyons or whatever, scifi mumbo jumbo).

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Even the big boys of MMOs have trouble with sound...

 

In SWTOR NPCs you walk past are only supposed to be heard within a short distance.  There's bugs in the system that I saw in Beta that are still present all these years later.  Namely... you run past an NPC and hear part of its conversation... and then it trails off as it should... but as soon as you get out of what should be the hearing range... the entire conversation sound file plays over again at full volume.

 

Though I did notice they switched the NPCs who had Male models but spoke with Female voices out for the correct gender finally...

 

 

So anyway... even the big expensive MMOs have trouble.

 

 

We don't have NPCs per se but it's still important that vehicles, animals, and our own voices if that gets in... have appropriate effective ranges and volumes.  

 

For vehicles... even very loud ones... IRL can't be heard as far away as you might think.  Jet fighters coming straight at you have a shorter sound projection than behind them before they even get past Mach 1... at which point all the sound they generate is behind them and you can't hear them coming.

Jet fighters also go at Mach 2 when they are on an intercept so their sound comes after they pass over you for half a kilometer... what's your point >.> ? Even Space Engineers managed to have gradual sound dampening. Space Engineers! They managed to make something right there. Go figure.

 

Also, SWTOR's problem is with EA getting a game engine like Hero Engine, two months after it was showcased in a tech expo in 2005, the Hero Engine's official release was in 2011. SWTOR runs on an engine that is absolute garbage, because it was developed along with the game itself, so it's clunky at best.

 

You might say, EA developed SWTOR and Hero Engine, like Star Citizen developed StarEngine out of CryEngine. Not really, Chris Roberts UPDATED an already functional engine, he didn't got its frame and added everything on his own.

 

 

So yeah, sound channels and muffled sounds and all that. Totally possible to happen.

 

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