Rising note

[Fidcal]

Is it possible to have a rising note without having a long ogg file? I'm thinking of heating up a small boiler. It's not realistic to wait an hour but I think it would work for maybe a minute if there was some indication of progress, eg, an ascending note, maybe a hiss to signify increasing pressure. At the end I can have some steam come out to show its ready.

 

So, I think we can increase volume in-game but can we increase pitch? I guess an alternative might be a series of say ten, 1-second loops each playing for 6 seconds and each one a slightly higher pitch.

[OrbWeaver]

It is possible to have an infinitely ascending (or descending) sound in the form of the Shepard tone, which is the audio equivalent of the rotating barber's pole illusion. I'm not sure it would work for a boiler though, which tends to be associate with bubbling or hissing noises rather than a tonal sound.

 

I don't think having an OGG file of 30 - 60 seconds would really be much of a problem though, at q3 this would be about 400 - 800 KB. You certainly could have a number of smaller loops which were brought into play by scripts if space was really a premium.

[Fidcal]

Not found an ideal shepard tone after a really long google. The 'best' I found was descending (though maybe my sound program can reverse it.) I was thinking if I blend it with hisses and other noises it might work.

[OrbWeaver]

Yeah, I don't think a shepard tone would really be suitable in this situation. Perhaps you could post some images of what the boiler is going to look like, which might provide some inspiration regarding how it should sound?

[Fidcal]

Yes OK. Thanks.

 

Meanwhile I've reversed the descending shepard tone and raised the pitch. It's about a minute long. I want to hear what it sounds like rather faint behind some continual hisses and maybe other noises. It might be OK. If not, rethink. I'm also going to add a dial with a moving pointer. The whole point is to give the player a cue that he has to wait a while otherwise he'll light the fire then wonder wtf.

 

 

Here's the boiler atop a small furnace. Sadly I made that before I realized the whistle model has its own tank which is better! But damned if I'm going to waste my tank. In reality it would take a couple of hours to heat up but we have to suspend disbelief somewhat. The player lights the furnace with a slow match. Once the boiler is hot enough it starts up the lantern bot and the generator. I have that part working. I just hope I don't electrocute myself doing this.

 

 

 

 

[Fidcal]

My rising note is an mp3. I thought I'd read that we can now use mp3s but its not working. Mmm... It's around 500K. I don't know how ogg compares or even if I have a convertor. I think I got one for something else but I'll have to search my drives.

[OrbWeaver]

I want to hear what it sounds like rather faint behind some continual hisses and maybe other noises. It might be OK.

 

That's almost certainly going to be necessary, compositing lots of different sounds is what gives the best result. I can also try recording some sounds which might be suitable, such as the kettle boiling or the house boiler lighting.

 

My rising note is an mp3. I thought I'd read that we can now use mp3s but its not working. Mmm... It's around 500K. I don't know how ogg compares or even if I have a convertor. I think I got one for something else but I'll have to search my drives.

 

Converting from one compressed format to another doesn't normally give the best results, but it might be OK if the bitrates are reasonably high and the sound is kept low in the mix. I could probably synthesise a shepard tone anyway if necessary, I have loads of soft synth plugins although I barely know how to use most of them.

[Fidcal]

Thanks, what I need is to indicate progression otherwise the player just hearing some hisses and sounds for a minute will think nothing is happening. The shepard has this in spades. Unfortunately I can't get it to work in game at the moment. It converted to 250K ogg. It works in DR so the shader is set up right. The speaker works in-game if I temporarily switch in another shader on the speaker so the speaker is set up right. So that's set up right. I can only imagine its the size of it. Maybe I have some max sound size config set somewhere?

[Fidcal]

It occurred to me that since the shepard tone repeats each sequence and this recording appears to have about 6 or 7 repeats that I might cut out one sequence and put it in a loop. This works but I can hear the join. I'm sure Cool Edit Pro has a feature that smooths over joins but I can't find it now. Maybe it only shows if two tracks overlap it can smerge them together.

 

Anyway, I've about exhausted my skills so if you want to try something then I'd be grateful. If you want this tone I can upload it but any ideas you can come up with should be fine.

[OrbWeaver]

Sure, I can make seamless loops fairly easily in Reaper and can composite multiple sounds together etc. I'll try and get some suitable recordings/sources over the next few days.

[Fidcal]

OK, thanks.

[OrbWeaver]

No Shepard tone as such, but here is a first attempt I cobbled together with some recorded/FreeSound sounds and volume/EQ envelopes.

 

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/27342522/Boiler_Startup.ogg

 

It's just an example sound with the startup and loop sections in one file, so could not be used in game directly, but I can export the separate leading/loop files when completed.

[Fidcal]

Sorry - I've been looking out for this so I cannot understand how I missed it for three days!

 

Yes, this is perfect. Thanks Orb. It will make an awesome scene even awesomer! I await the final with start + loop at your convenience.

[OrbWeaver]

I'm glad you like it. Here is the final PK4 with the looping sound and a sound shader:

 

http://www.2shared.com/file/n4TN64xo/fidcal_boiler.html

 

I did some testing in game, but only in an empty room so if you do want to make it louder to fit in with other sounds in your map, I suggest first increasing the maxdistance before reaching for the volume parameter, in order to avoid the "loud machinery which becomes silent after 10 paces" problem.

[Fidcal]

Thanks Orb. I'm getting server down at the moment. I'll try again tomorrow.

[Fidcal]

I'm unable to download the file Orb. 2share have so rigged the method that somehow no matter what I click it goes around in circles. They deliberately present the page to mislead and confuse the user. I know that but even so I tried all buttons and got nowhere. They try to trick me into downloading other software which I abort but nowhere can I get your file.

[OrbWeaver]

Hmm, that's odd. I can just click on the Download button and it starts to download immediately. Do you have some ad-blocking or script/image-removal add-on which is maybe preventing it from working? I could upload to another site if necessary (perhaps we have an internal testing/upload area instead?).

 

[Fidcal]

For me that button just reloads the same webpage. It does this both in Opera and Internet Explorer.

 

Have you got access to dramthethief_Dark_Mod_ftp which I think is our 'official' dark mod ftp now.

[OrbWeaver]

I forgot about the FTP. I've uploaded to:

 

ftp://darkmod@www.dramthethief.com/Audio/orbweaver/fidcal_boiler.pk4

[Fidcal]

Thanks - got it all working now and it sounds fine. I also got the shepard tones working. It didn't work before because I'd left the mp3 in the folder and not specified ogg in the shader so doom was trying and failing to use that. So I've now turned down its volume to a fainter background and put that in as a separate speaker. Altogether this gives a good sense of progression then at the end the generator starts and the lights come on etc. Very effective.