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New SFX thread


New Horizon

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Working on replacing some SFX that were never quite up to snuff, but just didn't get replaced. No offense to whoever created the current player submerging sound, but it has bugged me for some time. A little too blurpy, burbley. :)

 

At any rate, I put together a new sound effect that I hope everyone will like. I wanted something very subtle that would sound more like a transition from surface to below water, and actually blend into the underwater sound as it ended.

 

Wasn't sure where to put it, so I placed it in the voices/player folder and made an entry for it in the players sound shader.

 

this is the file name. player_submerge_1.ogg

 

To hear it alone might not sound as convincing, but I think it works very well ingame. It's not meant to be quite as audible as the current sound.

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No offense to whoever created the current player submerging sound, but it has bugged me for some time. A little too blurpy, burbley. :)

 

At any rate, I put together a new sound effect that I hope everyone will like. I wanted something very subtle that would sound more like a transition from surface to below water, and actually blend into the underwater sound as it ended.

 

Wasn't sure where to put it, so I placed it in the voices/player folder and made an entry for it in the players sound shader.

 

this is the file name. player_submerge_1.ogg

 

To hear it alone might not sound as convincing, but I think it works very well ingame. It's not meant to be quite as audible as the current sound.

Agreed.

Being a total self admitted tone junkie, I've been meaning to compile a comprehensive list of sfx in TDM and their relative audio levels - darkmod's "audio feedback" is imperative as to the player's performance.

For instance, the footstep volume levels on each different movement type, surface type, etc... needs a bit of tweaking.

I have yet to find the time to sit down and work on it though :P

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Yes, the footstep volume definitely needs to be adjusted for the next update.

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The new one sounds fine to me, but I couldn't find the one we actually use, is it a D3 sound?

 

(If so, cool, one less to replace for a d3-free TDM :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Yeah, I'm not sure where the one we were using is stored either. Maybe it is a D3 sound. Glad you like the new one. :) I've got someone working on a young builder vocal set, and I'm hunting through for any sfx that I might be able to tighten up along the way. Looking into little side projects like this to get my sea legs back, and deliver some work.

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Yeah, I'm not sure where the one we were using is stored either. Maybe it is a D3 sound. Glad you like the new one. :) I've got someone working on a young builder vocal set, and I'm hunting through for any sfx that I might be able to tighten up along the way. Looking into little side projects like this to get my sea legs back, and deliver some work.

 

Nice!

I'm re-recording the pro vocals... I really, really don't like them :S - so amateur

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I've committed a few new sounds, this time for the player bow/arrow sounds.

 

New

 

bow draw

bow sheath

bow unsheath.

 

I always found the ones we had sounded like they had no weight behind them. The bow sheathing and unsheathing sound like a pencil. I'm just producing these by frankensteining some free sounds I have, so I hope they're acceptable to everyone.

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It seems like the timing of the sword sheath sound is too soon, seems like it should start right when the arm goes down. I can't tell the difference in sounds for the sword. Can for the bow.

 

 

I figured out some things that might make for some better footsteps should anyone try to make a realistic set. One is having some dust and/or a few grains of dirst underneath the shoe. It makes for a nice, subtle, surface texture sound. Also, when you slide the shoe over the surface during contact, quickly, like for running sounds, it makes a great subtle scrape sound, which is a very familiar and realistic sound to me. Definitely try it out. Its not overkill. Not saying it should happen every time, maybe once, maybe never, i'm still figuring out what sounds best to my ears... Heres a bunch of footsteps i made a couple weeks ago with the XtremeMusic that demonstrate this crunchy sound:

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?ng2ymikwwty

 

 

The other thing I noticed is that running has a bassy "thud" happening along with the other sounds.

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It seems like the timing of the sword sheath sound is too soon, seems like it should start right when the arm goes down. I can't tell the difference in sounds for the sword. Can for the bow.

 

 

I figured out some things that might make for some better footsteps should anyone try to make a realistic set. One is having some dust and/or a few grains of dirst underneath the shoe. It makes for a nice, subtle, surface texture sound. Also, when you slide the shoe over the surface during contact, quickly, like for running sounds, it makes a great subtle scrape sound, which is a very familiar and realistic sound to me. Definitely try it out. Its not overkill. Not saying it should happen every time, maybe once, maybe never, i'm still figuring out what sounds best to my ears... Heres a bunch of footsteps i made a couple weeks ago with the XtremeMusic that demonstrate this crunchy sound:

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?ng2ymikwwty

 

 

The other thing I noticed is that running has a bassy "thud" happening along with the other sounds.

 

Doesn't sound too bad, though there is a lot of background noise (or not enough sound volume).

I'm gonna say it... I like the footsteps we have.

Honestly, a soundshader adjustment (with the volumes) of the existing step sounds will make a world of a difference... unless the team decides on re-doing a "realistic" set, which I don't particularly want.

Besides, what's so un realistic with the ones we have? The set we have is me running/walking on all of those exact surfaces at those exact speeds! Doesn't get much more real then that (other then the fact they are too loud in-game currently, but like I said: soundshader adjustments).

Anyhoo, that's my late night rant... sleep time.

 

@ New Horizon:

Love the new sounds, the bow draw sounds so creaky and satisfying! What are you using for recording? Is it synthesized? If so with what?

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It seems like the timing of the sword sheath sound is too soon, seems like it should start right when the arm goes down. I can't tell the difference in sounds for the sword. Can for the bow.

 

I didn't touch the sword sounds. I only did bow draw, bow sheath and bow unsheath. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the sword.

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@ New Horizon:

Love the new sounds, the bow draw sounds so creaky and satisfying! What are you using for recording? Is it synthesized? If so with what?

 

For anything I have recorded myself, I use a Behringer B2 Pro mic, and a lot of sound dampening foam. :) I'm cobbling these sounds together from some free sounds I found online. There are a couple of sites that have some pretty decent free sounds too. One such site is freesound.

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I didn't touch the sword sounds. I only did bow draw, bow sheath and bow unsheath. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the sword.

 

My bad, I guess when i read over "sheath", my brain immediately thought sword...

 

@Gold, nothing wrong with your footsteps really, they sound a lot like the Thief 1/2 "clip clop". If you think there perfect as they are, more power to you. I haven't heard any grumblings over the footsteps from the team either and i think everyone sees them as an "upgrade". I'd just prefer a more realistic set. I think its mainly the stone set that feels wrong to me. It seems like the sound is just the heel strike or the foot is planted all at once.

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My bad, I guess when i read over "sheath", my brain immediately thought sword...

 

@Gold, nothing wrong with your footsteps really, they sound a lot like the Thief 1/2 "clip clop". If you think there perfect as they are, more power to you. I haven't heard any grumblings over the footsteps from the team either and i think everyone sees them as an "upgrade". I'd just prefer a more realistic set. I think its mainly the stone set that feels wrong to me. It seems like the sound is just the heel strike or the foot is planted all at once.

 

Lol the entire thief community seems to be completely split down the middle... over footstep sounds :P

What do you think is more realistic? More of a heel/toe strike?

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I think the farther you go in the direction of realism the quieter the heal strike is compared to the rest of the foot plant. Total realism (which isn't what im after) is virtually silence, something i proved over and over during my childhood midnight "excursions" into the neighborhood with friends....in full camouflage.....with a paintball gun....and black face paint.... My initial experiments have led me to try and balance out the sounds of the heel and ball and actually step on the side on the shoe so new shoe material is constanty hiting the surface. This reduces the "heel to ball" (clip clop) sound, and gives more of a "Pllllllllaaaaaaaannnntt" sound, like a slow cautious footstep (if that made any sense at all...). This doesn't totally eliminate the heel/ball sounds from being the foremost sounds within the footstep sounds, but it reduces them to a level that sounds more right to me. I'm still trying to figure out which combination of settings gives the least amount of noise, so i still haven't formed a solid opinion on anything yet.

 

Heres some intitial stone walk footsteps i made a couple weeks ago, which have too much noise (from the XtremeMusic card) and are of bad over-all quality and are too quiet, but they show you the different feel: http://www.mediafire.com/?ueml1qxmmwx

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I think the farther you go in the direction of realism the quieter the heal strike is compared to the rest of the foot plant. Total realism (which isn't what im after) is virtually silence, something i proved over and over during my childhood midnight "excursions" into the neighborhood with friends....in full camouflage.....with a paintball gun....and black face paint.... My initial experiments have led me to try and balance out the sounds of the heel and ball and actually step on the side on the shoe so new shoe material is constanty hiting the surface. This reduces the "heel to ball" (clip clop) sound, and gives more of a "Pllllllllaaaaaaaannnntt" sound, like a slow cautious footstep (if that made any sense at all...). This doesn't totally eliminate the heel/ball sounds from being the foremost sounds within the footstep sounds, but it reduces them to a level that sounds more right to me. I'm still trying to figure out which combination of settings gives the least amount of noise, so i still haven't formed a solid opinion on anything yet.

 

Heres some intitial stone walk footsteps i made a couple weeks ago, which have too much noise (from the XtremeMusic card) and are of bad over-all quality and are too quiet, but they show you the different feel: http://www.mediafire.com/?ueml1qxmmwx

 

Doesn't sound too shabby.

I guess at this point its a matter of personal taste.

You know, we do need more footstep sounds on different surfaces :).

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On the topic of tweaking sounds, NH, could you take a look at the shoulder/unshoulder body sounds? It's been raised that there is a 'drop body' grunt that goes on for two or three seconds after the body has already been dropped.

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On the topic of tweaking sounds, NH, could you take a look at the shoulder/unshoulder body sounds? It's been raised that there is a 'drop body' grunt that goes on for two or three seconds after the body has already been dropped.

 

Yup, I'll take a look at that. I think that might be the 'unshoulder heavy character' sound. In T2X, they had a neat effect where the heavier characters took an extra second to shoulder/unshoulder, so I created one in case we were to a state for it to use with Builder forgers...or other heavy set folk. Might not be the case, but I'll fix it up.

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Yeah, I couldn't either. There's a shoulder body reference but not a drop one. Could the same sounds be being used for both?

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I was wondering, we have 5 arrow_flight_X that occur when releasing an arrow, making the "whoosh" sound. Do those occur when arrows fly over your head too? I have 4 different bow release sounds i made and was wondering if there going to conflict with another purpose. I'll upload them if anyone would like to try them out.

 

Also, in the archery section of the training map, when standing at the arrow quiver and firing an arrow into the nearest tree that lies along the fence to the right, I noticed the impact is completely silent, yet the tree is very close. There was no "max/min distance" string in the sound shader, so i don't know what it's default is, but I found that setting the "max distance" in the sound shader to 33 allowed for a very quiet, but very satisfying "thud" when an arrow hit the farthest target (when standing at the fence). Anyway, if this isn't something that has already been debated, are there any problems with moving this up to 33ish?

 

Also, i made a couple decent fall-to-death sounds consisting of quick bassy thud along with cracking bones. Is there a sound just for this action? I'll also upload this and some others.

 

edit: I was going to make some sounds for various items that don't have their own sounds yet. I've already made a few, like 4 for the large kitchen knife and 4 for the large wooden spoon. Is there any concern about performance thus far that relate to how many sounds to be used for each thing or am I safe to make 4 for each of the most common items i've thus far seen in maps?

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I was wondering, we have 5 arrow_flight_X that occur when releasing an arrow, making the "whoosh" sound. Do those occur when arrows fly over your head too? I have 4 different bow release sounds i made and was wondering if there going to conflict with another purpose. I'll upload them if anyone would like to try them out.

 

Also, in the archery section of the training map, when standing at the arrow quiver and firing an arrow into the nearest tree that lies along the fence to the right, I noticed the impact is completely silent, yet the tree is very close. There was no "max/min distance" string in the sound shader, so i don't know what it's default is, but I found that setting the "max distance" in the sound shader to 33 allowed for a very quiet, but very satisfying "thud" when an arrow hit the farthest target (when standing at the fence). Anyway, if this isn't something that has already been debated, are there any problems with moving this up to 33ish?

 

Also, i made a couple decent fall-to-death sounds consisting of quick bassy thud along with cracking bones. Is there a sound just for this action? I'll also upload this and some others.

 

edit: I was going to make some sounds for various items that don't have their own sounds yet. I've already made a few, like 4 for the large kitchen knife and 4 for the large wooden spoon. Is there any concern about performance thus far that relate to how many sounds to be used for each thing or am I safe to make 4 for each of the most common items i've thus far seen in maps?

Good work. This is the stuffs that has been bothering me about TDM.

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