Mixing sound levels

[Supergreg]

I just played the FM Awaiting the Storm, which has background music and a rain ambient sound. It was hard to discern the guards' voices in the din of heavy rain and/or background music. When adjusting the levels, I discovered all these sound types---weather, voices and music---were adjusted with the same slider, ambient volume. The other parameter was sfx volume---e.g. footsteps, water arrow splash and blackjack impact.

 

Maybe it should be hard to discern what people say when there's a storm, as an FM design choice, but I think the player should be able to himself set the sound levels for ambient music. People's hearing and their ability to discern one sound from another is highly variable. Even if the ambient music sounds nicely balanced with characters' voices for the FM author, it might not for the player.

[Tels]

Hm, eah, it makes sense to have another slider for "voices", which would just adjust the AI voices.

[demagogue]

I agree with that. It really calls for a special slider just for the voices channel on AI & maybe for voiceovers (whatever channel that uses), since any other sound could come from any other kind of source, you couldn't catch them all. But voices you can deal with directly.

[Supergreg]

Like I said, I think I think the author should be able to make voices hard to make out if he sees fit to, e.g. to make weather SFX hit the player harder. It definitely made the storm more real when I played this FM. But I think ambient music should definitely be adjustable apart other sound sources.

[demagogue]

Probably the problem is that mappers are using the ambient player for the rain sounds, so that it only plays when you're outside. So as far as the engine is concerned, it's playing as if were ambient music. And some mappers still use proximity speakers for ambient music like it were a sfx. There is no easy way around that kind of problem. Mappers do what is most convenient for them, not always thinking about the volume-slider implications.

[Nachtjäger]

hello,

i just, signed in this forum.

what about general music in this mod? Is there any need in helping creating some tracks underlinining particular ambients?

I would love to help with that or anything.

[demagogue]

We have a lot of ambient tracks now, 172 to be exact (a lot of them are in sets of 5 or 6, like remixes), but if you are inspired to create some more they might find a use. It's good to have new ambients sometimes. Also people making specific FMs may want ambient tracks custom for their FM where you could help a lot.

 

What you could do is go through the ambients that are there and see if there are any situations missing that you might account for. They're located inside the tdm_sound_ambient02.pk4 & ...03.pk4 folders, which you open just like it was a .zip folder.

 

Edit: Also, it's always welcome just create some fan media for the mod, like some soundtracks that we can use for PR and publicity, like for a video, and just to have for people to download & listen to as fans of the game. This is where you might be the most helpful with something we need. We need more fan stuff generally, fan art, fan fics, fan music... This is what creates buzz for the game better than anything.

[SeriousToni]

Hello Jägermeister ;p

 

It would be awesome if you can make some new ambient tracks, because the FM authors mostly pick the same music for there mission so it became very repetitive even though there is such a big sound pool.

A good thing to know when you start is naming the files after which location they fit most (like a choir ambient for churches, etc.)

 

Nice to see a helping hand!