Reorganize The Ambients

[pakmannen]

I'm thinking of reorganizing the ambients, because honestly I don't really like the current layout. We've got tons of various "hums" in different folders based on what they "might" sound like. I'm afraid it's going to cause more confusion than actually help people find what they need if we keep it like this.

 

Problem is I'm not sure what would be a better way to sort them.

 

One alternative would be to have them all in the same folder, and just use prefixes to sort them. Example:

 

animal_dog1 (currently in /city)

animal_dog2 (currently in /city)

animal_frog01 (currently in /forest)

animal_frog02 (currently in /forest)

animal_wolf01 (currently in /forest)

animal_bats01 (currently in /underground)

animal_bats02 (currently in /underground)

 

All of the above sounds are currently located in different folders, but I think it's more logical to sort them as animals instead of where one might find the animal.

 

Of course the other alternative is to come up with a new set of folders with more descriptive names instead of naming them after where one might find the sound in question.

 

Once this is done I will also (finally) write soundshaders for every ambient and every sfx we have. So that mappers can actually use them.

[sparhawk]

I guess the best is to base them on themes. Based on surroudings is probably not a good idea. Is a cricket a forrest, a city, or a farm surroudning? Grouping it based on what they sound like is IMO better. All animals, public humming, and so on.

[New Horizon]

I agree with spar.

[pakmannen]

Well, I already said that didn't I?

 

The question was if we should put them all in the same folder (I'm thinking this could be a good idea, when you think about how you browse sounds in the editor) or if we should come up with a new set of folders.

[sparhawk]

I know that you said that. I just confirmed it.

 

I guess it would be ok to put it in seperate folders by them

One folder for animals, one for doors, one for machines, etc.. I guess it would be better organized this way, right?

Having everything in one directory could get a bit crowded.

[pakmannen]

Well, we have to look at it from the level designer's point of view. When you fire up the sound editor, it lists all the shaders available, which means all the ai shaders etc. On top of that, all the standard Doom 3 shaders are listed as well (though if you remove the correct pk4 file from base, that's taken care of). The more shaders we have, the more confusing it's gonna be.

 

And the problem is I don't think you can't "nest" the shaders so that one shader lies within another. That would have been perfect otherwise.

 

So if we go for a new set of folders, then there should be very few of them, like with the sfx. Three or so.

[sparhawk]

Arent; the shaders nested like the textures? I haven't looked how sound is organzied in D3 as I don't know how to use the editor for this, but with textures and models, we have the materials and prefixed them all with 'darkmod'. So when you are looking for darkmod textures you just look in the tree and walk through the darkmod part.

[pakmannen]

You can check the soundeditor by typing editSounds in the console. There's a dropdown list where you can see all the shaders.

[pakmannen]

I just noticed that the soundshaders use the prefix "tdm" instead of "darkmod". I guess this should be changed. No point in using different prefixes everywhere.

[saxmeister]

I just noticed that the soundshaders use the prefix "tdm" instead of "darkmod". I guess this should be changed. No point in using different prefixes everywhere.

 

Changed to all DarkMOD?

 

So, the sounds could work like this....

• Animals
  
• Aardvarks
  • [+]aard_01_breath.ogg
    [+]aard_02_breath.ogg
    [+]aard_01_step.ogg
    

  [*]Voices

  • [+]Guards
    [+]Humans
    [+]Player
    [+]Spectres/Ghosts
    [+]Grunts
    

  [*]SFX

  [*]Ambients

and all of these could be broken down. Perhaps we do three main folders.... SFX, Voices, Music and then divide within from there? From looking at the sound editor it looks like this could be possible. Does anyone know how deep of a file tree we could make? I've seen 3 so far....

[Ishtvan]

[EDIT: Nevermind, I'm on crack again]

[Dram]

[EDIT: Nevermind, I'm on crack again]

wtflol...

[Darkness_Falls]

I've personally not used the sound shaders before, so I'm basing my suggestions from what you guys wrote here. Here is my recommendation. It would allow for many files to be put in single folders for easy access, yet not so chaotic that it gets overly cumbersome to find stuff, imo. I personally like having lots of files in folders so I don't have to go clicking all around through dozens of sub-folders. Yet, there does need to be some organization to it all. -- The trick is finding the happy medium. I just made these sounds up for sake of example; I don't know what we currently have/don't have. Although, we maybe don't have some of these sounds in our master sound list and might need them? Not sure. Oh well, here's my envisionment of the folder/sub-folder structure. It can be done millions of ways -- so nobody will have a righr or wrong approach -- but hopefully this is helpful...

• 
  
• nature
  • 
    
  • ambient_miscellaneous
    • creek_gentle_flow.ogg
      
    • creek_trickle.ogg
      
    • ocean_distant.ogg
      
    • ocean_near.ogg
      
    • river_gentle.ogg
      
    • river_fast.ogg
      
    • stream.ogg
      
    • water_drips.ogg
      
    • water_ripples.ogg
      
    • water_splash.ogg
      
    • waterfall.ogg
      
    • etc.
      

  • 
    
  • animals
    • bat_squeaks.ogg
      
    • bat_wing_flaps.ogg
      
    • bird_wing_flaps.ogg
      
    • burrick_grunt_01.ogg
      
    • burrick_grunt_02.ogg
      
    • cat_hiss.ogg
      
    • cat_meow.ogg
      
    • cat_purr.ogg
      
    • crickets_chirping.ogg
      
    • crow_kaww_1.ogg
      
    • crow_kaww_2.ogg
      
    • frog_croaks_1.ogg
      
    • frog_croaks_2.ogg
      
    • frog_croaks_3.ogg
      
    • insects_buzzing_calm.ogg
      
    • insects_buzzing_alert.ogg
      
    • owl_hooting.ogg
      
    • rat_squeak.ogg
      
    • spider_attack.ogg
      
    • spider_death.ogg
      
    • spider_egg_rustle.ogg
      
    • spider_hiss.ogg
      
    • spider_scream.ogg
      
    • etc.
      

  • 
    
  • weather
    • lightning_strike_quiet.ogg
      
    • lightning_strike_loud.ogg
      
    • rain_pour.ogg
      
    • rain_sprinkle.ogg
      
    • snow_flakes_falling.ogg
      
    • thunder_far_frequent.ogg
      
    • thunder_far_rare.ogg
      
    • thunder_near_frequent.ogg
      
    • thunder_near_rare.ogg
      
    • thunder_slow_rumble.ogg
      
    • wind_gentle_breeze.ogg
      
    • wind_mountain_breeze.ogg
      
    • wind_howling.ogg
      
    • etc.
      

  • 
    
  • vegetation
    • branch_small_snap.ogg
      
    • branch_large_snap.ogg
      
    • eyeplant_alert.ogg
      
    • eyeplant_calm.ogg
      
    • eyeplant_swivel.ogg
      
    • leaves_falling.ogg
      
    • leaves_bush_rustling_loud.ogg
      
    • leaves_bush_rustling_quiet.ogg
      
    • leaves_tree_rustling_loud.ogg
      
    • leaves_tree_rustling_quiet.ogg
      
    • tree_creaking.ogg
      
    • tree_falling.ogg
      
    • venustrap_snap.ogg
      
    • etc.
      

• 
  
• machines
  • 
    
  • actions
    • conveyor_belt.ogg
      
    • drawbridge_open.ogg
      
    • drawbridge_close.ogg
      
    • gears_grinding_metal.ogg
      
    • gears_grinding_wood.ogg
      
    • lever_pull.ogg
      
    • lever_push.ogg
      
    • etc.
      

  • 
    
  • ambient
    • hum_clicks_1.ogg
      
    • hum_clicks_2.ogg
      
    • hum_resonating.ogg
      
    • hum_pulsate_1.ogg
      
    • hum_pulsate_2.ogg
      
    • hum_phaser.ogg
      
    • hum_gritty.ogg
      
    • hum_grind_fast.ogg
      
    • hum_grind_slow.ogg
      
    • hum_squeaky.ogg
      
    • knocking_random.ogg
      
    • knocking_clockwork.ogg
      
    • whir_fan.ogg
      
    • whir_swirl_1.ogg
      
    • whir_swirl_2.ogg
      
    • etc.
      

  • 
    
  • bot_movements
    • arm_lower.ogg
      
    • arm_raise.ogg
      
    • bot_activate.ogg
      
    • bot_deactivate.ogg
      
    • camera_scan.ogg
      
    • camera_focus.ogg
      
    • camera_alarm.ogg
      
    • shoot_mine.ogg
      
    • shoot_rocket.ogg
      
    • sentry_clicks.ogg
      
    • sentry_winding.ogg
      
    • stomp_biped_1.ogg
      
    • stomp_biped_2.ogg
      
    • stomp_quadped_1.ogg
      
    • stomp_quadped_stomp_2.ogg
      
    • etc.
      

  • 
    
  • bot_voices
    • destroy_the_human.ogg
      
    • disturbance.ogg
      
    • obey_the_words.ogg
      
    • feel_a_presence.ogg
      
    • fear_the_machine.ogg
      
    • sense_an_anomaly.ogg
      
    • etc.
      

• 
  
• human
  • 
    
  • male
    • etc.
      

  • 
    
  • female
    • etc.
      

• 
  
• etc.
  • 
    
  • etc.
    • etc.
      

[pakmannen]

I should have mentioned this probably...

 

We have three folders in "sound": Ambient, SFX and Voices. These will remain, since both SFX and Voices have good structures. So this topic is about what folders we want inside "Ambient".

 

DarknessFalls may be onto something there.

[New Horizon]

Yeah, the stuff DF presented for ambient noises looks good.

[sparhawk]

How do you organize 'ambience'? If it is theme related then it's obvious. If it contains crickets, it's probably something like outdoor forrest, if it contains laughter, it may be pub or tavern. For the other ambiences, like Dram used in his map you can't really theme it. What would it be? Creepy, noisy, etc.? Something like this would not really make sense because it doesn't help at all.

I guess we have two kind of ambients and only for one it makes sense to define a structure. But only then if we have enough differeng sounds. Otherwise we can just create good filenames and it would be enough.

[pakmannen]

Just to explain the difference between SFX and Ambient (again.. hehe):

 

Soundeffects are the "pre-coded" sounds. Things like if I drop this bucket here it will make this sound. Or if that Haunt walks over the marble floor it will make that sound. Or when you open a metal door it sounds like this or that etc.

 

Ambients are things the mapper includes to add atmosphere. Like the sound of rain, or the ocean. Or humming background music or machine buzz etc.

 

I personally like having lots of files in folders so I don't have to go clicking all around through dozens of sub-folders.

Yes, this is how I feel as well. Few folders with good names. SFX has three or four subfolders, which is fine. I hope it will be possible to sort the ambients in about that many folders as well.

[sparhawk]

I know the difference between SFX and ambients. What I mean is that there are kind of ambients where a theme can be identified, but others can not. In the example I said an ambient that has cricket noise and a general forrest theme about. If we have more such "forrest" ambients, or more broadly, "nature" themed ambients, it makes sense to group them by the theme. For the other class of ambients, there is no such thing as a general theme. With these I mean ambients which are "just" scary but not a particular recognizable theme. A good example is sounds/ambient/church/church_theme1a.ogg. It would work well in a church, but the sound itself is nothing that particularly reminds me of a church. It would work just as well in scary. In fact I compared some sounds in scary and I don't see much difference between them. In terms of "functionality" of the sounds, not of the scores itself.

[pakmannen]

Sorry! That wasn't directed at you Spar! I was simply mentioning it because Sax and DarknessFalls included some sfx in their layouts.

 

But yes, the reason I'm not happy with the current layout is that you just can't sort some sounds into a "theme".

[pakmannen]

Damn, this is incredibly hard. But I have made a nature folder anyway, which has all the animals, water and weather sounds.

 

I'm thinking of doing a "hums" folder and place a lot of the short background loops there. Question is where to put the long, more busy "themes". Should we have a "themes" folder?

 

I have also written a soundshader for the nature file now, complete with a note of who made the sound. Unfortunately there are a few sounds which I don't know who made, since they were made before the CVS thread and I was unable to find anything on the forum.

[pakmannen]

Oops, nevermind that. I searched through the Journal board and found out all the missing info.

[pakmannen]

Does anyone know a good word for things "opposite of nature"? Things made by man, like machines, clocks, chains etc.

 

- nature

- non-nature

- music/background/loops (non-real sounds)

 

Could work?

[Springheel]

Man-made?

 

non-organic?

[pakmannen]

Yeah, I guess both would do. Probably better to go with man-made since it's not a, er, don't know what it's called in english.. a word that contradicts something.

 

How about artificial?

[Springheel]

I don't know...if I were a mapper that wouldn't really give me a sense of what would be in the folder.