Phide's applicant thread

[New Horizon]

Come on in, and have a chat. Tell us what you're all about.

[Nyarlathotep]

Never mind; I'm frickin' retarded. Please delete.

[phide]

There's not too much to me, really. I've been following the mod for a fair while now, I think there's quite a bit I can offer, and I'm just looking to be involved with a solid project. Like I said, I'd basically like to try and plug up any holes that need to get plugged before the first release. There are certainly going to be a few things that are going to be difficult to capture, but I'm looking forward to being inventive (and somewhat adventerous). That's all the fun for me, really. The secondary benefit for doing this would be expanding my existing effects libraries for future projects.

 

Eric Brosius's work pretty much convinced me that I wanted to do audio for a living (but not for games, necessarily, though I think that's where I'd be best suited), and I've been pursuing that goal for a couple years now having moved from the east coast to Los Angeles in 2005. I've never been impressed more, audio-wise, than I was when I first played Thief and SS2, and I don't think any game so far has really come close to surpasing them, sadly to say. I think TDM would be a good opportunity (and a good challenge) for me to try and accomplish something like what Brosius and Kemal Amarasingham managed to pull off with Thief even with such severe constraints. I'm hopeful that I can at least scratch pretty close.

 

I'm not the biggest Thief fan out there by any stretch. I play the originals occasionally, and I rarely try out FMs (though I've been getting into that more recently). Honestly, I think TDM has the capability to surpass the orignal games in many aspects, and I'd just like to be a part of it.

 

That's pretty much it. If there's some sort of task you'd like to set me to before bringing me into the fold, just let me know.

[Crispy]

I've taken the liberty of mirroring phide's sample .zip (originally posted on Megaupload (from this thread)) on our FTP so people can check it out without having to endure the hassle of Megaupload: http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Sounds/ap...ts/phide_fx.zip

 

I vote we treat this as phide's contributor task, since I think we're in need of a few of those sounds.

[Komag]

Ooo, those sound great! This is exactly what we need, tons of great quality stuff like this

[greebo]

Welcome to the Forums, phide.

 

Concerning a startup task: we were badly in need of lockpick sounds and wood impact sounds. Does this sound suitable for you?

 

We would need to discuss the requirements we have for these sounds beforehand of course.

[phide]

Sure. Those would be no problem -- there should be enough "quiet time" tomorrow morning for me to get going on those. I'll mess around a bit with different lockpicky things this afternoon and see what'll work best for that.

 

Wood impacts are pretty straightforward (I'll go light to heavy and try and get 30-40 'on tape'), but you might want to explain what I should do for lockpicking. Do you want single tumbler clacks, or short chains of clacks (similar to Deadly Shadows)?

[Nyarlathotep]

Single clicks. IIRC, we also need a distinctive "sweetclick" and fail sound. That's all I remember offhand.

[greebo]

The lockpick clicks are supposed to be combined into sequences, so ideally they should be combinable and not too different from each other. But they should still have a bit of unique character each, so it basically is about hitting a sweet spot between uniqueness and compatability with each other.

 

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say, if not, somebody else can try to explain it once again.

[Komag]

tic-tic-DRUK-ticc-ttic--tttiiic--tic-ticc-CLUCK!-tic-tictic--DREK-tuck-tick-tik-tuk-CLACK!

[SneaksieDave]

Exactly.

[phide]

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say, if not, somebody else can try to explain it once again.

Yeah, that's easy enough. If I just fiddle with the lock and slice up my fiddlin', it should sound natural when they're played back in a random-ish sequence.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, just so you know, the lockpicking goes into a Simon-eqsque minigame. Well it's not really Simon, but you have to recognize a pattern and react at a certain time in the pattern once you get it. So they'll be put together in a random sequence, and should be fairly distinctive. We also need a really distinctive sound for when the pattern repeats, and a sound for when the player reacts at the wrong time and the lockpicking fails.

[phide]

Well, the way you've described the little minigame, I'm going to have to take a look at it before I get a good idea of what it should sound like (you'll find that I'm going to be annoyingly picky about this stuff), so you might just want to consider the stuff that follows as a "proof of concept" or a "stab".

 

Anyway, I made a short montage of Thiefish clicks and clacks as well as a distinctive, but decidely somewhat shitty, "fail" sound at the end. I figured it should sound something like a tumbler slapping down hard, though it would most certainly need to be re-recorded to be usable (in my opinion). I added a bit of 'verb to give you guys a better idea about what it may sound like in-engine, and also because I love convolution 'verb so damn much, though the original files enclosed in the ZIP are sans-verb (but they will need to be re-rendered to 44.1kHz to be usable in-game). For reference, the beginning of the file has short rattles, while the middle bit consists of the individual clicks laid out in rapid succession.

 

Lock Clicks/Clacks Montage (MP3)

Lock Clicks/Clacks Original WAV ZIP

 

Going to try to get wood impacts on tape late tonight, and I'd guess I'll be able to get them sweetened by Thursday assuming I end up with 40 to 50 takes.

[greebo]

@Team: I've converted the sounds to OGG and uploaded them to SVN. For the moment, I replaced our existing sounds with the new ones.

 

The sample delay (I think that's tdm_lp_sample_delay) should be increased a bit, because the new sounds are shorter in length than the old ones.

[sparhawk]

The sample delay only defines the space that is added after a sample. The sample length is taken from the actual sound sample. I haven't tried the new samples yet, but do you think that the curernt sample delay would make it harder for lockpicking? After all, an additional timeout is added for the sweetspot as well, which is when you need to react.

[greebo]

Well, I haven't played around with it much, just opened one lock (after waking up angua with the damn "wrong lockpick sound" <_ just wanted to give people a notification about the new sounds. src="%7B___base_url___%7D/uploads/emoticons/default_smilie.png" alt=":)">

[Ishtvan]

Just tried them out ingame. They sound great. My only complaint is that we could use a couple longer sounds too, because right now the patterns are all very short and maybe too easy get. Alternatively, we could just bump up the number of clicks played to make them harder.

 

The "pin success" seems to be missing. I hear the failure sound but hear nothing when a pin succeeds. @Greebo: It sounds like pin failure, "sweet click" and overall lock success are still using the same placeholder sounds. Were none of the new sounds workable for those? [EDIT: I think I hear a few that could work for those in the montage.]

[greebo]

I don't have an overview unfortunately, which sound gets played when and which file is containing place holders. I just slapped in the new sounds in the pin01-pin15 shaders to let you guys test it, so I'm afraid I'm not too much of a help here.

 

Are you talking about the "blip" sounds at the end and at the beginning?

[SneaksieDave]

Yep, it sounds like the BONK (fail), bleep (sweetclick) and success (Yippee!) are still there.

[Ishtvan]

So is there any feedback in the sound department on this? They sound really good and professional to me, what do others think?

[New Horizon]

I think they sound great!

[Crispy]

So is there any feedback in the sound department on this?

What sound department?

 

I certainly have no objections. Let's get phide set up already.

[sparhawk]

Yeah. NH, can you set him up?

[phide]

Ah, so things have been happening in my absence

 

Let me just say that it's been one hell of a week. Anyway, I've been having a bit of trouble with the wood impacts, but I've managed to get a handle on some other things you guys may need. I've a short set of metal impacts I intend to expand upon by Wednesday, and also some light drips and splashes which may work for "puddle steps" and for ambients. I also think I've gotten a suitable lock pick success sound. I'll probably try to swing by the hardware store some time tomorrow, play around with a few things, and see if I can get an idea of what I need to make the wood hits work the way I want to. Additionally, I'm heading up to the mountains on Thanksgiving, and I think I'll be able to get some interesting sounds there that you guys might end up needing (big splashes, hopefully, among other things -- steps on foliage and generally foliage stuff, perhaps).

 

So, yes, the gears are still in motion on my end. I'll try and get a few things uploaded tonight once I have a spare moment.