Sfx Review

[saxmeister]

Hey guys-

 

I thought I'd post some of the work I've been doing and see if you guys think it will fit with the project. Here are some samples (they should be to spec) for you guys to review.

 

Here is an ambient sound for use in the underground area.

 

underground ambient

 

And here is a source music sample of the music box in the mansion level.

 

mansion musicbox

 

And a sample of a water drip with reverb. Should these samples be made with or without reverb/will the sound engine take care of the reverb?

 

underground water drip with reverb

 

Don't know if this will even be an element in the game, but chain rattles for the undead?

 

ghost chains rattling

 

Any suggestions or comments?

 

Thanks,

 

-saxmeister

Edited January 26, 2005 by saxmeister

[mrDischarged]

Hi and welcome!

 

Since you asked for feedback, here are some first thoughts - the underground theme is really nice - dark and moody, but the sweeps are too obvious, the theme would be much better without them! It has a good rhytm to it, but the sweeps have too much synth character in my opinion. Yes, I'm one of those "YOU MUST NOT RECOGNIZE THIS INSTRUMENT!!!" types of people...

 

The music box loop would be great if the whole thing was raised by an octave. There's room for improvement in the slowdown as well, but timestretching would distort it, maybe you can change tempo step-by-step drastically in your sequencer? The slowdown is a bit abrupt at this point.

 

mrD

[saxmeister]

Thanks for the input... I'm just trying to get a feel for the overall atmosphere and the input helps tremendously.

 

I've reworked the two samples you heard and tried the music box up an octave and without as much of the scratchiness. I saw a post in the forum after I had started working on this file that said that it would be interesting to hear a sample of this with that "old record" kind of scratchy. I feel like maybe this sound drags on for too long now, maybe???

 

mansion music box cue rev. 1

 

I also reworked the underground ambient theme. I wanted to leave it as just the bass but curiousity wouldn't let me. So, I tried it with some sounds in the upper extreme to try and add a touch of creepiness to it. I'll probably wind up taking those sounds out as well later.

 

underground ambient rev. 1

 

Here's another water drip sfx as well....

 

water drip fx 02 with reverb

 

And, since we can't use the original "loot pickup" sfx, how about this one possibly?

 

loot pickup lo sfx

loot pickup hi sfx

 

Again, thanks for the input!

 

-saxmeister

Edited January 8, 2005 by saxmeister

[New Horizon]

Ahhh yes. Your revisions are very good saxmeister.

 

The change to the underground ambience made all the difference in the world. As for the loot pickup, my personal preference would be the loot pickup lo sfx. That one sounds pretty much bang on, though it could be a tiny bit faster..without changing the pitch.

[oDDity]

I don't like the loot pickups, its too techno. We need something simpler than that. THe T1/2 sound was perfect of course, and everyone loved it, so a slight variation on that will be fine, or just plain copy it. The sound is not copyrighted, as long as we create our own version of it.

Love the mansion music box though, reminds me very much of Zelda. THe rest of the SFX are great also.

[New Horizon]

I don't like the loot pickups, its too techno. We need something simpler than that. THe T1/2 sound was perfect of course, and everyone loved it, so a slight variation on that will be fine, or just plain copy it. The sound is not copyrighted, as long as we create our own version of it.

Love the mansion music box though, reminds me very much of Zelda. THe rest of the SFX are great also.

Was the original T1/ 2 loot pickup sound a xylophone? You're absolutely right though....we could easily just recreate it, it's not like it's a masterful composition.

[sparhawk]

I also would prefer to have the exact loot pickup in that case. IMO that sound is one of the most important ones.

[saxmeister]

I'll do some revision to some of the sounds.

 

Here is the original Thief PICKLOOT sfx for reference.

 

original Thief loot pickup sfx

 

I didn't know if we could do it exactly, hence the variation on it. Wasn't sure how copyright worked with that....

 

Tried shortening the sound a bit just for giggles. Here is that sound....

loot pickup lo tightened up

 

thx

 

-sax

[New Horizon]

Yeah, there really shouldn't be a problem with recreating it. It's just a sweeping sound, nothing truly original about how they did it. Now, if we tried to use the original file...that would be an issue. We would want a higher quality version to call our own anyway. I like the revised low pickup, perhaps if the low hum in the file were toned down and the jingle sound were brought more to the forefront it may help a bit.

 

Great work by the way. This stuff sounds great!!!

[saxmeister]

Okay, here's another tweak to the loot sound. I noticed that the original had some ambient noise in the background as well as the bell sound.

 

loot pickup fx rev 2 - bells and ambient noise

 

Thanks for the kind words NH.

 

Here's my take on the "pickpower" sfx from Thief 1/2 as well....

 

pickpower sfx test

 

-sax

Edited January 9, 2005 by saxmeister

[oDDity]

THe latestloot chime is great now) It's not exactly the same, but it's probably best that way.

[Springheel]

It's good. But man I loved the one from T1/2....

[oDDity]

Yes, it was somehow perfect, even though it was so simple. I can't think of any way it could have been better.

[saxmeister]

I know what you mean... Looking Glass really knew how to hone the best out of every little bit of information to make it packaged as nicely as possible.... Boy, do we miss them! Imagine what Thief: DS would've been like with them on the job.

 

Thoughts for some of the music in the project list.....

 

There is a listing for classical piano music. Is this source music from one of hte old Viktrolas with scratches, etc. If so, is this the type of effect to go for??

 

scratchy Viktrola music - classical

 

I know this probably isn't the style in which to do the music, but it was just a sketch for hearing the effects/processing.

 

-sax

Edited January 9, 2005 by saxmeister

[BlackThief]

I love your last 2 sounds ! pickpower sfx test sounds almost exactly like the T1/2 broadhead-arrow pickup sound and the scratchy Viktrola music - classical is also very great.

 

regarding the loot sound - it's nice, but plze tweak it a bit - we all would love to have a the 'old' loot-sound back

[sparhawk]

I know this probably isn't the style in which to do the music, but it was just a sketch for hearing the effects/processing.

Sounds pretty good to me for a mansion.

[sparhawk]

Okay, here's another tweak to the loot sound. I noticed that the original had some ambient noise in the background as well as the bell sound.

That loot pickup sounds much better, but I would remove that reverb at the end (or however that effect is called).

[oDDity]

The scratchy hissy effects on the viktrola is great. but it's best to beep it to one instrument, like a hapsichord, and in baroque style rather than classical.

[pakmannen]

Sorry I haven't been able to respond yet.. We had a power blackout the entire evening yesterday, together with the worst storm (hurricane!) since 1969(!). I have made a first listen through and it sounds great! I'll get back with more detailed thoughts shortly.

[saxmeister]

Well, pakmannen..... I hope you and everyone around you is okay! I hope you guys didn't get flooding as well. Hang in there and glad you're back!

[pakmannen]

Yup, house still standing.

 

Ok, here we go:

 

The revised underground ambient is good. It could possibly be made into a loop since I believe the engine is capable of doing fadeouts anyway. (Right?)

 

The revised musicbox is great (could perhaps be a little longer). Exactly what I meant. I also moved the dotP task from ambients to soundeffects, and named it "frob_instrument_musicbox" and marked it as 95% finished (in case you want to change something). It's now uploaded to CVS as well. (You can always make new revisions of sounds uploaded to CVS once you get it set up.)

 

The waterdrips: I think it would be better to make a longer loop with several drips instead of doing it like that. My guess is that a mission designer would just like to slap on a background loop with a few drips here and there. The actual sounds sound good though.

 

The loot pickup: You're on to something there. I do think we agreed early on that we wanted the loot pickup to sound to be very much like the original. So keep experimenting!

 

Pickup sound: Great! Love it! It's on CVS as well, named "tool_pickup" under sound/sfx/tools. The task on dotP is marked 100% as well.

 

Victrola: Also great. Also now on CVS, named "frob_instrument_victrola". The task is marked 95% finished in case you want to change it, but personally, I think it's great as it is. You could always make a few more tunes and we can then let the level designer choose from a few different victrolas.

[saxmeister]

Latest update on some of the sfx/ambient stuff...

 

For the "frob_instrument_victrola" I changed two things in the music (just me being overly picky)

 

music revision

 

See what you think

 

-sax

[sparhawk]

For the "frob_instrument_victrola" I changed two things in the music (just me being overly picky)

Why is this called frob_?

[pakmannen]

Because the sound is played when you frob a victrola.

[sparhawk]

Because the sound is played when you frob a victrola.

No need for that. And of course you can use the sound also in a cutscene. Without frobbing. No need to make the names longer then is neccessary.