Hi Staniol

I had a small request a while back concerning the ships once they had landed in a planet based starport with an atmosphere. Cooling sounds! Basically a friend of mine used to ride a big motorcycle (a Harley I think it was) and when he parked up and switched it off, it used to make a ticking noise as the engine and exhausts cooled off. I always thought that would be great for the ships in Pioneer as the hull and thrusters slowly lose their heat.

Here they are, indeed. But I don't seem to have ever heard them when playing... Are they disabled, or at very low volume?

As I said a couple of times, I am not a programmer, I need someone to implement it. 🙂

Hi Staniol

 

I had a small request a while back concerning the ships once they had landed in a planet based starport with an atmosphere. Cooling sounds! Basically a friend of mine used to ride a big motorcycle (a Harley I think it was) and when he parked up and switched it off, it used to make a ticking noise as the engine and exhausts cooled off. I always thought that would be great for the ships in Pioneer as the hull and thrusters slowly lose their heat.

Good Idea, I'll come up with something.

I am keeping track of all these idea, I'll get some time this weekend so will have a look at getting the airspeed sound ingame.

Not done anything with the audio engine so far so might take a little while 🙂

No. I asked Staniol for those sounds because it's a feature that I want to implement and he has been kind enough to create the sounds, now I will try to use at some time in the next few weeks.

You would be best discussing that idea with Staniol and others to see what everyone thinks and then making an issue request for it when you've agreed on how something like that might work.

That way the developers will know what it is that you want, who has asked for it, and how it might work.

That's how you get new features into the game 😉 it's better than asking for them on the forums because they quickly get lost or don't get noticed at all. Especially as most of the core team don't check here very often.

So, my advice:

• discuss it for a bit here,
• get a plan for how you'd like to organise the music/sounds,
• try to figure out how you'd like them chosen or selected ingame,
  • Would you want certain game factiosn to use certain sounds?
  • How would you want them chosen? By faction? By population of system? Another way?

• Then when you've got a rough design request it on the Issues system so that developers see it.

if you do that then it might be me that tries to implement it, or it might be another developer that you've interested on here 🙂

It's much more likely to get made this way though than just asking for a rough idea and hoping that I, or someone else, figures it out.

You might no be able to code it yourself but with others on here you can do most of the design of it and that's a lot of hard work in itself.

Good luck 🙂

I suggest the above not because I think it's a bad idea, or because I wouldn't implement that idea, but because there's not enough of an idea there yet to implement 😉

Just so you know that I'm not being negative about the idea itself ok!

It could take a few weeks of time to do something like you've asked because all of the coders are part-time, coding in the evenings or on the train to and from work - if however you've already done the steps I outlined above, the design work, then that can make it less work for a coder and so the feature is more likely to get written.

Yeah, and when they ask you at the space bar where you come from there will be a fight every time. 😉

 

I made the sounds into a mod and got a red screen of death.

"Error: Vorbis file sounds/Cockpit/Ship_ambient.ogg is not 44100Hz or 22050Hz Bad!"

Almost missed this.

Let me check the rates. I assume I have to do it for all my files, right? 🙂

Almost missed this.

Let me check the rates. I assume I have to do it for all my files, right? 🙂

Ok, fixed all rates and reuploaded to Dropbox.

Some files were sampled at 48000 hHz, too good quality for Pioneer...:)

Taking the advise, I will also create a clear design document.

I need someone to explain me the current planet/sun/moon types or generation algorithm.

Fell free to drop me a pm if you have the time and will. 🙂

Unfortunately the "per-faction" thing isn't itself that great an idea.

There are a lot fewer factions now but at one time there were 135 and had an experimental branch where I had a couple of thousand (2000+).

Whilst I don't think that we'll ever reach those numbers again you'll also want to avoid having to define data for every single one that you might have.

So perhaps a library of "core" sounds that all of them can use, then a few specific sounds that override/replace things like radio chatter, attack music, etc on a per-faction basis.

This way if a faction hasn't got a sound it just uses the one from the "core" set of sounds.

This way you might have:

• One sound for each uninhabited planet type,
• Three sound choices for each uninhabited planet type,
• Four sound choices for radio chatter (docked, near-spacestation, etc),
• etc...

Then a faction would pick one from each.

That way if we ever have new factions being created, or old factions being destroyed, as time passes you can still use some of the core sounds for them.

Or, an alternative, Factions have differences deeper than their names, they also have ways of being ruled.

Some are dictatorships, some are federations, others are anarchic.

Then they have an "age", the date that they were founded.

So you might have the old federation and you could therefore choose and "old" sounding piece of music to play, and a very stuffy or formal way of talking on the radio.

For the Haber corporation there "on radio" music would be like lift music 😀 and they'd always be asking you to fill out forms and sign up for special offers 😉

So we could mix and match from a collection of sounds and music based on the factions information instead of having to manually define sounds and music for each faction.

Or you could even combine the two 😀

Just something more for you to think about.

@Staniol,

Just PM'd you a link to the Lua constants file that lists everything we expose to Lua API.

From Line 110 it lists the star & planet types, then there's various other stuff.

Might give you guys some ideas of ways you can combine information about factions or worlds for the kind of sounds and music you might hear.

I think 3 modes is an excellent idea.

As I said a couple of times, I am not a programmer, I need someone to implement it. 🙂

I was wrong. They are here and I can hear them, if I mute the music. 😉

 

 

 

 

I was wrong. They are here and I can hear them, if I mute the music. 😉

 

They are not really work as intended (or I dreamed), but yes, you are right, its partially implemented by someone (thanks to you stranger!).

@Staniol,

I haven't forgotten about the sounds you've done, just been busy.

My apologies for not getting around to doing anything with them yet!

Andy

No worries, I am old enought to live without expectations everywhere. 🙂

I am happy to help everyone out, but I also have family and work, so no deadlines on hobby, right?

Hi Staniol,

I don't know if it's already in the latest version or if it will take a day or so but the new wind rushing sounds have been merged in now.

I recommend diving into Venus' atmosphere if you want to get it to scream 😉

Let me know what you think and what tweaks or adjustments you'd like. I can also go through and describe the volume selection grading/banding that I chose.

There were a bunch of sounds for crew chatter and some other sounds that might have been merged in too but aren't hooked up to anything yet.

Did you have something in mind for how those would be used?

Andy

Thanks!

For the crew chatter, I had plans to randomly play them on a ship when you have crew. The more you have, the more often. 

To be really good, I think I need to collect at least 30 more crew noises.

I would suggest to create a process, which uses all sounds in the folder, so I can keep adding them without further modification in the program until we feel its enough.

If you are planning to implement this, I start collecting/creating new ones.

I think a better idea would be to add a way of configuring what sounds are associated with each thing.

Possibly using the Lua, I'd write an example file with all the existing sounds and then all you'd have to do would be to add more entries to sections. Dead easy stuff 🙂

Don't rush though, I'm currently trying to do a few other things too so I imagine it'll be a month at least before I can get around to this.

cool. Just let me know when I am needed. I have a lot of work and family stuff currently.

I tried the new wind sound un Venus. It's really cool and useful when entering atmosphere. 🙂

Maybe I found a little glitch. When going at full speed, you can hear the high pitched sample muting for a fraction of second, then restarting cyclically as the sound loops.

Try on Venus: enter atmosphere and, when you are low enough go at full thust.

I was pondering redoing some ship sounds, fx, lasers etc..   let me know if anyone else has this in progress, otherwise i'll give it a go.

I think a better idea would be to add a way of configuring what sounds are associated with each thing.

HI,

I'm doing some sounds for Cockpit and was curious how sounds in Cockpit filder work. I understand that Ship_ambient sound is playing constantly. What about other sounds, are they trigger randomly? Should I keep some specific naming, adding new sounds to that folder?

Thanks!

It's mostly controlled through the "AmbientSounds.cpp" file but I can't find any mention of cockpit audio, that might be driven by Lua perhaps? I'm not sure right now.

Most of the sounds are hardcoded so adding new ones requires editing the code.

I've been meaning to change that but haven't gotten around too it yet.

I didn't write the sound code by the way but I seem to be the last person to have edited it 🙂

The sounds are generally grouped from which a sound is then picked randomly from within that group.

So you can have multiple sounds playing at once in theory, even if it doesn't happen very often.

Ambient comes through AmbientSounds.cpp. Various input event responses (button clicks) and warnings and such are all over the place, look for calls to Sound::PlaySfx and Sound::BodyMakeNoise. The sound system isn't exposed to Lua in any way.

The whole sound system is a mess, and is one of the few bits of code that hasn't had anything more than basic maintenance since its first cut. Its on the list to be rewritten sometime.