Sound Events

Samples of sound/music, ideas or suggestions related to the development of audio assets for FreeOrion.
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StratCaster
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Sound Events

#1 Post by StratCaster »

Sound Events

I assume tzlaine's list is encompassing gui's list.

tzlaine:
1)Button Click - includes clicks on regular buttons, check boxes, radio buttons
2) Button Rollover - includes moving the mouse over regular buttons only
3) Item Select - selecting/deselecting an item in a drop-down list or listbox
4) Item Drop - dropping a drag-and-drop item into a listbox
5) Alert - when a warning or error message box pops up
gui:
;Galaxy creation menu open
galaxy button click
small galaxy selection
medium galaxy selection
large galaxy selection
huge galaxy selection
spiral galaxy selection
ring galaxy selection
cluster galaxy selection
2 arm galaxy selection
3 arm galaxy selection
clutter galaxy selection

;main
minimizing Window
maximizing Window
close window
planet SideBar Open
planet Sidebar Close
sitrep button click
menu button click
turn button click

;Fleet
mouseover fleet (galaxy)
select fleet (galaxy)
select (Fleet window)
unselect (Fleet Window)

;planet sidebar
primary balanced select
primary farming select
primary mining select
primary industry select
primary research select
secondary balanced select
secondary farming select
secondary mining select
secondary industry select
secondary research select
colonize click
open planet buildmenu
planet select

Things I see to add:

*Galaxy Setup, in the textbox where the user can type his/her Empire name. I'd have a sound for every keystroke, which underlines each letter the user has typed. And maybe a sound when the textbox looses focus as if hitting Enter.

*Planet sidebar, when you click the planet, the type of environment sound is played (i.e. Ocean planet - guibaah's Ocean2.ogg)

*Fleet Popup, in addition to Fleet click, then window maximize, there could be a fleet sound (just like the planet sounds). There could be multiple sounds, if the types of ships in the fleet are known.
-warship is present - sound1 (i.e. menacing sound) (could even subdivide this into small, meduim, large)
-colonization ship only- sound2 (i.e. hopeful sound)
-scout only - sound3 (i.e sonar sound)

*Turn In Progress, the main sound tracks should fade out and when going to Turn Processing there should be sound clip that would loop since the processing time would never be the same with each turn.


One other thing, I'm not sure tzlaine's events are considering clicking 'Colonize', different from clicking 'Turn'. My suggestion is to have different sounds for different buttons. Buttons like TURN, ENTER COMBAT or any other game transitions, should be louder than a click and break up the current sound with a good transitional sound so the player knows the game is taking them into a new section.
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

tzlaine
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#2 Post by tzlaine »

I understand what you're saying about wanting the turn button to make a different sound than all the other buttons, but actually having unique sounds defined for all buttons is going to be a huge coding and maintenance burden. Instead of the list you have now, which will need to be rewritten every time we add a new screen or window (and which in turn means that I have to write a lot of code for each new screen or window), let's try to keep all buttons the same, with a few exceptions, like perhaps the turn button.

So, disregarding individual button sounds, it seems that your list adds:

6) Minimize window
7) Maximize window
8\) Close window
9) Turn Button Click (specialization of Button Click)
9) Fleet Rollover (specialization of Button Rollover)
10) Fleet Click (specialization of Button Click)
11) Planet Click
12) Text Typing
13) Planet Background Music (music, instead of sound effect, for the planet detail view)
14) Fleet-Type Sound (plays sound specific to the type of fleet in the fleet detail view)
15) Turn Progressing

noelte
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#3 Post by noelte »

Overall i think zach is right.

On the other hand there might be an easy solution for buttons. Maybe we could give every button a unique name (same used for language translation) This way we might also get an easy solution for modders

[TURN_BUTTON]
TEXT = TURN_BTN_TEXT_MARK
ALIGN = CENTER,...
BITMAP = "art\button\xxx.png"
SOUND = "art\music\turn_pressed.ogg"


Crazy idea????
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#4 Post by StratCaster »

That could work. But if we just isolate what the 'specialized' buttons are, and find there's not that many of them, then we may not need to be worried about it. Although if it doesn't take much effort to apply the .ini file method, then sure, that expandability might come in handy.
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

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#5 Post by StratCaster »

tzlaine wrote:let's try to keep all buttons the same, with a few exceptions, like perhaps the turn button.
How about adding 'Colonize' to the specialized button list? Since, it sits next to a graphic of a Planet, I could forsee it making a colonizing sound (whatever that is) rather than just a normal click.
tzlaine wrote: 13) Planet Background Music (music, instead of sound effect, for the planet detail view)
Did you mean Planet Background Sound? GuiBaah created a bunch of Planet environment sounds. That's what I was referring to... Although we should think about this... I'm thinking, while it will be cool to hear the sound of a Tundra Planet...later in the game when you have a huge thriving civilization, that lonely sound of the Tundra may sound out of place. Maybe its just a matter of creating more sounds (overlaying more sounds onto the base sound).
ie:
TundraSound == TUNDRA_UNINHABITED
TundraSound + BioDomeSound == TUNDRA_HABITED

Even though this might sound like a huge code burden, couldn't you leverage some code in the Fleet-Type sound area? It's a similar idea, playing sounds based on some dynamic information.

Overall, I think in a game where something like a player's Empire progresses, sound evolution is a good idea. If you have sound that helps bring life to graphics being displayed, its more believable if that sound can evolve throughout the game. BUT I can imagine this could be a coding nightmare. Your thoughts?
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

guiguibaah
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Mixing

#6 Post by guiguibaah »

So in all, here's the list we work with.

1) Button Click - includes clicks on regular buttons, check boxes, radio buttons
2) Button Rollover - includes moving the mouse over regular buttons only
3) Item Select - selecting/deselecting an item in a drop-down list or listbox
4) Item Drop - dropping a drag-and-drop item into a listbox
5) Alert - when a warning or error message box pops up

6) Minimize window
7) Maximize window
8) Close window

9) Turn Button Click (specialization of Button Click)

10) Fleet Rollover (specialization of Button Rollover)
11) Fleet-Type Sound (plays sound specific to the type of fleet in the fleet detail view)

12) Fleet Click (specialization of Button Click)
13) Planet Click
14) Text Typing

16) Turn Progressing

15) Planet Background Music (music, instead of sound effect, for the planet detail view)




(As for planet sfx...)

- It all depends on the mixing abilities of FO and it's OGG player.

You could use the background SFX of a planet's untouched surface as the base.

Play (Loop) Barren.ogg, Volume=100%

Next, you create a list of different colony sounding .ogg files. Such as small and big, so...


Play (loop) Barren.ogg, Volume=50%
Play (loop) SmallHuman.ogg, Volume=100%


This reduces the amount of SFX files to download and store for multiple-race colonies.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


I agree that having many different sounds for buttons may make the game sound like a blinking pinball machine.
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#7 Post by StratCaster »

well, I wasn't thinking of giving the mixing job to the code... IMO we'd want to mix those sounds ourselves, wrap them up in one .ogg, and have FO play it.

i.e.
Tundra_UnInhabited.ogg
Tundra_SemiInhabited.ogg (which is built on Tundra.ogg)
Tundra_FullyInhabited.ogg (which is built on Tundra.ogg)

Or we could just do 2 classes: uninhabited and habited. Because at somepoint in the game, the player's tech will advance and will eventually terraform the planet into a different environment.
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#8 Post by StratCaster »

As far as having a different sound for Human_Habited or Race2_Habited, I'm am curious what you have in mind for the actual sound...

I guess if you were to have a 'human' sound like a stray radio signal, or something human (blanking on this for some reason) then it wouldn't work for another 'alien' race. But I was thinking the sound would be more generic....A subtle hum of a planetary shield, the low drone of machinery, a planetary beacon or a "larger than life sound" that isn't an actual sound of anything in paticular - just an obvious indication that there is a presence on the planet.

EDIT: another idea would be to have the sound of the planet's primary or secondary focus...

Regardless of all these ideas, we need to be careful to not annoy the player with the same sounds over and over. The sounds should be short and sweet. I can't tell as of yet how these ideas will work in the game. How often will the player click on a planet? Will there be other things added to the planetary screen? Things that will make the player go there often? Or is it just information things...
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

guiguibaah
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Hey

#9 Post by guiguibaah »

In regards to primary / secondary focus....

- Hey, I think I like that idea - it could certainly be done.

However, in my opinion, the best way would be to play 2 ogg files simultaneously to reduce the amount of noises used. Or, have the background drone of the planet .ogg playing, and intersparsed here and there are the sound effects.. For example...



<-----------------------------------------Planet Drone (IE: Desert) ---------------------->
<-Mining (primary)--------------------Mining (primary)---------------Mining(primary) -->
<--------- Research (secondary) ----------- Research (secondary) ---------------------->
<-- Shield generator-------------Missile Base ---------- Wonder ---------------------->


This way we don't have (number of terraform types) * (number of planet type configurations)
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#10 Post by StratCaster »

I see what you are saying if were to have all those sounds together... otherwise there would be so many permutations you'd have oodles of oggs just for planet sounds...

however, this will take some crafty sound design and mixing. Each sound has to not interfere with the other, and needs to be easily heard even if its in the background. And also like you suggested, sounds can be spaced out.

Of course, we'll have to check with the programming team to see if its possible but this should keep us busy for a while... we'll have to test this out.

To start we'll need:
Mining Sound
Farming Sound (this will be hard, mooing cows won't work)
Industry Sound
Research Sound
Planet Shield Sound
Weapon Structure Sound (missle bases, batteries etc...)
Wonder Sound
Planet Sounds (which we have)
(Bad) Specials Sound (Super Nova, Accident, Pirates, Space Amebia) (could just have warning klaxon)

This is going to be tricky.... It might not work, but hey, let's try it out.

I saw a really cool documentary from the BBC on John Williams. He basically talks about film scoring...but there was a really interesting part when the sfx guys from Empire Strikes Back talked about making the sound of the Millenium Falcon's hyperdrive failure. They mixed about 8-9 sounds to get the final sound. One was a whiny propellar, another was hydraulic press and the others were even more bizzare. It was pretty good.
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

guiguibaah
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Sound effects

#11 Post by guiguibaah »

- Oh, I can believe it. I've taken my laptop around and recorded really weird effects, cleaned them up, changed them into soundfonts, then scored them into cakewalk.

I have a few of those sounds you mentioned (like mining, industry, etc) - I'll have to upload them come next week when they are all done.
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#12 Post by StratCaster »

just curious... what do you use for a mic (not just the laptop mic?), and what program do you use to clean it up? SoundSoap?
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

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#13 Post by patchlord »

If I were to creat a set of custom sound efx wav files ...where to I post them to? or send them to?....I havn'r read through all the posts here yet, but is there a list of sounds you are looking for that you can just e-mail to me? ([email protected]) I'll creat some new stiff from scratch...I just finished setting up my new sound design studio and I'm eager to work on new stuff, :D
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#14 Post by StratCaster »

patchlord wrote:...where to I post them to? or send them to?
freeorion.org doesn't have space for that. you should get your own server to store files on. there are plenty of free sites out there easy to use even if you don't know HTML
patchlord wrote:is there a list of sounds you are looking for that you can just e-mail to me?
see previous posts in this thread...
patchlord wrote:I'll create some new stuff from scratch...
awesome!
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

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Sound effects

#15 Post by guiguibaah »

That sounds great! (pardon the pun) :)

- However, while at work I just realised that the previous idea of having multiple sound effects play with a background planet vista effect won't work well.

Here's why. When doing sound effects for sharp environments (like Terran, swamp and above-ocean planets) they have the same tone as the background sound. In other words, INDUSTRIAL.WAV may work well with TERRAN.OGG, but not with BENEATHOCEAN.OGG, because BENEATHOCEAN.OGG is at the lower end of the frequency spectrum.

You'd be hearing the muffled sounds of water and sea creatures, interrupted suddenly by a very crisp sounding ratchet-and-drill. It just sounds off, see what I mean?


I do think it would be neat to have the planet sound depending on its focus and its infrastructure size... but I just don't know how best to do it. Any suggestions?

So far, we have....

10 planet backgrounds

* 4 primary variations (Research, Farm, Mine, Industry)

* 3 infrastructure levels (None, Some, Large)


(that's a lotta ogg's to make :) )
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