Spring RTS Engine

The OTA sounds used with all of the current TA based mods are really quite nasty.

They're all in 11khz, so don't play properly on some of the newer sound cards, as well as generally sounding bad. This doesn't go very well with the graphics & effects improvements which have been made recently, and the sounds are holding back the general game experience.

Im willing to remaster the OTA sounds and upsample them to 44khz, but that won't be good enough. We need many new soundfx, which ill probably need some help in creating.

So who thinks this is a good idea? im only going to go ahead with this if people think its worthwhile, and remember it will benefit AA, BA & CA.

Good idea but why would it just benefit AA, BA & CA?

It wouldn't. Those are just the only ones that came to mind when he made the post.

Because they all use the same set of sounds, which i think were taken directly out of TA. Of course it could benefit any TA style mod, or even non TA mods, but i think they would be better with their own sounds to help differ them. (gets them away from copyright issues as well!)

I think this is a fantastic idea. I agree that the horrible low-fi sounds suck. Sadly I don't really know where to get better ones.

The explosions are rather generic, I'm sure you can get those anywhere. But sounds for unit selection and other stuff would have to be made from scratch I guess.

Im sure my synthesiser will come in handy, but its gonna take ages.

Anyway, before, i get started, please can someone explain to me how the sounds actually work in game.
I dont know if this is just me or what, but when im playing theres hardly any sounds, but occasionally there is one really loud sound. I dont know why this is cos ive got max simultaneous sounds on full. This is probably the worst thing about the in game sounds atm.
Does the position of the unit/event making the sound have an effect on the volume/stereo panning? (i assume it does, it just doesnt work very well)
I think some adjusting needs doing which cannot be done simply by changing the sound files (although they still need to be of a higher quality)

This really is a great initiative. Sounds are as important as special effects to atmosphere, imho, and the old OTA ones are really lacking.

There is volume/stereo panning, it's possible to get a good estimate of the position of enemy builders out of LoS by the construction sounds.

Here is a useful collection of FX.
This is interesting too.

Thanks for the links.

Does anyone know if its possible to start the sound playing before you would hear it? its just that it tends to make a popping sound if it goes straight from the start of the file to the sound

Try adding a small pop at the very start thats not very easy or impossible to hear.

I know what we need: continuous sounds for when units are moving!

Only for large tanks, commander and other big stuff to save memory, but as these are large units they will make a lot of noise as they move. at the moment, they make a moving noise when the move command is issued but this lasts ~1second and stops. what i want is for it to play the sound then go on to a loop of the second half of that sound, but quieter so you only hear it when you zoom in. it would be good if the end of this movement sound is cross faded with the start of the next, to give the sound a continuous feel.

More difficult will be trying to sync the sounds for walking units with the walking animation.

Will this be easy to do? i suppose it involves scripts.

Look at war evo..there's simply play-sound's in the walking animation.

Yes, i had a look at that, looks useful.

Since I dont know how to script, can someone please make me a script for the arm_commander which includes the walking sounds script (for any of the units) out of War Evolution 1.7.

That would be really helpful thanks

I'm not sure how the sounds for TA were made in the first place, explosions, movement, yes no, etc, but I think it's possible to get new sounds with some simple ingenuity.

You could make a bullet against metal by taking two pieces of metal and clacking them together, edit it with a sound editor until it's good. Explosions, record the sound of a firecracker, elongate it and deepen it, and, excuse the pun, bam, you have a good, big explosion sound.

YOu could make a missile launch sound by waving something over the mic to make a WHOOSH sound, and then edit it to make it start out loud and fade off.
The unit noises could probably be made by technochatter, something like a computer or somesuch; you know, they weren't all that surprising. "Whhee?" "Clankchunkrrrrr"..

Plasma cannon firing at a boat, misses and hits the water. Water splash sound simple as dropping a brick in a bucket, and vary the sizes on each object to get different sounds. Smaller object for a laser, or even water sizzling in a pan for laser, and brick in a bucket for a bertha.

Throw a nerf ball against some plywood and record it, makes a good bonk sound. Find some random motors, and spin them up to get some whirring and movement sounds. I have an old HDD motor here that, when I spin it, it scrapes, and would make a nice metal scraping sound.

thanks for the ideas, but it could be difficult getting things to sound exactly the same through a mic. i can do most of the sounds using pre recorded free samples, but if you want to have a go at recording some go ahead, it might work!

L0223R wrote:thanks for the ideas, put it could be difficult getting things to sound exactly the same through a mic. i can do most of the sounds using pre recorded free samples, but if you want to have a go at recording some go ahead, it might work!

Well the idea is to get your base sound from home made stuff, and tweak it, enlarge it, shorten it, elongate it, through an editor or somesuch.