Spring RTS Engine

I have found some ambient sounds, and a few other nifty sounds that would be a welcome addition to the game├óÔé¼Ôäós atmosphere. Or at least, that├óÔé¼Ôäós what I think. What do you guy├óÔé¼Ôäós think. Note: The bullet impact sounds are meant to be the impact of a EMG shot into an enemy unit to make it more ├óÔé¼┼ômachine gun├óÔé¼┬Ø like. Also the sea shore ambience sound would go a LONG way to making sea maps more interesting and less dull. The cannon shot is what I think a LRPC would sound like, and is absolutely terrifying to here when its not your LRPC firing!

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=showitem&ID=857

Bad...
Aircraft carrier
Harbour
Sub yard
Destroyer

Good...
Bullet sparks

Brilliant...
Cannon

Zoombie, some of those sounds are good, and some are bad.

But generally, they are too short. You either need lots of different sounds which are similar or longer sounds.
The reason for this is that these are ambient sounds, so you aren't meant to play them to replace sounds, but rather when the camera pans near them.

That is why some of the sounds that Cobra disliked aren't that bad (aircraft carrier does suck), because you won't hear them like that in game; you will hear them fade in and fade out depending on your distance from the unit.

Zoombie, its a start, but you've still got a helluva long way to go. You will likely need upwards of 50 soundbytes before you've made a good inroad at filling in Spring with ambient sound. Because you aren't finding sounds just for when the units are clicked, you are finding sounds that will play simply because the unit went by. That is a lot of sounds.

For an example, consider Kbots marching. You can get a marching sound of a single kbot walking along. But this wouldn't suit all kbots, some walk quickly, and some walk slowly. Some zip along (zipper), while some slowly plod (sumo, krogoth). All would need completely different sounds.
And those are individual sounds.
The sounds also have to work when a whole army is marching together, and should sound something like Total War's marching armies.
And that is just marching; you will need to get hold of some electronic grating sounds (like the sound of a tank turret moving in Battlefield 1942) for when units are moving pieces.

Of course, kbots would be the hardest units to do, so don't get too intimidated; vehicles and aircraft would be significantly easier.

Basically, you want filler sounds. Sounds that will play to fill the Spring world with atmosphere. Therefore, you don't need bullet sounds and the like, because there are already bullet firing sounds in TA. Why increase your workload? You need jet engine sounds, and tank catterpillar tread sounds, and nanolathe sounds, which only play when you get close to that unit.

Also, don't forget to get sounds that aren't just for units, you also need the sound of water trickling (rivers), wind blowing through grass (plains), trees shuffling and birds tweeting (forest), a low metallic hum (metalworld), bubbling lava (marsworld), etc.

When you are looking for sounds, don't look in your favourite games, look in the most relevant games. Often the most crap games in terms of gameplay put in heaps of effort in terms of soundfiles; so look for games with robots, tanks, ships and advanced aircraft.
For example, some of the homeworld sounds (not that homeworld is crap) are excellent, and would work very well with TA's ships and aircraft.
And by all means try and get at the ambient sounds in all three total war series. There are some great ambient sounds in there related to natural elements, such as wind, river, grass as well as the more obvious marching, etc.

Have a look at the sounds in Sid's soundmod for some really nice electronic sounds. I've uploaded .wavs in a zip at fileuniverse:
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=showitem&ID=858

Where are those sounds from? Because you can't just rip sound from other games, you need to produce or find sounds that can be used freely!

Yeah, I think I heard a Tribes 2 blaster and mortar in there!

Zoombie, the reason you will find the same noise in lots of games is because the sound is freeware, not because it is ok to rip sounds out of games.

I am 100% in favor of changing out all the noises in Spring so we can't be sued, but google for free sound effects (of which there are many collections I'm sure) so that after we are done we wont have traded being sued by one company for being sued by 1000.

Keep up the good work though! Great idea!

http://www.findsounds.com is a good site for finding sound effects.

However, I ripped many sounds from all sorts of games for my units, alot of people do since most people don't care about sound effects as much.

I highly doubt they would make a case out of a file of less than a 100 kb.

Thanks for all the advice guys! This is just a test. Plus I got all my sounds from Silent Hunter Three, and I really realy like the cannon. Also the bullet sounds are actually for when a bullet HITS something, not when it fire's.
But I├óÔé¼Ôäóm collecting some new stuff, so expect a ambience sound set 2

Everyone, ase note the following:

Zoombie is adding new sounds not replacing the old sounds.

This is important to realise.

We are trying to get some ambient sounds for when units drive by, or when aircraft fly by. Consider when you tell a whole army and aircraft to march to the enemy, you hear a bunch of acknowledgements of the order, and then the whole game is dead silent until someone fires. This is insane! Surely you should hear the march of kbots, the grind of caterpillar tracks, the groan of engines, and the doppler effect of jets circling above?
That is what Zoombie is trying to get sounds for.

He is not replacing sounds already there in Spring.

SadisticSid's Soundmod (linked to above) already does this.

i could use some help though. Right now i am looking for Tank's as they drive by and Jets as they fly by. So other people can look for Ship movment, Infantry movment and possibly some general ambieant sounds like the sound of the sea, wind, birds (if any are alive) and if they want to add weather effects to the game we could use thunder. But please have VERY high specifications for the sounds. We want a great sounding game, not a crappy sounding game right!

Can you make the footsteps heard whenever the foot actually hits the ground?

I doubt it, think about it... in a 200 units per a side battle youd have 800 feet falls every few seconds... The sound card cant play that many sounds at one!! And it would make a loud din!!

However ambient sounds are gr8, need very much so in the game, especialy as theres no music at the moment.

aGorm

It'd be hard, Doomweaver. It would mean that the sounds would have to be linked to the animation, rather than just played whenever the unit is on-screen (and a certain distance from the camera). I think for the moment just play the sounds. It'll be up to the people who put the coding for the sounds in to get it working with the animation.

Agorm, the trick is having 800 footfalls per second sound awesome. It isn't vey hard, mind you; play any of the Total War games. That many footfalls is a sound that should rattle your teeth. Of course, only if you're zoomed in. At a zoomed out distance, it would make a low thunder.

Very atmospheric.

and here is the SECONT INSTALLMENT OF SOUNDS!

I used Sound Pallet, whitch if free for 15 days. Only problem is i had only found 5 sounds that where any good before the 15 day trial was up. Now im going to need to srcounge up sounds some where else!

ENJOY! http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=showitem&ID=1017

The jet sound works for taking off, or for a sonic boom passing your screen. As for most other instances of a unit passing your screen, and actuall applied doppler effect would most likely be better than trying to recreate it through the sound itself. While I'd have to look up the formula again as I haven't seen it in quite some time, and didn't use it much when I had it, as long as current speeds are kept for units in motion it wouldn't be that hard to apply to a looping ambient sound file of a unit.

If the game already uses great physics in the newtonian mechanics area, why cheapen it by not applying equally good physics to the sound waves?

opse, double post

thanks. I really dont know HOW to do what you say, cause i can barly understand Arrays in C++, and i am a bitt of a slow learner. Also i have a hard time learning from books and vidios. BUT i can serch for good sound!

So what did you think of the forests? I think that you would loop them softly when the camera is near a forest (as in more then ONE tree) and then play the third sound in the back round for some more complexity and cool ness!

i dont think the issue is whether we should have ambience, it should be included. but it should be something that you can turn off if you dont want it.
zoombie: i can understand that you are working under limited resources here, but your ambient sounds need to be longer. having short sounds that just repeat would be terrible, im thinking of something like... 10 mins at least for each kind of ambience. also they would need to repeat seemlessly without a noticeable break. the only place in which this wouldnt be neccessary would be a core prime kind of environment which you could just have a combination randomly playing low hums and beepings (that would be cool as!)

one thing ive been really curious about is if terrain can effect the sounds that units make and explosions and stuff...
explosions in a broad core prime map would make haunting echoes... and battle could be heard from the other side of the map, but would be sort of molded together so you can only hear distant resonating booms and crashes

=D cant wait to see this kind of stuff.

Well i think that Core Prim should have a fan sound, gently thrumming in the backround. Also the sound that old computer banks make should also run in the back round.


Also i have noticed that its REALY hard to find long sound effects. I can find tons of short sounds, many of whitch are pretty... well... crap. But a few sound good. Also i think im staiting the very obvious.

lol i've got the sounds of a old computer bank right here anyway