Back from vacation

[Alex]

Hi all,

Just a quick note that I'm back from a 2 week vacation.  I'm ready to start work on any sound or music requests from the team.

I've just downloaded the new release, which I've played and it looks pretty good so far - nice work everyone!

I like the look of the new homepage, it seems a lot can happen in 2 weeks

One question - is there a reason why I don't show in the contributors list on the Development page?

[tempsanity]

Welcome back

I would like to suggest ambience sounds: like wolves in the night version of some forrest/village maps or wind in the arctic maps (or cow/bull on the village map ) etc. Plus different reloading sounds (you could judge what weapon the enemy is using - it's helpful) - right now the RPG reloading sound is the same as pistol's o_O

Footsteps on different materials: grass, carpet, stairs...

But these are only suggestions that need to be commented by the dev team.

[Zenerka]

One question - is there a reason why I don't show in the contributors list on the Development page?

Yes. We don't like you anymore.
Seriously, which Development page? We used to add every contributor to CONTRIBUTORS file which is included to every release.
http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ufoai/ufoai/trunk/CONTRIBUTORS?view=markup

[Alex]

Yes. We don't like you anymore.

I guess I will go and slither back under my rock in my cave then

Zenerka - I was looking in here : http://ufoai.ninex.info/?page=Contact

But I looked at the link you gave and I can see I'm in the contribs list so thats ok


Tempsanity and all the rest - it would be nice to have an entire list of all the sounds needed in the game, including the ones we already have, so work can start on adding them.  We could keep such a list as a table like this:

Filename    | Description                             | Rating
cgrl.wav     |  Sound of Chaingun Reloading  | 4        
gscrm.wav | Girl screaming in terror            | 0        
etc...

Where the Rating column could be between 0 and 4:
0: Sound does not exist
1: Generic sound exists, but is not unique to the item
2: Unique Sound exists, but needs more work to sound right
3: Sound is satisfactory
4: Sound is perfect

We could also perhaps add another column for priority?

[PhaD]

yes alex, that would be great, so i can check out my collection of sound samples too -  because i dont know exactly were you wanna put sounds in the game, during a civilian is moving for example. Another column maybe for, how long does the sound could be ? Priority is maybe in some cases hard to select, but also important!

[Alex]

I guess priority could be difficult, but maybe a rough guide so we soundies know which ones to do first, sort of like:

H: High priority, we really need these sounds.
L: low priority, these sounds are needed, but not right now.
C: Conceptual, these are sounds for things not yet certain to be in-game.

I think the idea of sample length is a good one, for example a gun firing could have 10 seconds of reverb after the initial shot, or it could be a simple shot with a very quick fadeout.

So, who should make this table?  I could make it an Excel spreadsheet, but I am not sure exactly what Winterslice and the other art-guys want in the sound department.

[Zenerka]

My ten cents about sounds.

All of you, people, have certainly nice ideas about sounds and sound usage in game. There is a one little problem with such new ideas (which, again, are nice): they have to be coded.
That's why neither me nor anyone else can just tell anything like: hey, prepare some sounds for $X-Feature. I cannot tell that because I certainly don't know when and who will code that. And I am sure that everyone would agree that it would be pity to have great sound files and sound input which would not be used in the game for some time.
Let me be clear about that: for sure everyone (including me) wants to have a lot of various sounds in the game. And for sure someone will do code/map support for that. The question is: when. Not talking about priorities.

As a side note, currently I am working on the code support for actors sounds when being killed or hit. We received some sound tracks for that from Destructavator, we already have some alien sounds as well but I just simply didn't have neither time nor the possibility to check that in game - that's why, again, I won't ask for more sounds here now, because I simply don't know what we already have and what can be used and where.

Again, please let get this clear: I am not telling that we don't need sounds - no. I am telling that we (or at least me) are not able to just make a list of needed sounds for now unless one agree that his/her sounds and usage of them in game can be postponed for some time. Most probably our storywriters can tell more what would be needed in the future, but still they are not able to determine when. Maybe they could prepare some kind of "sounds wanted" list, I don't know.

About music, that it is simply thing: the more - the better. Currently:
- we have 28 music tracks we can use in the missions;
- we have 34 missions in the campaign.
Clearly we could gather even more and more mission tracks. Especially that we are going to do more randomly map asseblies (and crashsites missions) in 2.2 if only we will manage to fix the bugs with that.