A facelift for footsteps/terrain

[Crystan]

I am a long ways off from attempting to implement that.
Well, there are sounds for every texture now.     I did it programmatically, so now that the textures are categorized, I can generate the terrain.ufo in seconds.

Ah sorry, thought you added them by hand.

So upload that sucker.  I would like to hear it.

Sorry, didn't mean to offend you. Check the attachment for my hovernet sound together with some other new footstep sounds
*Note: i designed the hovernet sound as a one shot sound

No, I created it.  I didn't find the one you made until I was looking for a place to put mine.  I haven't tested out yours in game yet, but mine is better than spiders with two feet, which is what it was.

Oh sorry. Yeah, mine is tbh a very old sound i made around end 2010.

By quality standards do you mean frequency and kbps or you just don't like it?

I meant the frequency - its noted in our sound & music contributor section.

Do what you feel best.  I like it the way it is, personally, at least better than missing sounds and some of the clicky footsteps.  This part of the game is your baby, so it is your choice how you use it.

Oh dont get me wrong - i am happy about that someone finally cares about the footsteps. As already mentioned i didn't mean to offend you. Anyway have you a site where i can checkout other sound samples from you? Oh and which programs do you use?

[ShipIt]

So far I found some minor problems only.

- The formatting in terrain.ufo.

Code: [Select]

terrain tex_base/helipad{
footstepsound "footsteps/stone1"
bouncefraction "1.0"
}
terrain tex_base/lab_wall001{
footstepsound "footsteps/stone1"
bouncefraction "1.0"
}
should be

Code: [Select]

terrain tex_base/helipad {
footstepsound "footsteps/stone1"
bouncefraction "1.0"
}

terrain tex_base/lab_wall001 {
footstepsound "footsteps/stone1"
bouncefraction "1.0"
}
And usually one newline at the end of the file is enough. 

- A typo where it reads "footseps/dirt2" instead "footsteps/dirt2" in terrain.ufo.

- The terrain.ufo contains a lot of useless textures, like the ones that are used for blending only. I would rather like to see only the needed textures there. There is a footstepper.sh script in /contrib/scripts. Not sure what it does exactly, but it was used to find textures and add them to terrain.ufo, so it might be worth taking a look.

If you could solve that, I would vote for pushing this to master. Crystan should be able to replace/add sound files afterwards, if needed. Of course it would be even better if you could provide sound files that meet the quality standard Crystan mentioned.

[DexCisco]

I have attached an updated terrain.ufo to fix the issues that ShipIt has mentioned.  I believe that the footstepper script was intended to work with the footstep surface tag in Radiant, but none of the maps that I looked at had that tag set.  I could be wrong.  The game has to have some way of determining what grids are passable.    I thought about trying to decypher the map format and determine which brushes had large, horizontal surfaces, but it was easier to just grab it all.

As for the sounds, these are the only ones that I did because they were the ones that I felt sounded the least like they should.  The grass was very crunchy, and the bloodspiders making the same walking noises as humans was just odd.

I am not at all offended by my inability to read the standards first.     I'll see what I can do in the future about higher quality sounds, but we are talking about noise here.  I think the frequency breadth is more important than the throughput, and stereo doesn't really make much sense because the footsteps are going to be positionally located anyway.

One thing I found challenging, particularly with the looping bloodspider sound is that the sound plays for each grid you enter, so walking horiz/vert plays the sounds closer together than if you walk diagonally because walking diagonally takes longer.  So either the horiz/vert walking sounds overlap, or the diagonal sounds skip.  I almost think it would be better to have one, long audio loop for footsteps on each surface type (maybe even synched with the animation !) and have the sounds played by some kind of object that can be told to start, stop, or change the sound based on queues from the actor.  So I start walking on grass, it tells this object to start playing the grass footsteps loop.  I move over onto gravel, it switches the loop to the gravel footsteps loop.  I stop moving, it stops the loop.  I crouch and move, it plays a different loop of crouched footsteps.  It would eliminate the whole problem of having to piece together unnaturally tiny little fractions of sound from different sources, and all the timing issues involved, particularly with constant footstep sounds like spiders, hovernets, and eventually UGVs (and flying armor  ).  The end result would be much more natural sounding.

[ShipIt]

I have attached an updated terrain.ufo to fix the issues that ShipIt has mentioned.  I believe that the footstepper script was intended to work with the footstep surface tag in Radiant, but none of the maps that I looked at had that tag set.  I could be wrong.  The game has to have some way of determining what grids are passable.    I thought about trying to decypher the map format and determine which brushes had large, horizontal surfaces, but it was easier to just grab it all.

I think growing the terrain.ufo file without end by adding each texture is not the way to go. We need some way to find out which textures actually needed here. Maybe Duke has an idea about this.

As for the sounds, these are the only ones that I did because they were the ones that I felt sounded the least like they should.  The grass was very crunchy, and the bloodspiders making the same walking noises as humans was just odd.

I am not at all offended by my inability to read the standards first.     I'll see what I can do in the future about higher quality sounds, but we are talking about noise here.  I think the frequency breadth is more important than the throughput, and stereo doesn't really make much sense because the footsteps are going to be positionally located anyway.

If Crystan says the quality of the sounds is not good enough, I believe him. If so, we will need to replace them asap.

[H-Hour]

@DexCisco: this looks great, thanks for doing all this legwork. Can I ask again: can you give us the script you used to categorize textures and generate the terrain.ufo file? This could be great for keeping this file updated in the years to come.

Did you only add textures that are definitely used in the maps (using the licenses file as I mentioned before)? If so, I think it's fine to add all these texture references, even if not all of them are likely to be used as floors. First, they could end up being walked on if a wall panel is lying destroyed on the floor, for instance. Second, since this is pretty comprehensive and sorted by category, it will make it easier to define overall texture categories which we could eventually use for lots of sounds, not just footsteps.

@ShipIt: the footstepper.sh only lists those textures that have the floor surfaceflag checked in Radiant. Maintaining the maps seems like more work than maintaining the terrain.ufo file, especially if we can use DexCisco's sorting and generating script.

[DexCisco]

Since I am not very good at C++ or Python ATM, I used what I know, which is Lotus Notes, so it is probably not going to be very useful unless you want to download the Notes Designer  .  I can run it against the map files and have it identify textures that are new and need to be categorized.  If someone wants to rewrite this using something else, have at it.  I knew I could do it quickly and easily with what I know.  It was a way I could contribute without knowing much C++.

As mentioned before, I parsed the .map files, not including the tex_common textures, so only used textures are included.  The _nm textures are not included, as they don't show up in the map files.  I have also created a list of textures that are only used once or twice if someone wants to attempt some consolidation (attached)

I have noticed several maps with doors lying on the ground for instance that now have appropriate footstep sounds.

[Crystan]

...and stereo doesn't really make much sense because the footsteps are going to be positionally located anyway.

Well i've written that just the ambience sounds should be preferably in stereo.

I crouch and move, it plays a different loop of crouched footsteps.

Well for a game like UFO:AI its actually not necessary to create extra crouched footsteps. But if you want to implement a system for it - go on. I wont stop you.

One thing I found challenging, particularly with the looping bloodspider sound is that the sound plays for each grid you enter, so walking horiz/vert plays the sounds closer together than if you walk diagonally because walking diagonally takes longer.  So either the horiz/vert walking sounds overlap, or the diagonal sounds skip.  I almost think it would be better to have one, long audio loop for footsteps on each surface type (maybe even synched with the animation !) and have the sounds played by some kind of object that can be told to start, stop, or change the sound based on queues from the actor.  So I start walking on grass, it tells this object to start playing the grass footsteps loop... ...It would eliminate the whole problem of having to piece together unnaturally tiny little fractions of sound from different sources, and all the timing issues involved, particularly with constant footstep sounds like spiders, hovernets, and eventually UGVs (and flying armor  ).  The end result would be much more natural sounding.

I asked mattn a few months about that, he meant it would be difficult to implement looping sounds - atleast for the geoscape - could be another story for the battlescape since it supports looping sounds for ambs. Btw. until the loop system is not ingame, we should use my spider move sound - although i like your sound. Also ill commit soon a sound update which will also include completely new footstep sounds. (including grate sounds)

[H-Hour]

@Crystan: how soon do you expect to have the new sounds commited? When you do, I'd like to get DexCisco to generate his terrain.ufo file again and then get it in-game so we can test in case there are any performance problems with such a long file.

@DexCisco: you never know, someone on the dev team might have Lotus Notes, and it could save a lot of time when we have to update this thing in a year or two...

[DexCisco]

Crystan, if you want you can give me a list of sound file names to use for each category so I can generate a terrain.ufo with the right sounds so we don't have to search/replace to fix it in the future.

I have been using my terrain.ufo (and my sounds) in game and have not noticed any performance issues, though the AI turn can get a bit noisy when there are multiple actors moving at the same time.

[DexCisco]

Updated the terrain.ufo to add the extra whitespace.

[H-Hour]

DexCisco, thanks for this. Can I just check: is this set up to work without your added sound files? ie - if I add this to master without adding your sound files, will it work without any problems? Or will it look for sound files that don't exist?

[Crystan]

Crystan, if you want you can give me a list of sound file names to use for each category so I can generate a terrain.ufo with the right sounds so we don't have to search/replace to fix it in the future.

I have been using my terrain.ufo (and my sounds) in game and have not noticed any performance issues, though the AI turn can get a bit noisy when there are multiple actors moving at the same time.

Sry have been busy with other things. Well atm iam replacing all stock sounds (grass1-4,snow1-4,sand1-4,stone1-4,wood1-4,metal1-4 etc.) just had not the time finish the stuff.

[DexCisco]

is this set up to work without your added sound files?

No.  At the moment it uses grass5, carpet5, wood5, which are all my sounds.  I could put them back, but... 
Ok, here is a changed copy...

Sry have been busy with other things. Well atm i am replacing all stock sounds (grass1-4,snow1-4,sand1-4,stone1-4,wood1-4,metal1-4 etc.) just had not the time finish the stuff.

At the moment we only need one sound for each.  If you make your best #1 we can work with that until we can use multiple sounds per terrain type.

[Crystan]

Here are the new footstep sounds. I've also multiple sounds of the same type available (grass1-4 etc) but i want to modify them a bit (and atm they're useless anyway). Ill also add later extra sounds for grate and metal.

[ShipIt]

Shall we push those sounds to the repo?