Sound Advice: Drox Operative

[kerzain]

Originally Posted by kerzain

However, the reason for this post is to bring up the Angelic sort of choir sound that occurs when a member of your alliance declares war, thus dragging you into it. This angelic choir-like sound effect sounds very distorted and clipped, giving sort of a Loudness Wars vibe. I don't know if there's a way to fix this, but as it stands it a bit hard to listen to when wearing headphones, as it makes it sound like the speakers are blown.

Replying to my own post here because much of it applies to what I'm about to say as well. I'm finding all the lower end bass stuff, like explosions during combat especially, to sound exceptionally clipped, staticy, compressed and/or distorted.

Since I'm the only person that has mentioned it I've wondered if the problem is unique to my system, so I've tried both the Direct 3D and MMSYSTEM audio options available for my system, and I've checked my audio drivers to make sure they aren't out of date, but this distortion persists. It's especially distracting to me because I play wearing headphones exclusively, and at a reasonable volume. Just a head's up in case there's something that can be done.

[Chumpy]

I like the intro voice.

[Reefpirate]

Originally Posted by Chumpy

I like the intro voice.

Lol I like it too.

[torikamal]

Originally Posted by kerzain

Replying to my own post here because much of it applies to what I'm about to say as well. I'm finding all the lower end bass stuff, like explosions during combat especially, to sound exceptionally clipped, staticy, compressed and/or distorted.

Since I'm the only person that has mentioned it I've wondered if the problem is unique to my system, so I've tried both the Direct 3D and MMSYSTEM audio options available for my system, and I've checked my audio drivers to make sure they aren't out of date, but this distortion persists. It's especially distracting to me because I play wearing headphones exclusively, and at a reasonable volume. Just a head's up in case there's something that can be done.

Hi Kerzain, I've got an experiment for you to try. If you go into the assets\sounds\environment\explosions directory and play back some of the explosion files, do you still get that clipping sound? I did apply some distortion to the sounds to make them sound more explodey, but none of them should actually be clipped. Let me know how they sound then.

I will be doing more posts tomorrow. Thank you for your ideas/critiques, everybody!

[kerzain]

I listened to all of them, and I think it's Explosion10 that's the worst offender (the beginning of it), and probably the one that's been standing out.

[torikamal]

Originally Posted by kerzain

I listened to all of them, and I think it's Explosion10 that's the worst offender (the beginning of it), and probably the one that's been standing out.

OK, so that's one of the explosions I applied a good amount of distortion to. On the one hand to make it sound quite a bit different than the other explosions, and on the other hand to simulate the effect of what your ears would "hear" if you were that close to an explosion of that size. Since they can't handle the amplitude, it would distort on you. I rather like the sound, but I totally understand if it's not your bag, and I don't want you to be annoyed by such a fundamental sound, so here's something you can do (that should work). Mod time! But super easy.

First, just pick one of your favorite explosion sounds from the existing ones there.
Now my file structure looks a bit different than yours--I think I wrote it how it would look for you, but if not, you may have to retype a little bit, but go to the existing install area, and create the following new file structure:

C:\Program Files\Drox Operative\Assets\sounds\environment\

The underlined stuff would be the new folders you would like have to create. Next, just plop the explosion you like into that folder and name it exactly the same as the one you want to replace. This should override the sound everytime Drox boots up, and if you ever want to remove the mod, you can just delete the file.

It's been a while since my last mod, so if this doesn't work, my apologies, but you should be able to do this with any sound in the game--you just have to make sure to match the path and file name. You can add your own custom-built sounds in, if you'd like!

Let me know if that doesn't work.

[torikamal]

Originally Posted by Jinsai

For things like the radiation burn, I'd prefer not to have the sounds randomly pitch-shift. I think a steady alarm is a better sound for that.

By the radiation burn, do you mean the buzzy type sound effect? If so, that's actually the sound effect for your shields getting hit by anything right now. DOTs will trigger that continually unless you are out of shields. I only bring that up to point out that it would be more complicated than removing the pitch variation, since the radiation effect is triggering the shield sound.

But if it's really buggin you, I suggest a quick bit of modding--Soldak is all about customization!

First, find the file ShieldHit.snd, which I believe is in a zip file which should be in a directory structure like this (might look a little different because my build is different):
C:\Program Files\Drox Operative\Assets\sounds\combat\

So kind of like the reference to the explosion above, you'll need to create folders in this directory structure:
C:\Program Files\Drox Operative\Assets\sounds\combat\

Then just copy ShieldHit.snd into the combat folder and open it up with Notepad. You can have fun messing with the variables, but to get rid of the pitch change, just delete the line below.

sound "Sounds/Combat/ShieldHit.wav"
Volume 0.8
VolumeVariation 0.1
Pitch 1.0
PitchVariation 0.2 <-----delete me if you don't like me!

[ShaggyMoose]

My favorite music is the "you just blew away a bunch of guys" music.

[ShaggyMoose]

Did the music change subtley with 0.903? Or I am just imagining things?

[Von Paulus]

Honestly, I don't like any of the music game. It's a question of style, I think.
However I do love the ambient loops, and I think they fit very well to this game.
I prefer New Age, or Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream for SF games.

About the intro voice, in my opinion it should be more deep, more like Picard.

Sound effects are OK, for my standards.
Don't feel the explosions too much distorted. I create some sound mods for a couple of wargames, so I guess that I'm used to that.

I play the game, only with the ambient loops and sound effects enabled.

Keep up the good work.