FreeOrion

Can we get a list of what sound effects the programmers want for v.2?

Off the top of my head:
* Big Button pressed
* Little Button pressed
* Open sidebar
* Change sidebar to new system
* Close sidebar
* Colonize world
* Dialog (such as fleetbox) open
* Dialog close
* Ship movement order set
* Focus change (maybe just a button noise?)
* Very subtle noise for the planet info screen opening

Correct? What else?

Is that a programmers decision? If so, programmers are mightyer than i thought

But serious, IMO it up to the UI and/or audio people to make some suggestions.

Since it's not in the design doc, I'd say it's up to whoever is planning on adding the code to play sound effects.

I only meant, give the programmers some audio files and say, play that file when .... (hit a button/ close a dialog/ whatever). I haven't had a look yet, but zach said that there is already audio support. If so, it shouldn't be a big deal to add the provided files. I'm really looking forward to add some sounds, it's sooo silent in open space right now

The only open question which i can't answer at this moment is, which file format is used. I read that we will use ogg but i don't know, if we can read those files right now.

Do we even have any "sound effects" audio files yet? There's Gui's planetary ambients but other than that I'm not aware of any non-music contributions so far.

The word from on high is we are absolutely positively and most definitely using .ogg, for everything. I was under the impression the current engine can play them, but I will get confirmation on this. I'm also going to inquire momentarily about getting a single music track into v0.2, in permanent background loop mode, for ambience. I agree Noelte space is far too silent atm. :)

Just to confirm, ogg support is in fact built in right now.

as far as looping it, will you put some dead space at the beginning and end of the track so there's a little break before it loops? how will it work?

I had to do that when I made some ambient music for a DVD menu I put together. I had to make the tune loop and somehow connect it back into itself with out sounding like its jumping to the beginning which can be abrupt. The best way I found was to fade in at the beginning and fade out at the end.

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"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

... having the song fade in / then out midway, as well as fade in / out at both ends, is also a possibility. Blizzard composers do this (to some effect) to give the impression that many songs are being cycled for one .mp3 file. However for a platform that involves multiple breaks (IE: Moo3) you'd want smaller music files... (Why a 4 minute long human diplomacy music song, when you only deal on the screen with them for 10 seconds.. )



Oh, if you want sound effects, do you want them in .ogg or .wav format - simply because there could be a delay when using an .ogg audio click.

I created about 20 sound effects (clicks, dings, etc) a while back, they're all in .wav format though, but it should be easy to convert to .ogg

good luck!

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There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

this may be premature, but if you know the key of the piece of music that will be in a paticular background, you can create sfx (button clicks etc...) that fit harmonically.

Like in StarCraft, in the menu system, they have that high pitch click/beep, and its a note that fits with the music. The other challenge is to find that one note that always fits with every part of the music and doesn't create too much of a dissonence.

just a thought....

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"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

Do like in arcade games: every sounds/music has to fit with C major (so your are stuck with tonal, C major and its minor relative, A minor). For beep sound, I'd go with important tone (1 5 3) of either tonality: C, G, A, E. Menu open/close could you appropriate cadence, like open one (V-VI) for menu open and closed one (V I, IV I) for menu close. Nothing original, but still effective (and I think we want things that blend well).

That's one way to do it.

(sorry if the vocabulary is wrong, I did all my music classes in French)

We should simply take that infamous 'close window' sound effect from moo3 and place it everywhere when you click something. Even better, have different variations of it, like

"File cabinet slams shut and topples over"
"Flie cabinet slams shut and squashes someone's fingers"
"File cabinet slams shut and explodes"
"File cabinet slams shut multiple times"
"File cabinet slams shut in 3D ZERO ACTION!!!!"
"Rusty file cabinet screeches shut"
"File cabinet slams shut while someone shouts "GODDAMMIT""

It would be our tribute to moo3 - the game that revolutionized first person shooters.

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There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

lmao Gui

Strat and Vish... I tend to change keysigs a lot in my music, one of my favorite tools. So this could be a problem...

If you change to a related key, then many of the important pitches will be retained. Also, consider whether the modulation is temporary or permanent... Having a home key that is returned to would make transitions between songs simpler, and give an overall sense of the song being in that key.

http://www.gearchange.org/index.asp

Having a few tone (say degree 1 and 5) that are never dissonant isn't too limiting: one tone (degree 1) have 7 keys and their relative, two tones (deg. 1 and 5) allow 6 keys, etc. But if you are doing tonal music (as you implied with "keysigs") I wonder if modulations so far can't be avoided for the sake of the global assonance.

Permanent modulations will prevent from using harmonic functions to do cadences (perfect, imperfect, plagal, half....).

that reminds me:

In one of the crappy little arcade game I half-wrote, I changed the pitch of each sound effect slighly (and randomly) each time it was played.

I found the variation a pleasing effect.