[mikmanner]

Hi - if I were to work on doing a sound replacement mod for Freespace 2 using high quality .ogg files would it be a case of simply extracting the original files and literally replacing the sounds with the same filenames? I know this is quite limiting - I would love to do a complete upgrade with FMOD designer and everything but I'm just a sound designer not a coder so I'd be hopeless at plugging in FMOD events into game code.

Cheers,
Mick
Sound Designer - www.manningaudio.com

[mjn.mixael]

Yup, that's about it for sounds.

You may need to look into the sounds.tbl though to adjust attenuation distances and whatnot unless you are careful that your new sounds are always the same volume as the originals. There's also a few other flags in there that you might want to look at.

[Colonol Dekker]

8/10 from NME? Impressive

[mikmanner]

Ha this is so old school - love it! Cool I'm going to do some new sounds then! Though the scope of improvement will be limited by the basic implementation of sounds shown in the table.

For a dramatic change, a modern AAA sort of presentation we'd need some code support to plug in distance filters, reverbs, dopplers, dynamic engine sounds and that sort of thing through FMOD but I doubt anyone will be up for plugging that support into the code. haha

Yup, that's about it for sounds.

You may need to look into the sounds.tbl though to adjust attenuation distances and whatnot unless you are careful that your new sounds are always the same volume as the originals. There's also a few other flags in there that you might want to look at.

[chief1983]

Actually there is at least a little bit of support for that stuff in the sounds.tbl.  And expanding that table might not be too difficult with the OpenAL upgrade, but that would indeed be a code change still.

[mikmanner]

So I spent an hour on it last night, just did some very preliminary tests - here's what I came up with (obviously sounds are not final) but even after a little work I think the jump in quality is clear especially from 8bit to 16.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3317708/FS2%20Sound%20Replacement%20Mod.wmv

Dropbox link of the video (don't want to youtube at this stage)

Unfortunatly there's one thing that's going to hold back this mod and that's variation - currently there's only one flare sound, one beam sound, one blaster sound etc and those single sounds are repeated constantly - what I really need is to be able to tell the game to pick one from a random group - so say we have missile1.ogg and missile2.ogg - get the game to play one or the other instead of just one.

Could anyone help with this?

Cheers

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm hoping it can be randomised. If the sound.tbl's been subject to the same extention as ships.tbl?

But i'd wait for a coder in "the know" to come and clarify

[mjn.mixael]

I like the new ambient sound and the afterburner cutoff sound is nice. However, I'm not sure I like the new afterburner sound itself. It's very different and sounds more like some futuristic gunshot than extra thrust.

[mikmanner]

I like the new ambient sound and the afterburner cutoff sound is nice. However, I'm not sure I like the new afterburner sound itself. It's very different and sounds more like some futuristic gunshot than extra thrust.

Cheers - Yeah like I say sounds aren't final - one thing to note though while I will be trying to keep the character of the sounds in-tact, this will be my interpretation of the sounds so don't expect all sounds to be the same but at a higher quality. I will be taking some artistic license with them.

[MetalDestroyer]

I really like the new sound.

[mikmanner]

Got another video here - this is the total of only 4 hours work - sounds are nowhere near final but this has quite a few more additions. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3317708/FS2%20Sound%20Replacement%20Mod%20Vid%202.wmv

[mikmanner]

I really like the new sound.

Cheers, it's going to sound a lot better than what these tests currently sound like

[sigtau]

You're doing exactly what I wanted to do with my HD Sound mod that went in the Media VPs back in the day.   I like where it's going. 

I'm not exactly sure about the new afterburner loop and the Subach firing sound--and if that was a subspace sound I heard in the second video, I strongly suggest we keep that one sounding as close to retail as possible, because it's so characteristic and recognizable to FreeSpace that it would be a little far to deviate waaaay away from it.

However, this is assuming FSU would be interested in using these and I'm not an idiot

(If I didn't make it clear before, these do sound great, all retail preferences aside.)

[mjn.mixael]

FSU would be interested in anything upgraded. However for the purposes of the MediaVPs, sounds probably shouldn't deviate too much from the originals. That's not to say you can't continue to take artistic license though.

I would assume this line of thought for any audio upgrades that would go in FSU. Like models, textures, and anything else... it needs to be a clear upgrade, it needs to be recognizable as the original.

[sigtau]

(I don't speak for FSU when I say this, but...) I suppose it'd be better to decide which sounds go into FSU by committee vote or somesuch.  I'm still interested in contributing to FSU under the category of sound.

On-topic: What would your take on the interface sounds be, mkmanner?

[Woolie Wool]

The weapon switching sound is awesome, the Subach sound is OK, but I really don't like the BVas sound. You should keep the high-pitched screeching character of the original beams, it's an extremely recognizable and intimidating sound, much more threatening than some electronic noise.

[mikmanner]

Thanks for the comments - just so we are clear, I wouldn't want to 'release' any of the sounds in these videos, some are okay but they are very much just sketches. It's difficult to know what direction to take at this stage, I want the character of the sounds to remain in-tact but that might be difficult because overall I want the game to sound much cleaner, in some cases this means toning down some of the sounds and making them lighter.

The old sounds are 8bit - this means that the sound designer would have made every sound as loud as possible to reduce the signal to noise ratio, as a result the sound design lack subtlety. It's here where I'll be taking artistic license - on an individual level the sounds may or not sound close to the originals but as a whole being played together they should work well with each other and still keep the style which FS2 adopted which are quite Earthy sounds based on Jets and modern war machines as well as synths and effects.

To re-iterate one simple bit of functionality which will improve this project by 1000% would be support for sound variations - instead of just one wasp missile launch sound I want the game to pick from 20 of them.

...sounds probably shouldn't deviate too much from the originals... it needs to be a clear upgrade, it needs to be recognizable as the original.

I've been working on Runescape for a year modernizing 10 years old audio (to the limitations of the audio engine). One thing I've come up against is that some older players will grate against any sort of change to the sounds. For the reasons mentioned above I'm just going to work towards how I feel the game would sound today but still trying to maintain the character of the originals.

That said if people want to use any of the sounds which more closely resemble the originals officially then they're welcome to.

... but I really don't like the BVas sound. You should keep the high-pitched screeching character of the original beams...

Yeah I totally agree -this was the last thing I did last night, hearing it again this morning I think it sounds awful haha.

...if that was a subspace sound I heard in the second video...

No I didn't touch that - there's a few sounds which are intimidating (in a fun way) because they are so iconic - the beam laser and subspace sounds are two of them.

On-topic: What would your take on the interface sounds be, mkmanner?

All the UI sounds like missile warnings, lock-ons etc I think need a bit of a facelift, much like the rest of the game they are very heavy and thick - I think for these sort of sounds you need something that can be heard very clearly but has a frequency range which doesn't completely dominate the mix.

[MetalDestroyer]

The beams sounds like those from Mass Effect. It's weird.

[mjn.mixael]

...sounds probably shouldn't deviate too much from the originals... it needs to be a clear upgrade, it needs to be recognizable as the original.

I've been working on Runescape for a year modernizing 10 years old audio (to the limitations of the audio engine). One thing I've come up against is that some older players will grate against any sort of change to the sounds. For the reasons mentioned above I'm just going to work towards how I feel the game would sound today but still trying to maintain the character of the originals.

That said if people want to use any of the sounds which more closely resemble the originals officially then they're welcome to.

My points were just FSU's policy in general. It's neither a comment for or against inclusion, more of an FYI.. for you and for anyone else interested in this project.