Pioneer dev forum

Hi All. Long time observer of Pioneer, I have watched this game develop into something increasingly special over the years and have always thought of contributing something. One thing that struck me playing one of the newer releases was the awesome new graphics and the new music, but I also noticed how some of the older sound fx sat out of place a bit with all this new immersive goodness. Long story short I've been playing around.

These are a couple of my first attempts and i'm happy with them to different extents. Would be interested to know what others think.

http://digital-confusion.net/files/pion ... _Laser.ogg
This is a more edgy sounding laser.

http://digital-confusion.net/files/pion ... launch.ogg
This builds on the existing missile launch sound but gives it more follow through with an attempt to make it sound like the missile is traveling away from the ship.

http://digital-confusion.net/files/pioneer/warning.ogg
Alternative warning sound.. just an idea.

http://digital-confusion.net/files/pion ... _large.ogg
Alternative thruster sound. This is a more droning 'cabiny' sound. This could be built on and I have great ideas for how to do various thruster sounds but there's a few limitations in the current fx implementation which I want to investigate a bit.

http://digital-confusion.net/files/pion ... Medium.ogg
As above, not exactly perfect but trying a few different things

Open to suggestions.
I did some fx for shield hit and even beam laser until I realized they're not actually in the game yet? I couldn't find any reference in the code at any rate.

Bit of background, I am an amateur/hobbyist music producer/master-er but I have been doing it for a while now. I have a decent amount of equipment to mix some nice layered fx. A couple of the above are composed of samples and others (like pulse laser) are synthesized so there is plenty of room for tweaks and variations. I am a programmer by day though and while I don't have a lot of c++ experience I thought I might have a play at the code as well and see if I can expand on it in a couple of areas, Some ideas that have immediately come to mind are:

Queued samples - engine wind up, constant, wind down?
Increase the number of channels and/or dedicated channels - The limit is currently 10? which doesn't really seem enough given the pulse laser can steal most of it during battle alone. Longer samples with more ambient sound can cause issue here too. Speaking as an outsider I am sure these could be previously considered issues that aren't trivial to fix and I'm not saying I'll knock it off either (I need to get up to speed a bit), but I plan to have a crack at least and welcome any advice/guidance.

I welcome any feedback

Cheers!

Don't forget that there are no sounds in space. The spaceship can of course conduct sounds, so laser sound, hits, thruster vibrations and similar can be heard.
But a missile that is flying away can't be heard anymore.
In my opinion your sound is still okay because it sounds like the rocket starting and the pressure of the exhaust making that knocking noise that echos a bit in the parts of the ship.
All in all the sounds are very good. Good job.

EDIT:
Since there are sounds in space ingame anyways it doesn't really matter.

Yeah, sounds in space is one of those things where I don't mind breaking the rules a bit, because pew-pew noises are cool but silence isn't.

I saw a few posts suggesting going for the more cabin heard noises which I thought might be good for the engines and damage noises. I tried not to make the missile too wooshy as well, but yeah sooner or later u gotta break those rules for space games :)

In other news I compiled Pioneer last night and wrote one line of code woo!

jmf wrote:Don't forget that there are no sounds in space.

Sure, but pilot of starship can just wear headphones and have all the sounds he want :)
Seriously, the game without sound in Space will be just not the same.

"Would be interested to know what others think."

Sounds are good, just some thoughts...
Pulse_Laser: needs normalization (level is low)
Warning: sounds good
Thruster_large: needs to be normalizes (signal is very weak)
Missile_launch: level is good, but I'm not sure it should have slow attack
Hull_Hit_Medium: same as for Missile_launch - slow attack doesn't sounds like a Hit

If you need more ideas, you may have a look on my Sound Blend library to listen.
http://www.julianraymusic.com/sounds/so ... end_DV.php

Best
Ray

I have done a few tweaks on those you mentioned and normalized laser & thruster_large. I had artificially reduced them to try and get a feel for them in the game but I agree with the point u make that everything should be normalized and then set in game.