Sounds

[Field Marshal Klesh]

Hey guys,

This isn't a thread to discuss units slots and their corresponding sounds etc... rather, it is to have discussions about extra sounds in scenarios.

What are your guys' thoughts on extra 'atmospheric' enhancing sounds? I mean sure,they sound good and all but do you guys actually download them? I am thinking of including an option sounds zip with only these extra sounds. But you know, they are really big files. I have one in mind that is almost 500kb just as the scenario's opening theme! (and its not even THAT long) Is it worth it?

I have been sampling movies and stuff on my pc, getting some great original stuff, but if it ends up making like at least 3 zip files for sounds do you guys think that is too much? Thoughs?

Discuss...

FMK

 

[CornMaster]

Personally, I don't include extra sounds. Actually most of my scenarios don't even have new units, so changing the sounds will be pointless.

I never download new sounds for scenarios. Sure it helps the atmosphere but I have a slow connection and it takes forever!!!!! So I don't bother.

I will be including new sounds in my Star Trek Scenario but in the scenario I will put out in a few days, it won't have new sounds.

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[Andrew Livings]

Personally I'm all for it. I think people can use new sounds to go much further in scenario creation these days. For example, a Star Trek scenario without a "themed" menuloop.wav or menuend.wav would be less atmospheric than it could. The one thing that bothers me in civ2 is the lack of opportunity for incidental music. The CD tracks are fine if all you want is an ancient earth scenario: it's less relevant for modern or sci-fi scenarios. Pratically the only place you could use incidental music is in the events.txt, either as an additional combat sound or just random. But unlike stand alone games with dedicated incidental music and soundtracks we're never going to have that level of professionalism.

If you accept that then there are two positions: 1, that having incidental music is a waste of time from the begining because it can't be as a continuous music 'theme', just patchy. 2, that having any incidental music is good while it adds something to the scenario's atmospehere.

If you have them, they don't always need to stick around. It would be simplicity to add an option in a batch file menu to "delete extra sounds" and have that process delete the files automatically from the scenario if it's never going to be used again. Depends on what the user wants.

 

[kobayashi]

I usually edit my sounds to reduce their size by chopping off sections and fading away the end (which seems to be what you are doing with the music but you can do that with the unit sounds too). You get almost the same effect. For instance, the panzer march in ZWK is gibberish because whole phrases have been chopped off in the middle.

Other things to do are to try not to repeat sounds (like extra1.wav = extra2.wav) by choosing the right unit slots)

On balance, I prefer to include a optional music zip like you suggest but put the important unit sounds in the game zip.

 

[Field Marshal Klesh]

kobayashi,
what are you using for software? I am stuck with the crappy sound recorder that comes free with the pc. Mine has no fade options... it has a decrease volume option, but that results in blocky volume drops. I was going to use some much better software like Cakewalk, but that won't make wavs as low as 8bit, 22050Hz. I think 16 bit is the lowest there.
What I have done is to use the imput volume slider on my pc's mixer to simulate a fade.

 

[kobayashi]

Goldwave 3.03. I just e-mailed it to you.

 

[Field Marshal Klesh]

Yeah, man! Thank you very much! I'm DLing it now, I can't wait to play around with it. It should really be nice to have even the most basic kind of effects... The sound recorder under the Entertainment section of the start menu is pretty much wrorthless.

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Thanks very much for the tip, Kobayashi!
In many ways I've been having the same considerations as FMK, but they're pretty much solved now.

Goldwave seems to be an excellent little util, and it seems suited to just this kind of sound work.

I digged up a link where you can get it, at AK's Multimedia Corner, ready to download for free, for all those lazy ones like me.
http://www.dfki.de/~kroener/ak_mmc.htm#software

I think with this program, you can keep the size of the sound files pretty much in line with the original Civ2 files, so that it isn't such a big problem anymore with download size.

And they DO give the scenarios that extra touch. But of course, nothing can stand in the way of gameplay. The scenario has to be fun to play, first and most, and properly balanced. The rest is just fruit.

Yours Truly,
Morten

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"A handful of might, works better than a bag full of right!"
Max Stirner (1806-56)