Re: [glob2-devel] sound events

[Bradley Arsenault]

On 1/10/06, Fernando J. Rodríguez (Herr Groucho) <address@hidden> wrote:
> El Mar 10 Ene 2006 06:30, Stéphane Magnenat escribió:
> > Fernando J. Rodríguez (Herr Groucho) wrote:
> > > El Lun 09 Ene 2006 05:51, Nuage escribió:
> > > What about adding sound events triggered when a building or unit
> > > is selected (different sounds depending on the state of the
> > > building or unit selected), when GUI elements are used, when
> > > units do something (harvesting, attacks, magic attacks, etc.),
> > > when buildings do something (defense tower shooting a stone,
> > > upgrades, destructions, etc.)?
> > >
> > > It would add some ambieance to the game...
> >
> > Well, some years ago we decided against adding sound because the
> > music is already action dependant, and so sound would tend to
> > disturb it/make noise.
>
> I had already read that in the lists archives, but nevertheless let me
> tell you that the action-dependant musis is overrated. Sure: it was a
> nice surprise the first time I played the game, to listen to a
> changing music when my units engaged in combat, but that is all about
> it. Only two contexts for background music, and it would be hard to
> come up with a few more, or even confusing, as units may be doing
> different things in different areas of the map at the same time, and
> there could only be one background music played at a time. Only major
> "states" or phases of the gameplay would deserve their own background
> music.
>
> On the other hand, short and distinctive sounds tied to some GUI
> actions or game elements provide better feedback, which is useful to
> learn quicker to play the game and to play more effectively.
> Consider my personal experience in this area:
> When I was playing the tutorial set of maps, I had a hard time
> figuring out that the construction site images displayed where I
> wanted a building, didn't necessarily mean that any building activity
> was taking place at all. I had to learn to watch at the small squares
> indicating the number of units working on that building-to-be, or to
> select the construction site and look at the "Working n/m" indication
> on the side bar.
>
> It was also not obvious to me at first that a building under upgrade
> ceases to serve its function while it is being upgraded.
>
> Now, how "short and distinctive sounds tied to some GUI actions or
> game elements" help this?
> If a constructing sound/noise was played whenever I clicked a
> constuction site which was actively being worked on, and no sound at
> all be played when no construction is taking place, then the player
> could intuitively know what is going on with that building.
>
> Also, if when a building is performing its function (an inn feeding
> units, a racetrack training units for speed, etc.) it made some
> sound/noise when selected, people would know that it is really
> working, much earlier than when they came to discover that sky-blue
> bar at the side of the map that indicates how many units are inside a
> building and how much time it is left until they leave.
>
> Done properly, sounds events would add usability and playability to
> the game.
>
> Finally, I consider background music as such: background, and I
> wouldn't mind if some short distinctive sound effects conveying more
> gameplay information and feedback disturbs it (but it shouldn't),
> specially as the music tends to get repetitive, in spite of it being
> well composed.
>
>
> > Now if someone produces clean, nice and
> > proper sound, this can be reconsidered.
>
> I would have supposed that the hooks in the code to trigger said
> sounds events would have to be in place before, so musicians/sound
> authors have something to play with.
> But anyway, let's see if someone interested in this can bring up a
> proof-of-concept set of sounds so the reconsiderations can take
> place.
>
> Thank you for reading so far.
>
> --
> Herr Groucho
>
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I certainly agree, the music originally incorperated into the game
seems like just a quick way to give the game sound, without any real
effort. What we would need for a full sound system is a sound artist,
and those are hard to come by.