Building and weapon sounds are in the works right?

Sounds are still... bad...

Uber plz go play TA we need better sounds.

I wish the sounds were moddable...

Me too....

Make it please happen @jables

I've had a look at the .fev and .fsb files that come with PA. They are made deliberately opaque which makes modding hard. What we need is the fmod project file that generates those files, or we need to reverse the .fev file format so that we can add custom sound 'events' along with our own .fsb sound bank files.

Yeah I read about that too. Someone also had the tip to recreate the library in a fmod file and naming so that it generates the same files but I don't think thats possible since it seems Fmod also alters sounds when it comes to distance and all. I can't remember if jables ever had a response to this kinda stuff.

I'd love to get my hands on that project file!

The event file describes the sound effects (this is also the place were we get the names "/SEblahblah" in the unit json files) and gives them names.
The sounds used in the events are sourced from the sound bank files (.fsb). I found references to all the .fsb files in the .fev file.
The fmod sound system api is what uses the distance and all that stuff to compute the sounds, so really all we need to be able to do is add our own events to the .fev file and at least one of our own .fsb files.

A year on and the first reply is still valid:

Yea i know. But to my knowledge you can't edit the .fev unless you have the original fdp and recompile with additional sounds. Copyright protection stuff.

To make sounds moddable would need uber letting us choose what .fevs we want to load up.

Not really, but it depends on what you think is wrong with the sounds. I do think some of the sound effects could use reworking, because I don't like how they sound. That part is subjective. The part that isn't is the relative volume / uniqueness of the sound effects. In TA I could pretty easily tell what was happening by sound alone, the firing of LRPCs, HLTs and LLTs etc. The unit sounds are all fairly distinctive and they are loud enough to pick them out during a firefight. Not so in PA.

Fully agree - the sound effects play a major part in why the people call this game "soulless". Hell take the laser turrets for example - when you can hear them they sound flimsy. When you have ever heard the laser turrets from TA you know what they should sound like.
This has been a concern since... well, ever since the game was playable.
Unfortunately I don't know of any response from Uber's side to this.

i am not disaggreing but you know very well that this simply is low priority still ...
just being pushy doesn´t help ...

I just want to mod the sound effects so I can add cutesy PEW PEW effects to all my units xD

Maybe we could simply get a comment from Uber that they acknowledge the problem....
@jables @mkrater plz

You mean FMOD Event Player I guess.

If you use a tool like Aezay FSB Extractor, you can get all the individual audio files.

What you probably didn't knew, the .fev-file has not just an index of all sound files available. That thing is a bit more ugly than that.

It contains logic. Such as "randomly select one of 5 available laser sounds using the following distribution" and alike. Or "combine these two tracks into one sound".

That old laser sound (I guess you mean the one in the ZOLD section, originally used for the Ant when it was still a laser tank and didn't fire shells yet) isn't even compatible with the sound event definitions used for recent units. It doesn't even have all the finetuning parameters.

In order to create a compatible .fev and .fsb pair, you would need the original project used to create these. Not only to remix some of the existing sounds, but even to add new ones as fmod only supports a single event definition file per project, and you need also to be compatible with the parameters used in the events.

...

Wait a moment, parameters?
And one of them named "view_frustum_distance"?
And quite a number of users complaining that they can't hear anything happening outside their view frustum?

Yeah, no wonder when that parameter dampens loudness to zero even at a small distance.

I think that one could actually just use a little prescaler on that parameter, so people can adjust the frustum culling for sound effects to their own comfortable values. One tiny setting, huge difference.


Not much related to the original issue of being unable to mod sounds at all, and the lack of a distinct "punch" in the existing sounds, but another point for the "missing features" list.

It used to be better, a nuke or commander explosion could be heard anywhere on the planet (and even zoomed further out) if iirc. Or at least the commander could be.

i rather wait for the update when things are actualy done ...
we know their plans for june so i say lets wait for that see how it turns out and then move on to the next step one at a time ...

Oh I don't want an update right now, I just want to know if they are even aware of this issue and if they ever put some thought into it.

how bout no?
just to keep your expectations low

seriously why should they not be aware of this
we have talked about this many times and i am sure they put thought on this already ...

Maybe because there have been many many many topics in the past that were huge concerns which have simply been ignored by Uber?

uh wow realy the fanboycard?

no, i am just tired of people asking a thousand times for the same things over and over
oh this doesn´t sound good, that doesn´t look good, were are my shields? were are my t3 and superunits
yes i want polish, too ... but how important are any of these compared to a well working and functioning singleplayer and galactic war (with saves and that jazz) or multiplayer multiplanetmatches?

you think they are ignoring those topics? that would be because they have their priorities and simply can´t just say "oh we plan to do x after y on that and that time" ... you experienced yourself how setting deadlines worked on alpha and beta ..

you say i sound like a fanboy?
i say you sound impatient for having your "merely nice to have" stuff ... what does constantly poking an answer out of people help you? a confirmation that they care for your expectations? that you don´t feel abandoned?
ultimately you have to wait for stuff to be done anyway ... no matter weither or not you get the answer of "yes we are looking into that" ... you are taking their time to answer your comparibly minor question ... and then you wonder why only so few of them are on the forum?