I just bought a headset recently, because my boom mic just wasn't doing it's job right, and I tried it out while playing a game of PA. This led me to the realization that PA has a lot of ambient noises that I had never heard before, because I was using speakers rather than headphones. So I thought, wouldn't it be cool to have ambient noises that change depending on the biome or planet type the player is currently zoomed in on? In fact, to make things more interesting, why not change the normal game sounds that the units and factories make depending on where they are? For example: Earth planet: -Ambient noises change depending on the biome, forests might have animal noises, ice biomes might have ice sheets grinding against each other, deserts might just have a lonely breeze. -Units might make different noises while moving through different biomes, while moving through forests they might be moving through foliage or dead leaves and would therefore make a rustling noise (on top of the noises they make already), Ice biomes would have snowy footsteps, deserts would just have a dry sounding crunch noise when the step. Barren Moon/Asteroid: -Potentially have absolutely no ambient noise, other than an ocasional small meteor impact making a little bit of a hiss and thump sound. -Since these are in vaccum, they might have all of the sounds slightly faded to add to the effect that there is no air, while keeping a footfall effect similar to an earth planet's desert biome. Metal Planets: -A constant hum of energy that might change depending on the location, perhaps accompanied by the sound of moving machines from within the planet. Might change depending on whether or not they have an atmosphere, if not, fade the sound out somewhat for the airless effect. -As units move across the surface of the planet their footfalls or wheels should resonate or clang a bit more than usual against the surface of the metal planet. Perhaps make the trenches make different clanging noises. What do you guys think?
I never noticed it either until i got a headset, there is currently ambient wind blowing in the background and some other noises that I can't currently place, they aren't bad at all, I just think they could be varied a bit.
this is a great idea but I dunno how feasible it would actually be to implement because what your suggesting I think would have to be loaded at the time your viewing a particular planet but as the game is a seamingless transition it might make it problematic if you get what I mean? You could have all sounds load as the game loads together, but I dunno how to get around the seamingless transition between planets though (how the game knows what particular planet type your currently viewing)
I have noticed that they do this somewhat already, just not with ambient noises, only with structures and units, I don't think it would be too hard to mess with the code so that biomes and different planet types can do the same thing. I know from my work with the unreal development kit that it's quite easy to set up as long as your game code supports it, and it seems that PA's code should be able to.
Yeah nice idea, I think the biomes could do with a bit more distinction, both for gameplay and just in terms of 'feel'. +1
Looking through the json files, I see they already have ambient sound entries like "ambient_sound":"/SE/Ambience/Amb_Planet_Earth". They may be planning on filling in more ambient sounds as they go on.
Would be nice to hear units driving walking sounds depending on surface. Ambient sounds like winds in different biomes as well. In general i think the game is still very early and lacking in sounds. Even the unit error cant build structure sound is very flat and unnoticeable. But im sure it will be coming later, when units are getting closer to being done and they know what units will most likely make it to the final game and in what state.