Sounds in Space

I really doubt the OP was thinking of UI sounds. Those of course don’t have anything to do with the sounds this thread is actually about - sounds from weapons, explosions, engines, tracks etc... (well tracks in space... never mind). I find it quite odd that you thought of UI sounds…

And I definitely can second the “realism for awesome” statement. I HATE it when films/ games do sounds in space or on atmosphereless bodies.

I would really dislike having part of my sounds muffled. I have huge robots shooting huge guns at eachother, I want to hear shots & explosions, no matter where they are.

Space not sounding like space is totally NOT awesome.

I don't care if it's realism awesome (see: Shattered Horizon powered down suit) or hollywood muffled sounds awesome though.

Distant/muffled sounds for high levels of zoom would be neat.

Good example, that is the way I'd like something like that to play out. Option C for sure.

I'd like to add something to this, in addition to muffling the sounds in vaccum environments (either looking at a battle on a moon/asteroid or panning out to solar system view), I think it would be cool to have the tone of the music adjust accordingly once you pan out to solarsystem view to increase a sense of cold detachment from the destruction of a interplanetary war - vs the faster paced more personal music for closer viewpoints - even when fighting in a vaccum.

An example of the tone I am think of is the game Defcon. The music was cold and a little bit chilling at times when you were looking at nukes on a world map hitting major cities and the deathtoll figures come up in the UI - whilst im not suggesting we have sobs in the background and try and instil a sense of guilt and grief - It was the best example I could think of that approximates what I'm trying to get across.

Beat you to it at least for some parts. I completely agree, and I believe it was mentioned 'somewhere' over the past few weeks.

Ah, so you did, sorry I missed your post there I went back and found your post, I agree - these were great ideas!

Oh cmon.. this is a game.. if hollywood movies dont care about sounds in space and nobody complains about it, why should we care?

I was thinking whispery sounds.

We do because unlike the many of the audience for those movies, we actually understand the error.

For starters we shouldn't be using Hollywood movies as a metric to measure the development of a game. A game should be measured on it's own standards, it is an entirely different medium. It is also likely that people playing a fan funded sci fi RTS are a very different target market than most Hollywood productions and have different expectations. Games such as Deadspace and Shattered horizon have included the reduction of sound to direct conduction in order to add to the atmosphere.

There have also been movies and TV series that dont ignore the idea of sound and space, it might not work in something like Starwars but the TV series Firefly and the movie Serenity dealt with muffled sound, Moon, hell even a section of the remake of Startrek had sound muted while following an unlucky crew member getting sucked out of a hull breach. I think (and I dont appear to be alone in this) that some balance of sound differences between space and atmosphere would add depth atmosphere and immersion to the experience.

Thus, we are trying to come up with concepts that we like and develop them in a constructive way. Uber will either like the results of these discussions and impliment some version of the idea or they wont. We care because we helped put together the starting capital to develop this game and would like to share our ideas with Uber.

How about you can hear all the shots you fire and all the impacts on your units, that is realistic, and you still get the cues you would expect, like 'my units are engaging' or 'I'm getting shot'. It also helps with the human mind getting immersed into the game (because it is programed to expect sound) while not jarring anyone out by be horribly wrong.

So... D?

This was exactly the example I was going to use.

In Shattered Horizon the suit you use has what they call a "sound simulator" which basically allows them an excuse to put sound into the game. IMO this saved the game from becoming pretty damn boring. And as a side effect, when your suit gets EMP'd and shuts down the dull, muffled sound effects make you feel isolated and vulnerable. It works brilliantly. It's scientifically inexplicable - but yeah it does the trick. Sometimes these things don't need an explanation.

Now bare in mind that the music score is apparently going to be dynamic. So it changes with the situation. And as the environments the user will be in are also varied, here is what I would propose for PA:

Planetary level: Full dynamic music score. Full sound, pretty much as you would expect. Massive explosions and all the noise and flashing lights that make the game great.
***Unless for some reason it might be altered by underwater or some such other reason (that's just an idea I thought of while I was typing).

Orbital/Moon/Asteroid level: I still want music, but it needs to be quieter and obviously still dynamic to reflect the current situation. But I'd like to hear muffled sound to represent a thin or non existent atmosphere. I know this isn't technically realistic but I think from a immersion point of view I think it's necessary. Mainly I want to know I'm not on a planet. On a side note I would also like the gameplay to reflect this. MAybe even the graphical representation of explosions etc. I really want to FEEL the difference between being on a planet with an atmosphere and being on an rock in space. I do however, realise there's a limited budget, the reality is that graphical niceties likely have to come near the bottom of the list.

Solar system or galactic map level: No sound of battle or music what so ever. Maybe some kind of sensor ambiance noise (like rhythmical beeps and tones of sensors and telemetry noise) but in general very quiet. Just to give the sense of distance from the battle. I think this gives an impression of scale and allows a little reflection on behalf of the player. It would be neat to watch the symbol of your asteroid take out the symbol for your enemies planet from the tac overview and all you see is a little screen shake and a dull thud (at the most) to a background of ambient sensor noise. It would totally create what I am talking about here - complete detachment from the battle and make the impact of zooming in to planetary level and seeing the awesome annihilation of your target all the more epic. Contrast is the key here.

Sort of like when the guy puts in the code and presses the red "launch" button for the nuke missile. He is completely isolated from the battle and the difference between his small action (pressing the red button) and the result (a nuke going off and killing maybe hundreds of thousands) are so far removed from each other. It would be great to recreate this effect in the game.

I agree with this wolfdogg - it allows a nice balance of awesome realism with the poetic licence required to keep it engaging in an audio sense. The UI would still be producing sound of course but you get that feeling of isolation and disconnectedness.

The only personal preference I would add to this is to have some kind of music at the solar system scale, a cold and lonely background to help with the atmostphere - much like in the music in the game DEFCON which I referenced earlier but a lot more subtle.

menchfrest - I like the idea of hearing conduction based sound while fighting in a vaccum, like if you were watching a battle on a moon or asteroid