Sound design - post CS position

First, a giant congratulations to @Lightiger8 for soloing the Phoenix in this epic fight!



Now, about the SFX, and why I really hope a Sound Designer is the next new hire after Customer Service.

Here is a similar creature in a boss fight in Dark Souls. Ignoring the epic boss fight music (which we shouldn't, but one thing at a time so it gets a pass for the time being), there are many sounds in the following video that increase the impact of the fight, but don't exist in the Shroud fight.

Put the videos part way into each fight and notice the difference. In DS, the boss is making noise the entire time. Flying and movement sounds are intimidating. Regular roar sounds, used to communicate a dodgeable attack it looks like. Attacks all make noises, hitting it makes noises, getting hit sounds painful.



The Phoenix doesn't make any sounds when running, when launching a fireball (fireball does have sound of flying and hitting though, but the latter could have some more oomph), rarely does his screech (a few minutes straight with no noise), when getting hit it sounds like the arrow is thunking into a tree, bow sfx lacks the twang of the string although it does have the flying arrow sound, getting hit never has pain cries, the ticking up of charged attack sounds like you're playing "Wheel of Fortune" instead of winding up for a big hit, etc etc.

As I sit here typing, I'm listening to the Phoenix battle playing minimized. It doesn't do justice to what just happened, how intense that fight was. The sounds aren't good enough.

Now I switch to typing with Dark Souls running minimized, and holy crap! WTH is going on over there? Sounds like the end of the world!

And as I've said before, ambient sounds are missing all over, combat, getting an artifact, becoming a GM and all sorts of other things need more sound love. Boss music would be fantastic too if that's not dreaming too hard.

The point of this post is to suggest that the next production hire should really be a sounds person. A game without great sound can never be a great game.

 

In Dark Souls 3, it also appears as though the events for the sounds happen on the same machine as the sounds themselves. In Sota, I believe the events for sounds come from the server, and thus precise timing for creatures moving around etc will remain elusive.

 

I fully agree here! Tho you really can not put these 2 videos next to each other. I am a big big BIG fan of the Dark Souls series.
Sounds FX, ambiance, music in SotA needs a to be improved a lot, but there is no money for it and will probably never happen..

 

Do not think it is, this will mean that for the solo (offline) players SotA will have even less sounds??
Also do you know how much data bandwidth we the players would use from the port datacenter hired cabinet, we would stream them poor. Network bandwidth is pretty expensive in hired data centers.

 

I definitely agree. Some games with limited mechanics make up for it with sound amd ambience - such as elite dangerous.

Older games used clever sound design to produce immersion where graphics simply couldn't.

Good sound can be so effective.

Bad sound can have a definite and clear negative effect. I don't summon earth elementals because they scream in my ear even if theyre on the other side of the screen. A tamer friend couldn't stand the wyvern for a similar reason. Bludgeoning noises are the samr volume regardless of distance. These things are grating

 

Well, I would predict this as a side effect of being an online-first game. I know nothing of the inner workings of the game engine, but I would imagine the single player client works just like the web client, only making round trips to localhost instead (resulting in even more accurate timing with sounds and events, not "more sounds").

Its not that I think "more sounds" are not possible, I am just stating this thread is yet another "compare MMO to single-player console game feature parity" threads.

I would love to have more rich sounds! Especially for "boss level" encounters.

 

@Black Tortoise @Feeyo

Sounds are downloaded in a patch, and then sit locally on your machine, waiting to make your life better. In almost every situation, the server does not say "Play the footstep sound", or "Play the buffing sound". You take a step or activate the buff and your machine knows that means that the sound should be playing. It's not "important" data, so that will never be communicated back and forth with the server.

It's the same with animations, those are all on your machine already, just waiting to be activated. When you cast a buff on yourself, the data being sent to the server is that the buff is happening, but locally your machine is responsible for playing the animation, the server doesn't care. Even if someone else is casting a buff, the server shouldn't be telling you to play that sound, it should just be telling you "X is happening at Y location, handle it". Your machine knows that means play the animation, play the sound, but none of the sound effects or animations needed to do that have to be transferred, you have them all already.

Ambient sounds are built into the scene, triggered locally when you enter an area where they should be playing.

Player music is an exception. Your machine has the sound files for ABC files on it already, but unless you have the file they don't have the music, just the individual notes. They will need to transmit the abc file data somehow. I don't know if they send they whole thing at once or stream it as you go. Streaming of music across in game radios is another exception, that data has to keep coming at you.

@Jason_M Yeah I can't stand the Earth Elemental, he is "Turn off all sound in the game" kind of bad. Wyvern too, shut up!!!!

Feeyo I think the Devs saved the game with the layoffs and subsequent changes. I believe we're going to see a ramp up in hiring before too long.

I just hope one of those is a full time Sound Designer. I believe that is the biggest bang for the buck at this point, easily doubling or tripling the production value of the entire package.

Test: Have a friend who doesn't know Shroud listen to those two videos and tell you what's happening in them, which is the better experience, which is more compelling/scary.

Second Test: Have a friend who DOES know about Shroud listen to one of the two minute periods where the Phoenix doesn't screech. Have them try to identify what is going on. They'll probably be able to pick out that an archer is fighting, using a water elemental, and no idea where or against who.

 

Ok, that all makes sense. But what about sounds for something like, "big monster translated 9 meters to the north-west" ? And at the same time as "big monster did special wing-clap attack," and "big monster BAF jeers at you," etc. Wouldnt all those be events broadcasted by the server, that your client would then receive, process, and then play sounds for?

Specifically, I was referencing the "sounds an opponent makes" as opposed to "sounds that are side effects from events originating from your machine." I assume there is some stream(s) or request/response cycle that the client processes, and that this results in both lag (even if its hard to perceive) and a finite queue for sounds, which in turn limits the amount of things the player hears at a given moment in combat (otherwise sounds may become desync'd from events).

Of course, I do think more bells and whistles could be added for any kind of event that occurs on one's local client - I just got done cooking about 1000 Jars of Cooking Oil, and even while doing IRL chores in the other room I got sick of that same repetitive crafting sound over and over .

Im genuinely curious, my online-game networking / architecture knowledge is like 10+ years out of date.

 

Your client ( sota game) has the knowledge, when to play sounds. No need to send commands to play sound. Server might send "enemy x died" and your client checks locally and plays the sound.

But, on the topic.. as long as we have that stupid annoyed, disgusted sound playing, when we eat the best food in game, don't expect anything fancy.

 

@Katu is right on both counts

On the technical side, the ONLY time a sound playing command would need to be sent is if it is sound specific. In almost every situation sound is also associated with something else that the server is already transmitting though. Big wing clap is an attack that implies "play the animation and the sound", so the server would only be sending the location and the attack, something it is already doing. Big monster Jeers at you is also location and emote, the sound would be implied.

Even if it is specifically "play this sound", an abnormal situation but lets say it happens, it's still a pretty small amount of data because the sound is already there on your machine, all that is being transmitted is that it should be played. In theory, it could be a huge sound file, hours long, but all that would need to be sent across the network is the start command, which is tiny.

Edit: Of course, you had to download that hours long sound file once in the patch it came out in.

 

Are they actually hiring anyone at all ?

There are a number of things wrong in the game, not least

1.) sounds sometimes breaking
2.) animations sometimes not playing
3.) wrong numbers and things going on (0 Damage Resistance on 20 percent DR back items, what the ????)

So.... I'm not really expecting the world at this point. I'm literally hoping things don't break further from release to release at this point. If I could stay on a release I would..

On the positive side at least the skybox seems to be working a bit better now than before.

 

I must have missed the skybox breakage. My experience has just been getting better, except for that annoying instrument bug.

As far as hiring, I hear them speak optimistically about ramping up for ep2. And the monthly fund raising numbers are looking good so I do have high hopes more employees.

 

The skybox would look off sometimes when it was cloudy. But you're on windows so I doubt it was affecting you.

+1 for optimistic hiring. Hire some support staff !!

"Ancient Staff of Support".... yeah !

 

Lol, I'll craft that one!

 

I watched a feature on a news program about a blind gamer who was able to beat sighted players playing fighting games with adequate sound cues for each move, counter, specials, etc. Very impressive skill set (after a learning curve) and focused attention to sound details.

Edit: found the feature online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=100&v=aX0oPwQPo9A

Turns out the guy is in Austin. hmmm......

 

I did this a lot (without being blind) in a few older games where the network AND sound designs were solid, the server was within the 80 ping range of all players, and they had "tell" sounds, like the wind up for a massive attack, leaping, blocking (or preparing to block) and sprinting, to name a few. That was back in 2003-2006, when internet speeds (and computer speeds in general) were not anywhere near where they are today, so... yeah.

That 2003 game? Completely written from the ground up mainly by one guy of a three guy team.
So, here we are today: a single player with decent internet and a decent computer by today's standards, living pretty much anywhere in the contiguous 48, in an instance, fighting a boss creature... in a game developed by a TEAM of gaming icons... that player should be experiencing exactly what Vladamir Begemot is saying they should.