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I'm curious if anyone has gotten a chance to play with some of the new UI sounds that got implemented. If so, has it helped address this issue?

 

 

 

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18 hours ago, Ninothree said:

Hey, I have no idea what I'm talking about (even when I speak up in my day job) but I still like hearing about this kinda stuff. Things are usually more complex beneath the surface, it is great to get given some of the details even if they aren't from the source. I especially like the idea of trying to code the tension-o-meter.

The last time this came up, I think I was chatting about the music in Zelda changing depending on what enemy you're fighting. That really sets the mood. As soon as that first note sounds you know to pull out your sword/bow, or sometimes just to shit your pants.

 

4 hours ago, EurekaSeven said:

I completely understand the obstacles of doing so and your decisions not to pursuit such feature, but still thanks a lot for explaining how exactly such feature can be so hard and complex to achieve in a technical perspective and also thanks for your effort put into X2, we all appreciate this.

 

Thanks! I'm always happy to talk about this stuff and I love hearing the ideas people throw out, no matter how unfeasible. It's fun to unpack them and discover new ideas and problems along the way.

 

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6 hours ago, EurekaSeven said:

He said that " it would take a lot of dev resources to do it properly and they weren't available", so I don't think these would be ever taken into consideration unless they had plenty of free time to work for them at the nearly end of development. So it's unfortunate, but understandable, let them work on the current sound design and maybe some of those ambience features can be modded afterwards.

 

4 hours ago, Ninothree said:

yeah I recall someone, probably a dev, saying that things like adaptive music need to come in well early in the development cycle, so I'm not expecting that to get dropped into this game.

I'm not speaking for Chris, Goldhawk or X2 here - I'm just spitballing about this since it came up a few times and I've worked on a few adaptive music projects.

From an asset standpoint, it's fairly easy to do. The tricky part with these systems is defining the playback logic and implementing it so it works properly (which includes addressing a lot of weird edge cases you may not expect). Even with a relatively easy system that is driven by a single emotion (let's say 'tension'), it can get squirrely:

How many levels of tension should you have?
Are they structured linearly, logarithmically or something else?
What logic escalates or deescalates the player through those levels?

• Proximity to the downed UFO?
• Enemy count?
• Enemy rank?
• Overall health of the player team vs enemy team?
• Time of day?

You'd probably want a system that measures and balances a lot of these together as trying to use a single variable creates obvious problems. For example, in the early game, enemy count might be the best way to measure tension but I'd argue that by late-game, it would be more about enemy rank. Trying to stun a single Praetor guarded by two elites feels more tense to me than having to mop up the last 4 guards on a terror map. There's loads of other problems I can think of with that example. Proximity to downed UFO kinda makes sense if there's a cluster of aliens inside, but if they're scattered all over the map it's actually misinforming the player.

So, working out the logic itself is no small feat, especially if you're trying to work with multiple emotional states.

Then, you still have to translate that into code and map it to different musical elements.

Do you bring in the hi-hats and pads when going from level 1 to level 2?
Do you only bring in the pads at level 1, then both at level 2?
How long are the crossfades?
What about volume adjustments?

These questions compound upon themselves and it takes a lot of playtesting to get it feeling 'right'. I can completely understand why so many non-AAA devs opt for the much simpler solution of playing single tracks in the background or whatever.

 

Anyway, like I said -- this isn't about X2 at all. I just do this for a living and I'm excited about this project, so it's fun for me to come on here and yak about it.

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On 3/16/2020 at 3:44 PM, Comrade said:

It's both, both sounds are very high pitched and it grates our ears. It reminds me of selecting something on a phone with the weird sound and vibration. Either way it's only a minor complaint and like you said you get used to it after a while.

Change it if you want, but of course its a very very minor change.

Hey! I'm the audio designer helping out here and there when I can.

I've seen this complaint too and I want to help fix it. To make 100% sure I understand the asset you're talking about, it's 8:30 - 8:35 in this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2vP_BAXCaY

I agree the audio design could use a lot of work. Chris and I actually kicked around some ideas a while ago, some of them pretty ambitious (adaptive music, reverb, customized ambiences, advanced playback logic, etc) but we eventually shelved them for various reasons. One of which is that I'm just crazy busy in real life so with limited time we focused on big ticket items like player weapons. The other is that it would take a lot of dev resources to do it properly and they weren't available.

Anyway, I've got some again and saw this thread. I'm gonna look at the UI audio this weekend and wanted to ask. Thanks for the feedback!

 

EDIT: I also want to reduce the sounds of environmental impacts (projectiles hitting wood, metal, etc) and footsteps quite a bit. I always thought they were way too loud in X1 and they still sound that way in the recent build I played.

 

 

[X2 Audio Design]

Howdy!

I'm not sure where X2 is at with the audio design, but game audio is what I do for a living and I wanted to offer my time in a volunteer capacity if it's needed. To be clear: I'm not asking for payment -- I just really liked X1 and put so many hours into it that I simply think it would be fun to be give back to GH and the Xenonauts community a bit. If you've got it all taken care of, that's cool.

But if you need any help creating sounds, implementing them, fixing bugs, testing stuff, tightening up the logic a bit -- anything you need, just hit me up. I really would be honored to be part of this badass game.

 

I'm really excited for this game and the future of GH. Thanks so much for Xenonauts and X2!

[About the soundtrack of Xenonauts 2]

I work in audio for AAA games. This wouldn't be hard at all if you're using good audio middleware like FMOD or Wwise and your composer / audio designer is familiar with those tools. It would have to be integrated into Unity (I think that's your engine), of course. That might require some coder time, but the actual design, logic and implementation of the soundtrack should really all be handled by the audio team.

There might be an additional licensing cost with the middleware but they're surprisingly low cost for indie devs like GH.

 

Personally speaking, I don't mind having non-dynamic music. Just saying it might not be as taxing on your resources as you think. :)