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I almost forgot...

I have scanned youtube of people playing this beta and the comments, and the singular, most often repeated comment is:

"Please replace the sound effect used for selection.  That high pitched clicking noise is extremely irritating."

so... yeah, there's that.

 

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On 3/7/2020 at 2:36 AM, Ichthyic said:

I almost forgot...

I have scanned youtube of people playing this beta and the comments, and the singular, most often repeated comment is:

"Please replace the sound effect used for selection.  That high pitched clicking noise is extremely irritating."

so... yeah, there's that.

 

Is this the specific "click" noise that happens when you click the mouse over an interactive element?

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On 3/14/2020 at 4:08 AM, Comrade said:

Most definitely, if a sound could assault your ears, it would definitly be the selection and click sounds.

Selection AND click sound? To be clear, are you referring to one sound here or two different ones?

I'm completely used to that sound now and it doesn't bother me, but I'm happy to look into getting it changed if it bothers a lot of people.

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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.

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  • 2 months later...

I’d agree with Comrade and also say that the whole sound design could do with a touch more lovin’. I like the atmosphere created by fairly minimal music, so it’s not the score. It’s all the sound FX. They’re all pretty tinny and too high pitched... could do with an overhaul of the sound FX to some with a bit more bass and weight to them. Current sounds somehow remind me of computer games on the 386 PC when I was a kid - nostalgic but firmly belonging in the realm of nostalgia I think! Good stuff generally though, looking forward to seeing it released :)

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Get we speech to in the Game? If we discuss about sound that is a part of it too.

In Hoi 4 they implemented speeches from historicaly Events (Chamberlain with the Sudetencrises, Roosevelt after the Pearl-Harbor Attack and such). More will come.

For Xenonauts 2 were it from the first Step:

a) Fighter Pilots in the Fights (Rocketfire = Fox 1, Fox 2; for the Guns = going to close Combat or such) 

b) Transportpilots (saying what he sees on the landing zone)

c) Main Chars (Technican, Reseracher, the Girl from the beginning etc.)

d) some Background speeches or noises (Technicans, Reserachers)

or such things. X2 has nothing from that, what other Games of this Gerne (XCOM2 / XCOM: Chimera Squad as Standard) and medium to low financed Games (Phoenix Point [full Game], UFO Extraterestials 1 and 2 [Startvidsequence, in the Groundfights]) bringing in.

Edited by Alienkiller
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I've asked about a similar idea for separate sound FX of missile launches for different factions so modders can intergrate different chatters (Fox 2 for human missiles or Missle Warning for UFO missiles .etc) for different occations, adding the chatter sound into the original launch sounds. Unfortunately the current sound system still cannot support such idea. It's just an authentic issue and I won't be disappointed if we can't play with such things in X2, but it would be cool if we're able to do so.

There can also be some authentic sounds for notifications, I was planning to find the war room backgound sounds from Wargame series and also the high-pitch telephone sound that was used in multiplayer while you're sending destinations to other players, unfortunately they are nowhere to be found.

A XCOM style soldier chatters in their own languages is understandably impossible to do, but it would be nice if there are background radio transmissions for ground missions as well, maybe even intergrate some alien-style static chatters like what they did in Enemy Within.

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  • 3 months later...
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.

 

 

Edited by Parametric
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On 10/4/2020 at 6:00 AM, Ninothree said:

oooh, I say, you tease

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.

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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. :)

Edited by Parametric
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On 10/5/2020 at 3:53 PM, Parametric said:

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. :)

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.

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On 10/6/2020 at 1:53 AM, Parametric said:

 

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.

 

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.

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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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  • 2 weeks later...

Quick update on this - our audio guy came through and has sent over the new and much more subtle click / hover sounds. So if you're one of the people that found them incredibly grating you'll hopefully find the next build a bit easier on the ears!

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  • 2 months later...

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