Audio Feedback.

"

Andrew_GGG wrote:

Currently with the audio tech we have we can only have one sound per item! but the plan is to change the ring and gem sounds soon to something less grating on your ears.

ALSO I wanted to mention to the people who were finding the impact of cleave, sweep, dual strike, double strike a lil weak. They will all have better impact sounds soon!

My post isn't going to be very productive but what can I say? I haven't noticed anything odd or unpleasant about any sounds related to the mentionned skills, neither for the sounds when handling gems or rings. They are very distinct, I think they're all great.

That said I don't play with headphones.

One of the sounds I think is great is when you freeze a monster and it crumbles down into pieces. Very satisfying.

Do the melee skills lack "oomf"? Honestly I haven't noticed. Cleave has a "whoosh" kind of sound with a metallic hint, very nice. Heavy Strike is not particularly distinct like I can't remember it very well now, but nothing I dislike about it either. Shield Charge is awesome with the sound of the foot steps. Double Strike is quite audible already...

I just want to balance out opinions here because adding "oomf" to everything isn't going to be that much better. It's best to have "oomf" on the criticals, high damage hits, when it can relate somehow to the value of the skill or the interaction.

But again.. I don't use headphones.

Instead of focusing on graphics so much I'll pay more attention to the sounds and give some feedback if I have some. Cheers.

--

Edit: random thought: I don't remember much "organic" sounds. Like the cracking of tree branches, or cracking the shell of an insect (yuck :)) ... hmm... could be talking nonsense, just a general impression. I'll have to check ingame later tonight. There is some water dripping sound I believe in the caves, which are very nice when you can hear them.

I use Fire Trap all the time. It has a nice explosion sound, but I don't remember the sound of the flames afterwards, never really noticed it. (just writing from memory) Crackling fire might be nice, though those are short term flames I don't know. But a sound that would somehow parrallel the fire effect fading out would be an improvement.

Thanks for the feedback! You are right, if everything sounds powerful then nothing has any impact :) odd concept but its true.

As for organic sounds, its something that's being updated all the time, there are some issues when making environmental audio. but its something Russell and I have been thinking about improving! (need some creaking boats in the ship graveyard!)

As for the ground fire this is one of the issues I was talking about above. the way the effect is made there is actually about 5 different sound sources on each patch of ground fire. To make the fire look random there are multiple VFX's within the one effect..... anyway this means that if I use fire sounds it creates phase issues and it sounds so damn bad :)

There is one sound that is not great, it's a sort of "tink" when you are wearing a metallic armor (chain looking armor like Soldier's Brigandine), and hit by enemies.

EDIT: Do you use something like a small pitch variance btw? Maybe it can help with such sounds being a little repetitive?

I do, when I replace sounds I tend to render down twice the amount with pitch variations. Unfortunately our audio engine doesn't do this! :(

in regards to the TINK sound if its chain mail i shall get to it soon, its on my list of impact sounds to fix up. but if its plate, I imagine it will come through in the next patch.

EDIT: armour impact audio really needs some work its a very small sound bank that Im looking to improve.

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned before, but when you cast Freezing Pulse with Multiple Projectiles modded onto it, the sound overlaps in a bad way. It's a sort of loud popping noise that is really irritating, particularly when I'm trying to record a gameplay video.

I noticed using firestorm today that it sounds far too soft and low, I think each fire 'bolt' impact should have a fast attack with fair bit of decay.

When the darkness event happens in act 2, I feel like some background audio to reflect the evil souls flying about - like the occasional distant wail, or maybe the occasional sound of people crying or screaming or something like that - would really support the awesome visual atmosphere.

I dont like the sound of Dual-Strike

it sounds weak, boring and it is monotonous

i cant hear a difference between attacking a bandit or a stonemonster (but normally i should here some difference, right?!) with it, because there is this "wush" that "over-sounds" the hit-effects

@Khastro

Agreed, even more so when characters use this for their main attack with high attack speed :(

I'll work on it!