Thougts about KSPs sound

[Audiopulse]

Heya,

for some time now I noticed something was changing about KSP to me. I am really looking for words here, but it appears I cant really stand the sound of the engines anymore. That surprised me myself a little - but it was an interesting thougt: Does it actually matter -how- the engines sound when firing? Would that really impact that much on our experience with the game?

Well, looking at myself now - apparently so. Now Im curious what you people think. Has anyone else had these thougts? Or is it even the other way around and you actually enjoy the white noise the engines produce when firing?

Thinking back I remember a similar case. Ive always been enjoying space-games and so I, of course, enjoyed a good bit of Freelancer online, too. During the countlyess Tradingruns I mostly relied on Liberty- and Bretonian Vehicles but at one point the circumstances forced my to fly a Kusari-vessel.

Now - for everyone not familiar with Freelancer (Which should not be too many, here, really ) - Every one of the five Houses has its own type of Engine with its own set of visual effects and sounds. The Rheinlanders used some kind of plasma, Liberty had their fancy magnet-something-technology and Kusari relied on some kind of atomic drive which sounded somewhat like two metal-surfaces brushing softly on each other.

So there I was, crossing a vast and empty space in some far-off system, when it suddenly jumped on me that I enjoyed the sound of my Thrusters. They had something meditational on them and made the whole, tedious trip less tedious. I ended up flying that brick longer than I had to, knowingly sacrificing some cargospace compared to similar bretonian Vessels, before finally switching back to my Trader-guilds line of ships.

Now, last but not least, I presume the sounds are probably anyways still subject to change sometime in the future, but what do you think about sound in general. How important is it to you really?

[Diche Bach]

They sound a bit 'tinny' to me. I think the engine sounds could do with a bit of 'thickening' for lack of a better word.

Sounds are IMO a huge part of what makes a good game a great game. I would call the sounds in KSP at present, overall good. The music is very good. Some of the sounds are perfect. But overall they could stand to be revisited and improved a bit. Engine sounds being one of the ones that I think could stand a bit of improvement.

[Audiopulse]

Totally agreed. Id describe the engines as coarse and grinding. If they were dinner, I would add cream

I would not care too much about realism either. Considering youre often listening to them during long burns for minutes straight I think its more important to create a comfortable atmosphere than being correct.

[astropapi1]

It has been said that sounds are going to get overhauled in the near future. KSP is "empty" (apart from the awesome music). I know, I know... no sound in vacuum and all, but this is a game, and sound is a huge part of gameplay.

[Geschosskopf]

I don't mind the sounds per se but I do have a couple of nits to pick. First off, all my engines seem to run in 3-second bursts. This affects the engine flame, too, not just the sound. It's like the engines have the hiccups. WHOOOSSH-hic=WHOOOSH-hic. Doesn't alter the thrust at all so I think it's just some extra space on the end of the sound and animation tracks. The other nit is that I usually don't hear the engines anymore when I'm looking at the map view. Most times I hear nothing at all and when I do hear something, it's not the normal engine sound, even with hiccups. Instead its the flameout sound, or the structural failure sound, or something else equally disconcerting. This particular issue started in 0.21 and at first it drove me paranoid so I was forever leaving the map in the middle of watching my course change during the burn to see what had gone wrong with my ship. But eventually I realized it was just crying wolf so now I ignore it

[FITorion]

Only sound thing that annoys me is that I can't hear the engines going when I am throttled up and switch to map view. I get this weird woosh that comes and goes if I get any sound. I don't hear stages separating(not sure if you can initiate staging while in map) ... I don't get the engine cutout sound when they run out of fuel. Only thing besides the woosh I get is explosions...

Karolus10: Double posting, second post has been removed and merged bellow - please using "Edit Post option", thank You.

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EDIT_1:

It has been said that sounds are going to get overhauled in the near future. KSP is "empty" (apart from the awesome music). I know, I know... no sound in vacuum and all, but this is a game, and sound is a huge part of gameplay.

Sound... greatly depends on where the microphone is... No where is it written that it is where the camera is...

Edited August 7, 2013 by karolus10

[AllenM3]

I don't mind the sounds per se but I do have a couple of nits to pick. First off, all my engines seem to run in 3-second bursts. This affects the engine flame, too, not just the sound. It's like the engines have the hiccups. WHOOOSSH-hic=WHOOOSH-hic. Doesn't alter the thrust at all so I think it's just some extra space on the end of the sound and animation tracks.

I get this too. Lately Ive just been muting KSP and playing music.

I would love for the engine sounds to get a good overhaul.

My personal opinion is that the SRB's sound and leave a much better smoke trail then any other liquid engine.

[Dortmunder]

I don't mind most of the sound effects in game.

Some of the engines are ridiculously loud compared to others though. When I was streaming the other night I had to change the volume down and up a few times because people were complaining they couldn't hear me talk.

I get sound bugs fairly often too. During multiple missions to Mun I noticed how my engines make a burn sound, the fade to nothing, repeat over and over every 10-20 seconds or so. Or sometimes I get that crackling/popping sound bug.

[loknar]

I'm surprised/glad there are no purists in this thread complaining that sounds should not be heard in space!

Sound is an important part of gameplay much like all other senses. I vote to implement smells as well - but those with a Pentium 4 trying to launch a 400-part rocket probably enjoy this feature already.

[Ralathon]

I'm surprised/glad there are no purists in this thread complaining that sounds should not be heard in space!

Sound is an important part of gameplay much like all other senses. I vote to implement smells as well - but those with a Pentium 4 trying to launch a 400-part rocket probably enjoy this feature already.

Plenty of sound when firing the engines, even when in a vacuum. The engine is (supposed to be) connected to the spacecraft and metal conducts sound pretty well. Case in point:

. They start burning their engine at around 2:30 and it is very much audible.

The only time you shouldn't hear sounds in space is when you're physically disconnected from the object making the sound. So if you separate a stage using tiny seperatrons you shouldn't hear those. But really that's too much effort to program for something so small.

I fully agree with the majority of the thread though. Engines sounds could do with some tweaking. I think it's okay for the NERVA and the LV-909 but the bigger engines could do with some more sound in the lower frequencies. Gives it a bit more volume, the LV-45 and the LV-30 are especially guilty of this imo, they sound way too clean for a continuous controlled explosion.

[Torham234]

Oh good old freelancer. I love that game, and just the other day I thought of reinstall with some amazing mods I saw. I agree that they had very cool sounding engines, except I didn't much care for the Rheinlander ships. I always ended up skipping that tier of ships and using bounty hunter ones, until I got to the corsair ships (pirate ships, they are arguably the best in game).

On topic, after ignoring the Stuttering sound problem that I had since the first install, there are some engines that sound a bit odd to me, to the point of excluding them from some of my designs (namely rockomax 24-77). So yes, sound scape is fairly important to me, if its present( I have no problem playing Dwarf Fortress, since there is no sound at all, so I can listen to music instead).

[Brofessional]

It would be nice to have a realistic sound option so you can't hear things in vacuum, it's not super important though. The engines would still be audible if you assume the player is listening from inside the ship, they would just sound different.

One thing I REALLY want though is sounds for the wheels. Sounds for the motors and sounds for soil/gravel/ice/etc. crunching under the tires. Subtle wind noise when applicable would be great too, it would help with the sense of speed.

[ash73]

The key sound that's missing for me is radio chatter, I think it would add to the tension on final descent to the Mun if there was some helpful (or unhelpful!) radio instructions, along with Apollo quindar tones. It could be just an occasional status check while following an orbit, but get much more animated during maneuvers, or when crashing!

I like the music but I tend to switch it off as it's repetitive when I spend a lot of hours playing the game.

[loknar]

I just want to mention Flight Simulator (Latest is still X?), had slightly better sounds on some engines. The sound from inside and outside airplanes were different and they account for the Doppler effect when the camera is on flyby.

As I recall, the company that made Flight Simulator has a slightly better budget than Squad.

Seriously: I have no experience programming sounds, but I can estimate it is not so simple and restricted by the game engine used. Using lower frequency sounds may cause certain hardware to produce annoying sounds while other sound good etc. On my logitech 5.1 it sounds ok and quite deep already. Deeper my house will start vibrating no doubt.

[BarryDennen12]

If it's already the case then pardon my ignorance, but I'd like it if it was just a little simpler to mod the sounds in the first place. There's probably a number of excellent engine sounds Squad can't use because of permission issues and such - I wouldn't have any qualms inserting them into the game myself for my own use.

[karolus10]

I think that Sounds of engines in outside view can fade away, when air is getting thinner.

IVA could add more sounds carrying by ship structure, like engines noise, vibrations (both quite noticeable when big rocket is under Your seat ) sound of bending/stressing structure and some background noise like ventilation fan and such.

For example we could heard when we hit something hard when trying to dock or our moon touchdown was bit faster than anticipated.

Space can be quiet, but spacecrafts guts aren't so peaceful .

Edited August 7, 2013 by karolus10

[DisarmingBaton5]

They sound a bit 'tinny' to me. I think the engine sounds could do with a bit of 'thickening' for lack of a better word.

Sounds are IMO a huge part of what makes a good game a great game. I would call the sounds in KSP at present, overall good. The music is very good. Some of the sounds are perfect. But overall they could stand to be revisited and improved a bit. Engine sounds being one of the ones that I think could stand a bit of improvement.

^^^^This. The Mainsail should sound like an F-1.

[Rhyunix]

All I'd smell if smell was implemented was smoldering designs. Anyway, the hiccups in the sound are kinda annoying as with the loading.... lets put it as seizures but they can be dealt with... in time

Karolus10: Double posting, second post has been removed and merged bellow - please using "Edit Post option", thank You.

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EDIT_1:

IVA could add more sounds carrying by ship structure, like engines noise, vibrations (both quite noticeable when big rocket is under Your seat ) sound of bending/stressing structure and some background noise like ventilation fan and such.

For example we could heard when we hit something hard when trying to dock or our moon touchdown was bit faster than anticipated.

I second this, along with noises of landing and stuff, I'd like to see (God help my computer) regolith on the surface. That would be awesome!

Edited August 7, 2013 by karolus10

[Clayton]

I think some engines could use some sound effect refinement like those radial mount engines, or the ant engines. I don't like that high pitched phhheeeew sound...

[SciMan]

I know that 0.20 broke the old way to make the game use custom engine sounds. That system was easy to use, but I understand that it had to go to make way for the new GameData system.

Unfortunately, as far as I know the new GameData system does not have a way to call out a custom sound in a config file, it comes up with "can't find 'soundname.wav'" when you try the old system

Now if you want custom sounds for ANYTHING you need to write a plugin for it. Firespitter is one plugin that can handle custom engine sounds. However, I think we shouldn't need a plugin!

With KSP 0.20+, the GameData system lets you just tell the game to use the same model over again, instead of loading it twice. This ends up saving a lot of loading time and RAM whenever textures and/or models are shared. My question is this: Why can't you just call out a custom sound on a part the same way you can call out a model and/or texture for a part?

Here's an example of calling out a model using the 0.20+ GameData system:

Say you want to use the model of the Rockomax Jumbo-64 fuel tank, but you don't want to have the game load the same model and texture twice. Here's how you would do that in the part.cfg of your custom part.

MODEL
{
    model = Squad/Parts/FuelTank/fuelTank3-2/model
}

Now, it doesn't make a bit of difference if the part.cfg is not in the same folder as far as the game is concerned. As long as that part.cfg is located somewhere in "KSP_win/GameData" the game will find the right files and your custom part will end up looking like a Rockomax Jumbo-64 fuel tank.

So, if it's possible to do that with the 3d models and textures, doing something similar should be easy without using a plugin, right? Apparently not. I have a feeling it was "meant" to work that way, but the fact of the matter is that it does NOT work that way, like many of the other features of the GameData system (config nodes, stuff like that).

Bottom line? It wasn't hard to get custom sounds working before. Unless there's data that I'm unaware of, it shouldn't be IMPOSSIBLE to get custom sounds working now, even if the way the game loads assets changed significantly.

I'm not trying to make it seem like I think SQUAD screwed up the update or anything like that. (0.20.2 plays much smoother than previous versions did, so they did SOMETHING right)

However, seeing how easy it was to mod KSP before, and how much support the devs are give to the mod makers, it seems like this issue should at least get considered, instead of getting unintentionally "swept under the rug" so to speak.

[DChurchill]

I don't mind the sounds per se but I do have a couple of nits to pick. First off, all my engines seem to run in 3-second bursts. This affects the engine flame, too, not just the sound. It's like the engines have the hiccups. WHOOOSSH-hic=WHOOOSH-hic.

Same here.

[Deadweasel]

I dislike the little engine sounds because the loop is too obvious. You can hear granular elements in the sound that make the engines sound more like a train than a blaring rocket. There's also a pitch difference between the beginning and end of the sound, making the loop point easy to pick out after you've heard it for only a couple of seconds.

Basically, they sound like the kind of thing that a newbie add-on maker for Flight Sim 2000 would have made, using only sounds from a free samples site (which us sound folks know are extremely crappy specifically to save the hosts' bandwidth). I can (and have) made very realistic looping engine sounds using nothing more than a mic, my voice and a sprinkling of post-editing effects.

I have to wonder if there isn't somebody at Squad who knows a thing or two about Audacity and the plethora of (free) VST effects out there that would allow them to make their own custom sounds easily...

EDIT:

Incidentally, most of the annoyance with the rocket sounds comes from the fact that the sounds are recorded at one speed and then forced slower or faster from mid-throttle to accommodate the setting. Speed-modding any sound will result in annoying looping "markers" and odd pitch shifts, unless care is taken from the very beginning to adapt the sound to work within the expected range. This has me thinking about doing some experimentation with the stock sounds after work.

/now the word "sound" sounds weird to everyone

Edited August 7, 2013 by Deadweasel

[Maddmatts]

As with many other parts of the game, I'm sure a lot of the sounds are still considered placeholder.

[loknar]

I think that Sounds of engines in outside view can fade away, when air is getting thinner.

IVA could add more sounds carrying by ship structure, like engines noise, vibrations (both quite noticeable when big rocket is under Your seat ) sound of bending/stressing structure and some background noise like ventilation fan and such.

For example we could heard when we hit something hard when trying to dock or our moon touchdown was bit faster than anticipated.

Space can be quiet, but spacecrafts guts aren't so peaceful .

Me likey. I would not mind at all if space was silent. In map or cockpit view, a world of sound possibilities is open to the devs.

I want to plug this mod, the only mod I'm using. Introduces random radio chatter in alien (real space mission chatter played backwards) with a beep and requires no parts just electricity.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25367-0-21-Chatterer-v-0-5