Importance of sound in space battle atmosphere and immersion

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limith

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limith

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100g2g pts

9 years ago

Oct 31, 2015, 5:23:32 AM

I prefer gameplay over immersion. Good gameplay has me play a game over and over again. While having not bad sound is important, I prefer games that focus more on gameplay. Or AI. Or Both.

That said, immersion is still good. It's just important to remember that immersion comes after good gameplay. Immersion is the top of the pyramid, gameplay the base.

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Stripe7

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Stripe7

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13 500g2g pts

9 years ago

Nov 22, 2015, 10:16:46 PM

Maybe they can just have a few toggles for sound effects in battle. Turn off/on as to your preference.

1. Pew-pew - All ships make the pew-pew star wars sounds in space

2. Effects sound - Only sounds you hear are impacts of incoming or sound of outgoing munitions, when cinematic is focused point of view of 1 ship.

3. Voice over - When point of view is that of a fighter group, you hear fighter pilots chat...

When point of view is a ship, you hear commands, damage control parties, engine scrams, etc..

When point of view is that of a carrier, you may hear different dialogue based on carrier deck ops..

based on what internal environment each ship has, the sounds my differ.

- leads to question of what environments each ship type has. fluid filled ships {Higher accelerations possible}

- ships that are in vacuum for battle {To prevent explosive decompression ships remove atmosphere before battle}

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Lulz!

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Lulz!

Two

19 200g2g pts

9 years ago

Nov 21, 2015, 2:09:03 AM

I love this suggestion. For me, it's more about the sounds that a ship's weaponry makes (nevermind that space doesn't do sound -- it's part of what makes ship to ship combat really cool!) than voice work. Though I enjoyed watching my ships do battle in ES1, one of the biggest gripes I had with it was the fact that for all the variety we had in upgrades to the three categories of weapons, there was almost no variety in sound effects for each one. Especially disappointing were kinetic weapons (which I liked to use more than the others) which sounded like cheap machine guns when fired, with the impact sound being equally unimpressive. These are supposed to be like massive guns which can deliver large payloads of ordinance; why did they sound like all they did was pepper an enemy ship? There was no sense of power in the sound.

Since ES2 is aiming for that cinematic feel, I'd love it if the weapons of our fleets sounded very powerful. I'd like to be able to "feel" it when a ship fires its salvo and again when that salvo reaches its target. It'd be great also to be able to identify different grades of weapons along the same type (ie. tier 1 laser to tier 2 laser) not just by their visuals, but also by their sounds.

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greavance

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greavance

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9 years ago

Nov 15, 2015, 5:33:35 PM

To piggyback on this a little bit, I would absolutely LOVE to see a somewhat procedural battle soundtrack. Many years ago I played a game called Navyfield, which would pit two groups of players against each other in a WW2 era naval battle. The game had a great song that always started every battle, but where it became really powerful was after about 2-3 minutes of fighting, the music changed from the standard battle to either a victorious or a brink-of-defeat song, depending on how your team was doing. For example, the song when your team was losing was this here. I linked that one specifically because it is so stoic, so resolute that even as you were watching your team be destroyed you were completely immersed and had a faint hope of victory due to the song.

The two ways I could see it best having an impact is A: You have procedural generated battle soundtracks that adjust based on the success/failure of each phase of battle, all culminating in a victorious or a defeated tone at the 5th phase. Now, I would grant that that's a pretty lofty and ambitious goal to do well, so the more easily obtainable option B might be something we could see, where option B is you have a few battle soundtracks for battles where the player is predicted from the start to win, to lose, or the battle is evenly matched.

Bottom line: I would be so hyped if I knew that the battles where I'm desperately hoping for a miracle to come through will have music that itself sounds desperate.

My 2 cents on VO is that I feel like they would feel kind of out of place for an Endless game.

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ImPulsar

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ImPulsar

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1 300g2g pts

9 years ago

Nov 8, 2015, 11:13:58 PM

Science aren´t damned, it´s an question of the angle, i think inside of a ship you can hear vibration done by the working frequency of a laser or the impact of a projectile. Or inside a gasstream out of a Ship there are also sonic in Space like plasma or gasclouds, explosions are high pressure uncompressed gas... .

And music by the same person would be (slang for great).

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Brazilian_Joe

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Brazilian_Joe

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18 600g2g pts

9 years ago

Nov 2, 2015, 12:27:39 PM

Science be damned, space battles must yell and whoosh and pew-pew and boom like Star Wars movies!

About voice actors... Only do voiceovers if you are doing them properly. Voice acting must be GOOD to give more immersion, else it breaks it.

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Blastoderm

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Blastoderm

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100g2g pts

9 years ago

Nov 2, 2015, 8:04:52 AM

Static, response and command effects does not reqire expensive voice actors.

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ImPulsar

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ImPulsar

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9 years ago

Nov 2, 2015, 12:56:19 AM

Bad voice actors are horrible and in my opinion sound graphic and fun is better than expensive voices. Remembering Haegemonia... reading can be better.

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Falkner

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Falkner

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43 200g2g pts

9 years ago

Nov 1, 2015, 8:34:24 PM

Dawn of War had truly fantastic voice acting. And so did the entire Command & Conquer series. And it added a lot to the game. But I shudder to think at the cost of it.

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VIPEysteinh

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VIPEysteinh

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40 500g2g pts

9 years ago

Oct 31, 2015, 11:53:55 AM

Limth that is a given. Without gameplay immersion would enhance nothing. Without good AI the SP game would be boring and no amount of immersion would help. But a fantastic game will have all these elements and basically creating an artwork.

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Blastoderm

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Blastoderm

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9 years ago

Oct 28, 2015, 6:18:57 AM

I think this topic is important because ES2 will have a "cinematic" semi-autoresolve battles and a good chunk of the game will feature players sitting and watching as battle unfolds without any control over it.

I think sound is one of the best ways to provide combat immersion. And by sounds I mean voiceovers. Combat static, pilot reports, admiral quotes on the current situation etc.

The best example so far is Dawn of War franchize. It has one of the best sound and voice work. Almost every action is commented by the units. The result is a very atmospheric battles, where soldiers scream, groan, and all this "Chaarge!" "Grenade!", "We ar eoutgunned", "Retreat!", "Enemy tank ahead" allow you to recognize curent situation even in a huge meat grinder.

Adding even background voiceovers to the battle with make it "alive", so players will not watch silent clash of ships but listen to requests for help, last transmissions from dying ships, victory calls, maybe canonic "It's a trap!" when enemy manages to counter your tactics, reports like "we are overwhelmed", "missiles incoming, brace for impact" etc.

All this sounds will prolong a period of time before people just start the battle and set speed on maximum after chosing a battle plan because, well, it's autoresolve anyway.

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Ykara

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Ykara

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9 years ago

Oct 30, 2015, 7:49:57 PM

I've always felt like something was missing to make the great cinematic battles truly outstanding. Giving heros some identity with unique lines and hearing some transmissions from your ships sounds really good,

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VIPlo_fabre

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VIPlo_fabre

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50 100g2g pts

9 years ago

Oct 30, 2015, 6:27:01 AM

I like your idea. Just one suggestion: make the sounds like you are hearing them from inside of a ship, no only the radio chatter, also the explosions, engines, weapons firing, etc. IMO it will give better immersions, as everyone knows tat sound doesn't travel into space.

Anyway I trust in Aplitude, because immersions in sound and art always has been one of their strongest points.

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VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

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VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

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53 100g2g pts

9 years ago

Oct 29, 2015, 2:16:44 PM

Combat chatter definitely adds a lot to the atmosphere, and if done right could also add to the clarity of combat.

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VIPEysteinh

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VIPEysteinh

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40 500g2g pts

9 years ago

Oct 28, 2015, 4:25:24 PM

Sound and music are vital for immersion. I like to say that the graphics is what lures you in and the sounds and atmosphere is what keeps you there. So + to your post I agree. I also like epic music for epic battles and changing music depending on how the battle unfolds. But it is obviously also a question of development resources and time.

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LordVladec

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LordVladec

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9 years ago

Oct 28, 2015, 1:12:27 PM

like the idea too!

can confirm the example with DoW - would be great if such voice acting can get into EL2

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VIPNasarog

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VIPNasarog

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36 700g2g pts

9 years ago

Oct 28, 2015, 11:22:59 AM

I like your idea!

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Keymaster89

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Keymaster89

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24 100g2g pts

9 years ago

Oct 28, 2015, 9:23:17 AM

But in space, no one will hear you scream! lol

This should work if done properly and accompanied with some solid battle musics. It shouldn't overhang the music either.

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dudeguy

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dudeguy

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14 700g2g pts

9 years ago

Oct 28, 2015, 7:38:45 AM

I also remember sound being vital to combat feedback, The sound of lasers being absorbed fully by shields vs fully impacting for example.

Spoken words is probably more overhead then is needed. A few generic possibly pitch adjusted race sounds strung together with subtitles should do the job nicely. Here is an example of masters at work.https://youtu.be/N6lloyYoZrk?t=138

Perhaps a unique line per hero that gets triggered in a specific scenario.

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