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[Sound] Comprehensive feedback on new sounds

First post
Goonswarm Federation
#121 - 2012-11-08 23:50:33 UTC
Ok, here's what I came up with:

XL projectiles:

Awful. Sound like medium projectiles ought to... their sound effects are way too short / brief and lack bass-- they sound small and tinny, especially the artillery.

XL Hybrids:

The railgun sound is a good start, but is still too bass-free and short. The blaster sound doesn't sound coherant (sounds like two separate and unrelated sounds stuck together) and is too high-pitched and short as well.

XL lasers: :\

The lasers sound pretty bad too. The pulse laser sound is just awkward (a thunderclap followed by buzzing) and the beam sound doesn't really work either (the sound sort of fizzles out while the firing animation is still going full-bore). They should probably sound more like the Amarr doomsday device (something that sounds like it's pouring energy out for the whole duration of the shot).

Large Lasers:

Tachyon Beam: doesn't sound very energetic, sounds like a pulse laser rather than a continuous shot

Mega Beam: Sounds like you shot a sack of flower at a mudpile. Doesn't even sound like weapon.

Dual Heavy Beam: At least this sound mirrors the turret's visual effect (starts energetic sounding and sound fades as the beam fades out). Sounds kind of pathetic though.

Mega Pulse: doesn't match animation, sounds incredibly flat.

Dual Heavy Pulse: sounds very electronic and... wrong. Sounds like its launching grenades from a tube. Doesn't match animation.

Medium Lasers

Heavy Beam: wrong again. Sounds like an awkward combination of unexplained thudding noise and horribly 1980's arcade electronic fizzling. Sound duration matches animation but the sound is just all wrong.

Focused Medium Beam: this one actually sounds alright and the sound syncs up nicely with the animation. Definitely the best result so far.

Quad Light Beam: decent match on the animation, sounds a bit arcade-y though.

Heavy Pulse: very arcade-y, poor animation match, the old sound is vastly superior

Focused Medium Pulse: sounds very insubstantial, high amount of reverb-y bass at the end of the shot doesn't sound right? Doesn't work well with animation.

Small Lasers

Small Focused Pulse: syncs p well with animation, sounds a bit punchy and bass-y rather than like an energy weapon though

Dual Light Pulse: doesn't sync with animation AT ALL. For some reason, has more bass in it than battleship weapons for some reason?

Gatling Pulse: TOTALLY desynched from animation, doesn't sound like something that burns you.

Dual Light Beam: not sure why this sounds so thunder-y, but at least it roughly matches the animation.

Small Focused Beam: roughly matches animation but sounds very bass-y for an energy weapon.

Large Projectiles

1400mm Arty: needs more bass-- refer to previous sound (which owned pretty hard)

1200mm Arty: no sound yet. welp!

800mm AC: sounds more like your laser sounds than gunfire. Get some base and sounds of ejecting shells in there :3 Make it sound mechanical.

Dual-650mm AC: sounds electronic and laser-y

Dual-425mm AC: same complaint as above, and sounds like a single shot when animation is a volley of projectiles

Medium Projectiles

720mm Arty: initial part of sound is good (the "crashing" part), but take the electronic sounding reverb component out

650mm Arty: same as above

425mm AC: Sounds like the old sound (good) but with added electronic "energy pulse" sound (bad). Remove the electronic addition.

220mm AC: Same as above-- old mechanical component good, new electronic blurb sounds awful

Dual-180mm AC: Same. Remove splooging noise.

Small Projectiles:

280mm Arty: SPLOOGING NOISE BE GONE. Should be more of a sharp, cracking sound (like a large caliber rifle shot) than... well, what it is.

250mm Arty: More electronic splooging noises :\

200mm AC: The mechanical part sounds ok, but get rid of the splooge / thudding part that sounds electronic and dumb

150mm AC: Change the thud

125mm AC: the mechical / air hammer part sounds ok, but again the odd combination of thudding noise isn't great.

Large Hybrids

425mm Rail: sounds flat (and very similar to most of the smaller lasers)

350mm Rail: this sound is much less flat than the 425 but still isn't very... complex?

Neutron Blaster Cannon: sounds "light" for a battleship weapon

Ion Blaster Cannon: Good! Nice animation match.

Electron Blaster Cannon: Good animation match, doesn't quite sound massive enough.

Medium Hybrids

250mm Rail: a bit flat and thud-y

200mm Rail: same as above, sounds like you might expect a blaster to. Doesn't sound like a long-range weapon.

Dual-150mm Rail: a bit better... at least it sounds like you might expect a railgun to. Sort of snappy.

Heavy Neutron: sounds a little tinny

Heavy Ion: sounds a little laser-y and toyish

Heavy Electron: sounds a bit small for a cruiser weapon, but otherwise alright

Small Hybrids

150mm Rail: sounds muffled

125mm Rail: sounds like a muffled flexing piece of sheet metal rather than a gun!

75mm Gatling Rail: same as above.

Light Neutron: p decent

Light Ion: sure

Light Electron: why not

General Thoughts:

The vast majority of these sounds need a lot more work. A lot of them don't just don't feel right for what they're supposed to represent and a lot of them don't sync with the animation effects very well either. Most of the sounds aren't very "rich." I don't know how else to describe them, but they mostly sound flat / tinny and very synthesized-- they sound like more like something from an arcade game than something that fits into EVE's generally "gritty / realistic" atmosphere. More :words: to follow...
Iris Bravemount
Golden Grinding Gears
#122 - 2012-11-08 23:57:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Iris Bravemount
CCP WhiteNoiseTrash wrote:

Sounds like there is a bug in the system. they are not too short from my end and of course, are not supposed to, they should fit the shot animation.

One thing though, to the youtube vid posted here, as on how sounds are in other games, all those sounds are of continous fire, all the guns in EVE are single fire.


You definetly should try to fire an AC in game. The animations are not single-fire. They are short salvos.
Same goes for pulse lasers.
Rocket launchers launch two rockets per launcher.
Additionnaly, some turrets have multiple barrels, even if their name doesn't say so.

I am disappointed. Sad

Just because it says that it uses 1 round of ammo per shot in the item description, it doesn't mean that it is single fire. Confusing, I agree, but anyone who plays the game knows that.

I usually don't like when people question if the devs actually play the game, but this is just disappointing.


Goonswarm Federation
#123 - 2012-11-09 00:52:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Ganthrithor
Also while the "most energetic" part of a firing sound should match the actual shooting animation, there's no reason that sound can't continue to sort of "hang in the air" after the firing animation is completed. Check out some videos of any large guns being fired-- there's a sharp sound followed ambient booming as the sound reflects off of everything.

...and before someone starts talking about how there isn't a bunch of stuff for the sound to reflect off of in space, I'm not the one who decided to make a space game with sound! :3 As long as there's sound, it should sound "right."

Here's one example of the reverb I'm talking about:

The old 1400mm arty sound has a similar feel to it.

I'm trying to find more examples of good sounds but videos of real weapons tend to have awful audio recorded on whatever mic was built into the camera person's gopro or whatever. Welp. Maybe I can find some stuff from movies or something.

Large / capital beam lasers, for example, should sound more like this:

..though perhaps with a little less thunderclapping at the end.
Onyx Nyx
State War Academy
Caldari State
#124 - 2012-11-09 06:43:23 UTC
I think afterburners should have this effect.

I kill kittens, and puppies and bunnies. I maim toddlers and teens and then more.

  • Richard (
Maximus Andendare
Rote Kapelle
#125 - 2012-11-09 08:32:10 UTC
Is there a link to a video with the new sounds? I'm on a Mac and cannot test them, but I'd love to hear what's been done so far.

Also, a continuous loop on a DCU would probably be annoying, although you could use it to trigger a "red alert" klaxon, but only play it once or thrice or so.



Inquisitor Kitchner
The Executives
#126 - 2012-11-09 13:34:00 UTC
CCP WhiteNoiseTrash wrote:
But there aren't any racial music at the moment, but there probably will be very soon, also trying to make the music system perform in various ways of letting players "know" if there was a recent pod kill here or the current "danger" at the current position. Not giving away all the info and fun, but just as a hint of what is going on around the player.

This is actually really really cool.

If you have ever played C&C Red Alert 3 they use a similar system, where the music seamlessly changes from sort of quiet-ish military style music to full blown crashing C&C rock type music when fighting starts.

I'm assuming you know what you're doing anyway, but if you've never played RA3 I'd suggest you give it a go and see how the music changes. I took part in the beta and I remember their sound guys going on about how they programmed the game to tell when a decent sized fight is going on them. It's something most people wont realise is even happening but it adds so much more feeling to the game.


Bienator II
madmen of the skies
#127 - 2012-11-09 16:21:01 UTC
CCP WhiteNoiseTrash wrote:
Bienator II wrote:
after listening to the new mix for i while i am wondering. will there be an option to turn off the music but keep the spooky generated track?

Just turn the volume of the music down to 0 for now.
There will at some point be an option just to "turn off", but setting the volume to 0 solves the issue.

i am either deaf or the music slider is for both tracks. since i don't hear anything if its at 0


Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#128 - 2012-11-09 21:05:20 UTC
Salpun wrote:
CCP Audio wrote:
Gilbaron wrote:
any chance we can get (fully configurable!!) sound warnings when getting targeted/scrambled/painted/whatever ?

that would be so fricking awesome

Fully configurable won't happen atm.
but there are some changes to the sounds of the ship being targeted and scrambled, but yet again not configurable from the user end.

I have gone over them and will do again, mainly because I thought they needed a better warning type of sound so that it was clear what was going on.

Scram from bubbles currenly does not show up on the action bar. If you could get a sound to turn on when trying to warp fails or when in a bubble that would be cool.

Oh god, like the sound the Millinium Falcon made when it repeatedly failed to jump into Hyperspace. Smile

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.

Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#129 - 2012-11-09 21:09:58 UTC

Logan LaMort wrote:
Just a thought, but whatever happened to Aura? Always thought it would be a lot more pleasant (and more fitting) for Aura to announce that "Your shields are low", "You're being warp scrambled" or even "You are being targeted" etc.

Of course that isn't feasible in the near future, but is it something you sound guys have considered?

That part is thought of. but for various reasons it can't be done unfortunately, it would be an awesome and easy way to solve some of this, but this is a very heavy subject at the office at the moment, so maybe it will happen, but not anytime soon.

I think it entirely fitting, if nothing else is done along this line, to at least allow Aura to be able to say "Warp Drive Failure". If nothing else it will iinpire the names of countless blogs and pod casts.


The Scope
#130 - 2012-11-12 05:25:35 UTC
This may be the wrong thread, but the new dynamic music is great. I can *feel* the difference between high, low, and null sec now... it grants and ambience that has long been needed.

Good work.

#131 - 2012-11-12 12:54:05 UTC
Onyx Nyx wrote:
I think afterburners should have this effect.

Oh sweet Jeezit I want.
Pierced Brosmen
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#132 - 2012-11-12 14:00:33 UTC
Onyx Nyx wrote:
I think afterburners should have this effect.

Oh wow, that is wicked.
Both the sound and the visual effect of the eshaust flame... Would look awesome in EVE
Galactic Rangers
#133 - 2012-11-12 14:21:20 UTC
any update on that sound dev blog? very much looking foward to it ^_^
Taxation Damnation
#134 - 2012-11-15 21:19:57 UTC
The new buzzing sound when you dock up is bloody annoying. Sounds like it's an error noise and even at that its ugly.

Go beyond the edge of space... Explore

Goonswarm Federation
#135 - 2012-11-17 08:06:52 UTC
Logix42 wrote:

Confirming I got on Buckingham today and this sound was irritating the **** out of me the whole time. It's not just for docking, it happens every time you engage or disengage a module as well. :suicide:
Nagarythe Tinurandir
Einheit X-6
#136 - 2012-11-17 10:44:56 UTC
Ganthrithor wrote:
Logix42 wrote:


as far as i could make sense of it, this buzzing is tied somehow to the aggression timers in the upper left corner. it makes the buzz everytime it gets reset to maximum timer time (so to speak every time you start firing or remote repping or whatever) and it makes a buzz every time it starts to count down.
i like, that the last 10 secounds of the timers have some form of acoustical countdown, but the buzzing everytime you get the timer or it resets or it starts to count is just annoying (in any normal pve or pvp situation this correlates with non stop buzzing...)

additionally i have the feeling this buggy, because these sounds are also played upon docking and undocking, sometimes overlayed with another sound.
Roll Sizzle Beef
Space Mutiny
#137 - 2012-11-17 17:42:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Roll Sizzle Beef
New idle and ambient noises i have observed as I can best describe it :)

Mimatar sounds like someone is punching an accordion every so often.
Amarr has a purring kitty in a air duct.
Caldari has a nest of bees in the background while someone plays a didgeridoo.
Gallente I guess are dragging their feet on the carpet while someone vacuums.
ORE is kind of plain humming with the odd gear spinning or sonar pling

Rats still seem like old noises still
Goonswarm Federation
#138 - 2012-11-18 00:19:47 UTC
I just find it pretty ironic that after years of always playing with sound on in a game where most people make fun of you for not playing on mute, it's the "fixing sounds" patch that's finally gonna make me turn them off :3
The Scope
#139 - 2012-11-18 00:54:18 UTC
Like the sound and music all around. Good work folks.

Roll Sizzle Beef
Space Mutiny
#140 - 2012-11-18 02:04:54 UTC
Shield boosters and armor reps are still annoyingly repetitive.
Station ambiance + ship idle + mods cycling equals SO MUCH NOISE.
More toggles. more and more toggles.
I mentioned this in the team Klank dev blog feedback but
Graphic options up the wazoo are meant to save your PC stress and improve performance.
We need more sound options to save our brain and improve our experience.