Tweak: Sounds

[xcelsior 53]

I would like to start off saying, I did search but saw nothing about it, so sorry if it's a duplicate.

Now, the suggestion to tweak, sound effects levels. If a person is to survive a place such as Chernarus what is one of the main ways to survive? Situational Awareness, know what's going on around you. How does one go about this? Primarily Sight and Hearing. As it stands right now though, one of those is difficult to make use of. We can see just fine, but due to the levels at which sound effects are set, it makes hearing your surroundings a bit of a trick.

Most people have heard all the sounds in-game in real life. The ocean, flies, someone running, footsteps in general, doors opening/closing, gunshots, etc.

Right now several of these sounds are far overpowering, and others a bit low or even non-existant.

The ocean, for example, is extremely loud. I use to live near an ocean, a bay, and a river, and unless it's a really windy day you won't hear the water that well, especially several hundred feet in-land, or even indoors.

Flies, unless Russia/Czech have the loudest flies known to mankind, it's a bit too loud. Now a whole swarm of flies can make a good bit of noise, but it would a lot of them, something a fresh body wouldn't create. I think (far from sure), that a dead body takes a few days to attract that kind of insect attention. Now that is a little much for this game, but a ~10 minute or more delay would likely be a little better. Unless I'm gitched, but I hear them instantly when someone dies.

Footsteps, a bit too low in comparison to other sounds. I can hear someone walking up the driveway from a decent distance away, or someone walking up/down the stairs with music on. If that person was running up my driveway I'd hear them from about halfway (~1/4mile driveway total). Obviously other sounds will drown out footsteps easily depending on how fast the person is moving, but not sure how that would work in-game.

Doors, seems to have no sound. Now, if anyone has been to a big old building with large metal doors they know that those are anything but quiet. Small wooden doors would be plausible to open quietly, but things like Warehouse/Firehouse doors would make some noise, espesically if they have been sitting there a while rusting.

Gunshots, while they travel decently, are a bit low. Take the Revolver for example, can fire it and attract very little attention. Has anyone here fired a .45 Revolver? (honest question) I've only personally fired a .357 without ear protection (bad move btw), and that left me nearly deaf for the next ~2 minutes. With ear protection I've fired 30-06, Glock 40 and 12ga. All of them with ear protection (just simple plugs) were still loud enough to get plenty of attention and would have left me with limited hearing if not for the ear plugs. Someone with plenty of gun experience may be able to adapt better, but our survivor doesn't seem like a gun master. Maybe make them slightly louder, or leave a ringing in the ears after a certain caliber? 9mm wouldn't leave much of a ring if any, but firing a Lee Enfield or M107 without some kind of protection? Ouch.

Hit tab/enter too son, woops. Anyways, not sure how much can be edited sound wise, but just some thoughts about the effects levels.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Xcelsior

[FunkyHermitCrab (DayZ) 95]

All noises in game actually follow real physics quite well. The sounds are accurate to the region. The reason that you cannot hear gunshots very well is because of the nature of longitudinal waves (http://en.wikipedia....ngitudinal_wave). This is further explained by the longitudinal decay of dB value over distance (http://en.wikipedia....ower_quantities).

Edited July 12, 2012 by FunkyHermitCrab

[xcelsior 53]

While i don't know the technical side of it (wiki links explanations), I am just going off personal experience. :)

I clearly don't know the area the map is located (never left East Coast US) but some of the common sounds couldn't change that much from place to place could they? With the Water sound, I know some places may be louder than others depending on what the water is coming into contact with, how windy it is, etc, but it just seems off. Unless I have a setting wrong the "beach" at Cherno, for example, is incredibly loud. Plus it just seems to cut off for me, one second water sounds, and the next there is none. It fades some, but not to the point of a whisper before getting drowned out.

Guns, I have only fired / heard a few, as mentioned, but it just felt like they were a bit too quiet at the point of firing. Obviously volume of speakers plays into that, but in comparison it feels a little low.

Obviously I can only go off personal experience, and don't really know the technical side of how it would get coded, or even how objects affect sound travel and such (only basic understandings), but personally it just felt off a little. It is just a suggestion though, and it's always open for input! :D

Edited July 12, 2012 by Xcelsior

[lucifer6642 1]

The one sound level I'd like to tweak manually are the vehicle engine sounds. For some reason, some of my friends hear little to no engine noise in 3rd person mode yet for me it drowns out everything.

[vision1776 42]

I agree that sounds need some tweaking. I see some fixes on that in Arma 3 though not Arma 2. I also really like the JSRS sound mods. I wish I could turn those on when playing DayZ. give the player the option to turn on sound mods that affect only the player using them. I dont see why not.

[0only1 4]

Just some regulations would be nice, cause sound is crucial in this game

So yeah +1

[xDIx Revenge 51]

I agree that sounds need some tweaking. I see some fixes on that in Arma 3 though not Arma 2. I also really like the JSRS sound mods. I wish I could turn those on when playing DayZ. give the player the option to turn on sound mods that affect only the player using them. I dont see why not.

Adding in the ability to use personally benefitting scripts is like saying why not let people cheat. If they can gain an unfair sound advantage just by running a script or mod through the game, then it shouldn't be allowed.

[vision1776 42]

Adding in the ability to use personally benefitting scripts is like saying why not let people cheat. If they can gain an unfair sound advantage just by running a script or mod through the game, then it shouldn't be allowed.

haha you are concerned about cheaters yet Im seeing players spawning in Berezino fully armed seconds after I kill them. But adding a JSRS sound mod would be cheating...

[LordJarhead 1]

haha you are concerned about cheaters yet Im seeing players spawning in Berezino fully armed seconds after I kill them. But adding a JSRS sound mod would be cheating...

Maybe the thing is not using the JSRS soundmod which is made for Arma2 and not for DayZ, but a JSRS DayZ Soundmod Version which not contains scripts or anything and totally concentrates on the distances and ranges as they are in vanilla DayZ right now. So there would be no differents in ranges, distances or extra sounds, instead of different sound samples.

BUT: I can totally understand that Rocket/+Team dont want a soundmod or at least cant focurs on that right now. They have much more stuff to do with Arma3, all the DayZ Updates and the DayZ Standalong game. The Standalone will bring new sounds, I'm sure of that ;)

LJ