Daemonion's Audio Thread Thread - L.U.R.K. mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl

If you have any questions for me (the sound guy), ask them here!

[update] 20120406
Nice, I am making progress on something awesome. Not 100% sure if I can get it working, but picture this:

You walk into a building/area, and a stereo audio file (one that I make from scratch) plays. Exit the building/area and it stops. Combine this with 3D positioned audio and you have a completely enveloping soundscape on a per-building/area basis.

Holy shit, this is exciting. Probably another week or two before I can have something posted, as I am out of country right now.

Edited by: Daemonion

Hello Daemonion
So you are the one trying to add creeking sounds in houses and echo in tunnels? I imagine it's fun to play around in the editor if you know how-to
I appreciate what you are doing, every tiny bit of new detail be it audio or visual will add to the immersion; im sure all of us wonder in a certain part of a game, for example, why the producers didnt develop further in this here area, make it more detailed? sadly because that takes alot of time, they need to release the game, grab the dough
I wish you the best of luck with the editor; looking forward to see what you come up with next
My question, who made the soundtracks of lurk areas? i love em; the original soundtracks are good (original Yantar isn't to be replaced ) but i really love lurk Garbage theme, Darkvalley, Wild territory and Military warehouses themes

Edited by: marsalandrei

marsalandrei wrote: Hello Daemonion
So you are the one trying to add creeking sounds in houses and echo in tunnels? I imagine it's fun to play around in the editor if you know how-to
I appreciate what you are doing, every tiny bit of new detail be it audio or visual will add to the immersion; im sure all of us wonder in a certain part of a game, for example, why the producers didnt develop further in this here area, make it more detailed? sadly because that takes alot of time, they need to release the game, grab the dough
I wish you the best of luck with the editor; looking forward to see what you come up with next
My question, who made the soundtracks of lurk areas? i love em; the original soundtracks are good (original Yantar isn't to be replaced ) but i really love lurk Garbage theme, Darkvalley, Wild territory and Military warehouses themes

This is odd, it only shows your quotation of what i said, can't see your response
If you are responsible for the themes then know you did an incredible work 10+ out of 10, i just finished the game yesterday with 1.0552 and heard the Pripyat theme and CNPP theme, those are briliant too; your music is added to my repertoire of epic game soundtracks

marsalandrei wrote: This is odd, it only shows your quotation of what i said, can't see your response
If you are responsible for the themes then know you did an incredible work 10+ out of 10, i just finished the game yesterday with 1.0552 and heard the Pripyat theme and CNPP theme, those are briliant too; your music is added to my repertoire of epic game soundtracks

Huh, that is weird!

I am not responsible for them, but I'll ask Holden as I'm sure he'll know. You know that you can pull them from the Gamedata folder, yes?

Yes I know, I play them in Winamp. Nice of you guys to put them there, thank you!

Holden says that some music was made specifically for LURK by someone. I think he is trying to find out more information on that for you.

Edited by: Daemonion

I have a question: Is the audio going to sync up? As in for reloading weapons and such? Because the sync was really bad in 1.0, and occasionally bugged in 1.1.

I'm sure that it's going to (no point in making great audio if it still doesn't sync to the weapon animations)...but I still have a need to ask.

Since you're going to be recording the firing sounds from weapons, will you also be recording the reloading sounds?

You guys could do the animations backwards. As in, instead of making the animations first and then making & syncing the sounds to the animations (which is what everyone else seems to do), you could make the sounds, and then make the animations around the sounds.

Also, off topic, but will there be an MP412? I just love that gun so much.

I don't have a MP412, but I do have a .357.

Great question. Yes, some of the synching is horrible! I will be changing all of the. Recording the reloading animations will actually be easier than recording the firing, because I only have to use one microphone (with shooting I will need to use at least 5, possibly double that).

I will probably record the reload sounds in the way most foley is done for Hollywood. I will watch the animation on screen, and act it out real-time with a gun in my hand next to a microphone (indoors).

I sincerely hope you don't just mean a weapon in .357 SIG. That would be the biggest cop-out evar.

Ah. That's good to know. That means that you could actually record you reloading the same gun several times, and select either the singular reload that sounds the best/coolest, or even take the best parts to make a great whole.

Hmm. That will probably produce great results. Although that means that you would have to wait until whoever is doing the animations finishes them to start recording.

.357 Magnum, yea. I don't have a .357 SIG.

I don't see why it would be a cop-out, though, to not use a REX. It would pretty much be impossible for me to get my hands on one. It would also be pretty much impossible for me to get one of every gun in the game and record just from that.

Without a doubt, all of the reload and mechanical noises need to sound different for each gun. However, a .357 is a .357 and the report will pretty much sound the same no matter what it is fired from. The differences, though, are in the mechanics (triggers, bolts, slides, ejection ports, etc). I'll be using whatever techniques I can to make each gun's mechanics sound different, even if they start from the same base gun (i.e. I will be using my AR-15 to make sounds for the 552, LR-300, M16, etc).

The slope starts to get slippery when you use things like a snare drum to try and make a gun shot. That is just crap and I'll never be doing that kind of stuff. All my gun noises will come from real guns. Wind noises will come from wind, thunder from thunder, rain from rain, etc etc. You won't find me putting a chicken breast in a ziploc bag and throwing it against the wall to make a "flesh-crunch" sound for this.

Edited by: Daemonion

"You won't find me putting a chicken breast in a ziploc bag and throwing it against the wall to make a "flesh-crunch" sound for this."
Hah, funny. Sad thing is, somebody, somewhere, has probably done that at one point or another...

Also, I didn't mean it would be a cop-out to not have the REX, I meant it would be a cop-out to say you have ".357" and mean .357 SIG instead of badass .357 Magnum, as would be expected from saying that. Still, though, is this weapon going to just be "Some Magnum" (like a nondescript Remington or Taurus), or will it at least be something recognizable like a Colt Python?

Oooh. I wonder if the M29 is going to make an appearance. Even if it's only a unique weapon, I would get the weirdest boner by using such an awesomely textured epic weapon to shoot epicly rendered dudes in an epicly textured game world with such epic sound-works behind it. Oh man, I am now SO looking forward to whatever pump-action shotguns are going to be included. I hope that there's at least one full length pump-action shotgun.

My new challenge is to play the game with nothing but high-caliber pistols and shotguns. I'll probably end up using a magnum and a pump-action shotgun, Battlefield 3 style, because they are both kind of meh at close range, both somewhat effective at medium range, and both pretty much ineffective at long range.
It's just that the shotgun and the magnum are slightly less shit at close and long* range, respectively.
*Note that when I say "close, medium, long" range, I don't mean in and of itself, I mean for CQC. I don't mean 50, 100, 200+; I mean 0-10, 11-25, 26-50.

Edit: I should probably add that those ranges are in meters.

Edited by: RobertSteele

Fantastic work Daemonion. Do you work in audio professionally or is this just a hobby? With your attention to detail you could definitely land a job in the game industry if you show off work like this. I'm looking forward to the guns as much as everyone, but I think the environment audio is the most important thing for STALKER. The new ambient white noise is fantastic and does make a world of difference. I hope you can find some way to fade in the transition from outside to inside, but it still is very promising. I'm curious how you are going to handle all the growls, howls, and such that you hear every so often in the zone. I imagine the original audio isn't up to your standards.

spoodigityz wrote: Fantastic work Daemonion. Do you work in audio professionally or is this just a hobby? With your attention to detail you could definitely land a job in the game industry if you show off work like this. I'm looking forward to the guns as much as everyone, but I think the environment audio is the most important thing for STALKER. The new ambient white noise is fantastic and does make a world of difference. I hope you can find some way to fade in the transition from outside to inside, but it still is very promising. I'm curious how you are going to handle all the growls, howls, and such that you hear every so often in the zone. I imagine the original audio isn't up to your standards.

Thanks for your feedback. I hope to work in the industry at some point, so that is great to hear.

Yes, you are right about the vanilla sounds - not up to my standards, by any means. Most of them are pretty cheesy, to say the least.

I do sincerely hope to find a way to polish up the transitions. I am sure there is some Lua way to make it happen without doing anything too drastic ...

Hello again Daemonion! I'm sorry i have a question not related to audio but to the gameplay. |SemiI asked about the mag system, I know you said no promises; you planned to merge LURK with RMA (bud undid that) and i have seen RMA has the.. not sure if it has a certain name, the feature which requires you to hang the ammo to your belt so you can load, otherwise you have to open the inventory to reload, as in 'open your backpack to look for the ammo'. I am one of the people who like these kind of realism features; i played abit of Stalker Lost World Requital which has the same style of interface as Lurk but with reworked spaces for items ready to use and spaces for belt where you put artifacts or ammo. So, will you keep the ammo on belt feature like in RMA for the new Lurk?
Here's how Stalker LWR inventory looks like:
Imageshack.us

Panzer and I are in the process of making a large to-do list for the re-build. We'll probably end up sharing it with you guys.

If it were up to me to decided whether or not things sounded awesome, I'd be saying yes to all these ideas all of the time. However, when it comes down to it, I won't be the one doing the implementation work. Due to that, you can probably guess what I'm about to say - I really don't know

We're always open to feedback, though, so keep the ideas coming. I'm very active on here so I am keeping track of everything you guys say/ask for. Whether or not it ends up getting implemented is something else entirely, but you're ideas will at least be heard.

I'll talk to Panzer about it.

[update 20120513]
Wahoo!

I now have the space restrictors switching between one another flawlessly (minus the fade in/out function I have to make). The player can now switch between many different space restrictors and trigger an interior ambient white noise when inside, and trigger an ambient whitenoise when outside.

I have it working in such a way that I can attribute different white noise tracks to different locations. For example, being underground will sound one way, being in a wood house will sound another way, being in a large brick building will sound another way ...sweet!

Here is the code.

A video demo (still with place holder sounds, sorry):

Edited by: Daemonion

Will there be any music on the radio and megaphone at the Bar? I played OGSE mod and it had english songs(Celine Dion-my heart will go on, Bob Seger-ramblin gamblin man, Jefferson Airplane-don't you want somebody to love) playing on Duty's megaphone and some nice russian songs playing in the bar, at Freedom's base and at the ferris wheel in Pripyat(don't know russian but one of the songs is Viktor Tsoi- pack of cigarettes, and at the ferris wheel were funland happy children songs in russian). Was pretty entertaining

marsalandrei wrote: Will there be any music on the radio and megaphone at the Bar? I played OGSE mod and it had english songs(Celine Dion-my heart will go on, Bob Seger-ramblin gamblin man, Jefferson Airplane-don't you want somebody to love) playing on Duty's megaphone and some nice russian songs playing in the bar, at Freedom's base and at the ferris wheel in Pripyat(don't know russian but one of the songs is Viktor Tsoi- pack of cigarettes, and at the ferris wheel were funland happy children songs in russian). Was pretty entertaining

Sorry, could you write it again please, the answer doesn't show, again

Ha! It probably has something to do with responding to posts on my phone. Yes, there will be plenty of changes made to the in-game radios. I may even add more radios to new locations if it seems right.

Don't want to bother you with other stuff than Lurk, but didn't know who to ask ; I was wondering what's the reason for the following crash, is it memory related or something? It's not from Lurk don't be alarmed.
Expression : assertion failed
Function : _VertexStream::Lock
File : E:\stalker\sources\trunk\xr_3da\R_DStreams.cpp
Line : 44
Description : (bytes_need<=mSize) && vl_Count
I play LWR(no eng version apparently too bad) and i get this crash when visiting some of the "new" zones like CS Red Forest, CS Swamps, CoP Pripyat ( CoP Jupiter was fine though). All i want is to get to explore the 'new to me' old build maps and 4 fan made maps but the above mentioned kinda stand in my way plus the fact that map tranzit points don't show

marsalandrei wrote: Don't want to bother you with other stuff than Lurk, but didn't know who to ask ; I was wondering what's the reason for the following crash, is it memory related or something? It's not from Lurk don't be alarmed.
Expression : assertion failed
Function : _VertexStream::Lock
File : E:\stalker\sources\trunk\xr_3da\R_DStreams.cpp
Line : 44
Description : (bytes_need<=mSize) && vl_Count
I play LWR(no eng version apparently too bad) and i get this crash when visiting some of the "new" zones like CS Red Forest, CS Swamps, CoP Pripyat ( CoP Jupiter was fine though). All i want is to get to explore the 'new to me' old build maps and 4 fan made maps but the above mentioned kinda stand in my way plus the fact that map tranzit points don't show

Damn, I have no idea. Try posting at the GSC forums? Gsc-game.com

Hey ! May i ask something about modding COP actor.ltx? Probably you are aware that in COP if you change the time_factor in alife.ltx it will mess up alot of stuff including stamina drain and the rate of hunger. I always set time_factor to 2 to be more realistic, so that means 30 seconds real time = 1 minute ingame. It's easy to adjust the consumables to the new time factor, but i don't know for sure which lines i have to change so the stamina drain and hunger be the same like when it's default time_factor 10. Because with time_factor 2 the stamina doesn't drain at all, and hunger is very delayed. So i have to increase stamina, hunger and sleep parameters 5 times their default value, but i don't know which lines; maybe all lines from actor condition in actor.ltx?

I'm sorry, I can't help you with that. However, I'm sure you'd find help at the GSC CoP mod discussion forum. Let me know if you need a link!