Test Server Feedback

We are having issues with the MWD and the AB, because the code says one thing, but the game seem to be behaving otherwise. But they have been turned up a notch for Rubicon. Especially the AB.

Today, while brainstorming we kind of noticed one thing that is really missing, which is just as with gates, wormholes, cynos, etc. (by the way, we found the bug, which made the cynos and wormholes distort so badly when several were jumping - huge mistake, totally human error 40, but I got it this time) anyway, that there is no sound when others around you warp. that would be a huge step up, if it was possible to hear other firing up.

Maybe not so useful in a battle where you would be zoomed out to the max, but say you have some more close range battle, like 10 km PVP or PVE. Someone warping, having a significant sound.
And on the way home I may have been daydreaming, but I think I found a solution to some of the global voices problems we are having when a lot of players are in the same location - stay tuned.

The Changing of the Mic location, is at the moment not doable in the near future because of some other things, but I'll put it into our backlog and come back to it when I can.

It happens a lot actually, walking home, talking to myself, even sometimes when I am falling asleep or in my sleep I come up with the weirdest hacks as to how to solve something. especially in periods where I am coding stuff.

Ohh, just thought. Instead of focusing audio only on your ship or camera, it would make more sense to have the sound focused on camera target (so if your lined up with a roid but 100km out you still hear the mining drones). This also seems like it would be easier to implement with how the sound is rendered at the moment?

Anyway many thanks

EDIT: These (hopefully) changes should be options so as not to force a change for the general player base who may not want the change

Speak to me with a friendly beam

I don't get what you want to show with the first link.

The second link. we are discussing that, believe me.
the effect of the sound is really awesome in this, but calling it good - it a different matter, it's clearly distorted because of the mix and doesn't seem to be so because of the original sound - so making it so, into the game is impossible.
But you can have something similar.

It has made us discuss a whole new warp sequence, in particular when watching others going into warp.
The warp sequence itself, for you - will get a smoother soundscape at some point, but that was just talked about the past few days.

When watching others warp, there is currently no sound, so an indicator that someone is now gone, is a good idea.
depends on how much booming effect I can put into the sound engine, without making it a huge mess.

i am a big fan of the MJD where you see before the actual jump that the target is about to jump. The normal warp has also the acceleration part (if not already aligned) which isn't however represented by any graphics or sound effect for the observer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0kswK2aI08

ah yea- the first video / trailer is really nice, the problem here is that without a new visual, the sound can't change as much as I would like it, without completely making a new warp sound - and can you imagine the amount of roar I would get from the player base if that happened?

I fixed it. I don't know what went wrong for Odyssey when this went in, because it was supposed to be more like what I just changed it to again today.
Ships now have louder boosters and AB and MWD sounds, (The AB sound was audible before - but that is one of the things I mean by that I don't know what went wrong in the process up to Odyssey, because it was supposed to be very clear and audible, as it should be of course)

Boosters, AB and MWD are now louder and but now even more so if you look straight at them and if you move around the ship, more silent. It was supposed to be like this, but I noticed that the effect of moving around the ship, wasn't very noticeable.

I'm not sure what the lore about the MWD should be? They are kind of useless on it's own, and the fact that some say you hear it when others show up, is a mystery to us - as we made it so that it's only your own ship that has audible booster effects like these. I have heard it myself, the sound when not firing up my own, but it always happened in situations where my profiling system was off, so I couldn't track it down where it came from.
So some are either imagining things, including me, or something is buggy somewhere, but not always - which is the worst kind of bug.
They went in for strictly aesthetic reasons and not really to be used in battle situations, I understand that they can be used in these situations, but to begin with it was just because "we could". and some things the director pointed at and said GO.

and yes, you are right - in a battle situation we would have a massive duplication problem. that can though be solved by just limiting the amount of audible sounds in the system, but then keeping track of every player in there will be pretty hard and let's say somebody leaves the scene of the crime again, then keeping track of what to re-activate will also be a pain.
plus we only have ONE programmer on audio - alongside ONE audio designer, so sometimes we got a bit of a four hand when needing eight hands problem.
If we could code like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBX6cAtpkC8
(Notice my heavily hacked Dub-whatever-step'nbass in there :D)

So. Rubicon should be ready to be released in a few days.

anything from here on now, will be out for the point release instead.
and god I'm tired now.

Thanks lad.