Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-341

[Gergely]

The sound of the artillery gives the impression of something falling on the ground after each shot but I can't see anything. Is that the sound of some internal reloading procedure of the cannon, or are you going to add a particle for that?

[MaexxDesign]

It's the reload of the bullet.

[Edriel]

I love the new artilley sound!

[Optera]

Does increasing max sounds solve this issue? viewtopic.php?f=182&t=80745

I hope belts where not the only sounds adjusted.
While working on Volume Control I found Substation, Roboport and Combinators to produce too loud/annoying sounds when working in their proximity for a while.

[MarvinCZ]

Will there be ability to mute game sounds once the window loses focus? It would be really useful.

[Marconos]

I love the sound of artillary, I just wish the actually firing sound was A LOT louder. It seems too quite for the power it's pushing out.

[Ghoulish]

Is there a plan to update the sound when placing stone brick or concrete? It's really needed imho!

[BattleFluffy]

I love the new artillery sound! I'm so stoked this is finally in.

I have some feedback about it. I love the metal tinkling sound toward the end of the firing sequence (i guess it's a shell being loaded).
I love the reverb on the main gunshot, giving the impression of massiveness.

There are some things about it that I think could be improved.

The main gunshot transient should sound more brutal - artillery shelling is a real event and should be accompanied by maximum thunder. :>

The sound during rotation should be a bit louder. Again, when artillery fires it's generally a big event for the player - they will be standing around and watching it, probably with a grin on their face. This isn't something that will be playing in the background all the time - but only during certain times when the player's attention is very likely focused on the artillery itself. So you needn't worry so much about making an "annoying" soundscape in this case - high pitched servos are more acceptable here, etc.

The rotation sound also does not rise and fall in pitch; it instantly reaches full speed, and this gives the impression that the gun turret is not very big or heavy. It would be better if there was a very short ramp-up and ramp-down of pitch on the rotation sound, to give that impression of weight.


One more sound that I truly long for is the descending-pitch "whoosh" of an artillery shell flying overhead. Would it be possible to add that?

[warlordship]

The sound of the artillery gives the impression of something falling on the ground after each shot but I can't see anything. Is that the sound of some internal reloading procedure of the cannon, or are you going to add a particle for that?

Listening to it, it sounds like it is the metal clank of the artillery abruptly stopping after a rotation. After each shot - around the time you'd expect a clunk of something falling - the artillery changes angle oh so slightly. This causes a momentary "rotating" sound, and they end each rotation with a metallic "clunk" of the machinery stopping in place.

It's rather unfortunate, as it is at just the right spot for a shell to be ejected. Can we get a shell ejection particle, like how the gun/SMG toss out a tiny short-lived shell particle? I mean, they do have casings like bullets. While we're at it, give us a really heavy sounding set of clunks from the internal mechanism ejecting the old shell and clanking the new one into place.

Edit: There is a single slight clunk after the cannon fires, but it's pretty faint. I'd love for there to be maybe another one too, for the ejection of the shell.

[T-A-R]

And our old robot sounds have come back as additions.

Yes yes yes!

I have really missed them. These electric seagulls have been great companions for so many hours. I am very happy to welcome the lively bots back.

[herkalurk]

When are we going to see nuclear artillery shells? Why did we only make Rockets and traditional gun ammo nuclear enhanced? I also wonder why we had to go away from the ideal of building on the previous for the atomic bomb. For the nuclear ammo, we build up from regular ammo to piercing to nuclear. However with atomic bomb we make something completely different. Why not be inclusive and go upwards from the explosive rocket? I don't mind that it's expensive using Control Units and the more rare uranium, but we don't actually have a rocket there.

[bobucles]

I do like that they're going for sounds that don't stick out too hard. An annoying sound effect multiplied by 100 things times dozens of hours would be the stuff of nightmares. Very few sounds really need to stand out in gameplay. The most important sounds would be direct hazards to the base or player, so those shouldn't be drowned out by piles of belts and assemblers. Some sounds would also have more "power"/priority than other sounds, so a loud train or firearm would be heard from a longer distance than a quietly gushing pipe.

Visual effects are always evolving in gaming, but I don't keep up on sound evolution so I dunno what features it has. Is it possible to do doppler effects in the sound engine? It'd mostly matter for vehicles, so an approaching train would have a higher pitch than a train going away. Of course the mere pitch of the sound isn't the only thing to change, the entire entire sound sequence would be faster or slower. But I imagine that's a very difficult thing to reconcile in a way that feels good.

From what little information I can pick up on sound attenuation, the loss of amplitude scales according to the square of frequency. This is something most people have witnessed first hand, I.E. the krak-kow of a nearby lightning bolt has a lot of high frequency tones that vanish in the boom boom of a distant bolt. I'm not even sure if sound engines perform such a thing, but it may be useful as a way of highlighting nearby sounds vs. distant ones. Just talking out of my hairy bum, of course.

[hyspeed]

When you do work on the UI sounds, can you add a control specific to muting the notification when someone types a message?

In multiplayer, a couple people typing can get really annoying. The only solution being to mute more sounds than I want.

thanks

[Oktokolo]

The introduction of the artillery shell ejection sound is the perfect excuse for making the artillery actually produce an empty shell for each round fired.

[Usul]

Please do not re-add the old "cuty-beepy" robot sounds. The new quieter and subdued robot sounds are much appreciated!

Please do not subdue the new belt sounds even further, they are just right now... a relaxing humming drone, perfect to fall asleep to.

[<NO_NAME>]

What do you mean by attenuation? The wiki article tells that this is about how much of the sound can go through a material. Does this mean that sound will be quieter if the thing that makes it is behind a building?

Visual effects are always evolving in gaming, but I don't keep up on sound evolution so I dunno what features it has. Is it possible to do doppler effects in the sound engine? It'd mostly matter for vehicles, so an approaching train would have a higher pitch than a train going away. Of course the mere pitch of the sound isn't the only thing to change, the entire entire sound sequence would be faster or slower. But I imagine that's a very difficult thing to reconcile in a way that feels good.

I would like that but it gets more complicated if the player is in the vehicle. Then everything but the vehicle is Doppler-shifted and if there is another vehicle nearby that goes in other direction then it gets even more complex.
Hmm, as I thing about it more the only things that matter are relative speed and angle between objects. Maybe the math isn't that complicated.

[conn11]

The introduction of the artillery shell ejection sound is the perfect excuse for making the artillery actually produce an empty shell for each round fired.

Second that, especially beside the remarkable new fiering sound the ejected shell sound is quite noteworthy.
And good to hear back from sound design.

[AndrewIRL]

The sound during rotation should be a bit louder.

Definitely NOT. It should be quieter. The difference between the rotation and the firing event should be huge in comparison. I want a big contrast, not a loud motor and slightly louder artillery. Quiet motor and max volume artillery.

The rotation sound also does not rise and fall in pitch; it instantly reaches full speed, and this gives the impression that the gun turret is not very big or heavy. It would be better if there was a very short ramp-up and ramp-down of pitch on the rotation sound, to give that impression of weight.

Agreed. The animation of the gun should also have a acceleration/easing. Currently it goes zero-constant angular velocity-zero just like the sound.

One more sound that I truly long for is the descending-pitch "whoosh" of an artillery shell flying overhead.

That would be cool. Plenty of times in multiplayer I've been shelled, be cool to hear the whistle.

It's rather unfortunate, as it is at just the right spot for a shell to be ejected. Can we get a shell ejection particle, like how the gun/SMG toss out a tiny short-lived shell particle? I mean, they do have casings like bullets. While we're at it, give us a really heavy sounding set of clunks from the internal mechanism ejecting the old shell and clanking the new one into place.

There are three distinct sounds when operating a M777 155mm howitzer:

1. Shell being rammed
2. Breech close
3. Breech open

Ideally first two sounds should happen when shells are loaded. Last sound directly after firing.
Youtube: Artillery Sling Load & Fire Mission - M777 Howitzer
Note: This artillery uses a bag charge (green cylinder loaded from left) and there's nothing to eject.

Factorio is different because there are no bag charges loaded, the shell and propellant are together. More like Youtube: 105mm artillery which is smaller. Large artillery pieces usually (exclusively?) use bag charges.

Here's a better look at the projectile and bag charges for a Navy gun:

[Kialandri]

Not sure if its already known, but the barrel of the artillery has a slight cut in it when it rotates.
Sound is great