Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Regular reports on Factorio development.
User avatar
FactorioBot
Factorio Staff
Factorio Staff
Posts: 403
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 1:48 pm

Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by FactorioBot »


User avatar
Gergely
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 595
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2016 8:31 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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
Long Handed Inserter
Long Handed Inserter
Posts: 54
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 9:59 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by MaexxDesign »

It's the reload of the bullet.

Edriel
Burner Inserter
Burner Inserter
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:12 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by Edriel »

I love the new artilley sound!

User avatar
Optera
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 2915
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 6:41 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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.

User avatar
MarvinCZ
Long Handed Inserter
Long Handed Inserter
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2016 7:11 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by MarvinCZ »

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

Marconos
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 301
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2014 10:46 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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.

User avatar
Ghoulish
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 458
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2015 8:40 am

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by Ghoulish »

Is there a plan to update the sound when placing stone brick or concrete? It's really needed imho!
See the daily™ struggles with my Factory! :D https://www.twitch.tv/repetitivebeats

User avatar
BattleFluffy
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 188
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2019 4:58 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 34
Joined: Mon May 08, 2017 8:13 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by warlordship »

Gergely wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:40 pm
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.

User avatar
T-A-R
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 171
Joined: Tue May 22, 2018 4:20 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 111
Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2016 8:55 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 1666
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:37 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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. :lol:

hyspeed
Long Handed Inserter
Long Handed Inserter
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:18 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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

User avatar
Oktokolo
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 883
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2017 5:45 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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.

User avatar
Usul
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 131
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2016 5:05 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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.

User avatar
<NO_NAME>
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 291
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2016 9:52 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by <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?
bobucles wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:16 pm
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.
I am a translator. And what did you do for Factorio?
Check out my mod "Realistic Ores" and my other mods!

conn11
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 385
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2016 5:02 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by conn11 »

Oktokolo wrote:
Sat Apr 04, 2020 12:58 am
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
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 240
Joined: Fri Mar 24, 2017 2:17 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by AndrewIRL »

BattleFluffy wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 7:37 pm
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.
BattleFluffy wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 7:37 pm
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.
BattleFluffy wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 7:37 pm
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.
warlordship wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 8:20 pm
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:
Image

Kialandri
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2020 2:02 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #341 - Audio, Artillery, Attenuation

Post by 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 :)

Post Reply

Return to “News”