Friday Facts #396 - Sound improvements in 2.0

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-396

[Necronium]

Nice sounds improvment, will wait for new music

[03noster]

Sounds really nice, I was wondering whether the water sound could be bound to the pollution level to make it sound more "sludgy" as it gets "greener". Can't wait for new music!

[Enderbsd]

Sounds amazing.

[DanGio]

Cool !

The water sound seems a bit loud and over demonstrative.

I'm hyped about this new Vulcanus ambient sound, it's a bit sad that we can't hear it today tho

[Shadow_Man]

New big mining drill with its sound and animation looks gorgeous

[protocol_1903]

I love the new sounds of assemblers, and the new inventory sounds are interesting but refreshing. Vehicles sound amazing. Mining drills sound great, i know that was a main reason you wanted it cuz the current ones dont have the dynamic sounds.

+5 points for foundry "bonk" noise

[Ghoulish]

Adds immensely to the game. 2.0 is turning out to be a big bomb of an update!

[Justderpingalong]

Oh my god does this FINALLY mean massive biter swarms won't drown out our friends?

Next time you're setting a forest on fire, remember it might be someone's home.

Also how dare you try to make us feel immoral for our ruthless exploitation of the planets and the mass genocide of it's inhabitants!

By the way, as someone who enjoys trains quite a lot and spends a lot of time around them I suggest adding a faint 'metal screeching' noise as they go around corners. Because the wheels will be grinding up against the rails themselves.

Oh and lastly (and certainly most importantly), can we get horns?! If only just for manual use, I wanna beep at the biters! (Also could include an automatic horn that plays if a player is close to train tracks whilst a train is approaching... then again making deaths by your own trains more easily avoidable sounds like a bad thing if only because of how funny it is)

[MarvinCZ]

Nice one, even though I am not completely sold on the sound blending between idling motor and revving one, it does not sound completely natural to me, but it can be just me.

But there is one quality-of-life improvement related to sounds that I would really love to see in the 2.0 game - it is an option in the settings to mute game sounds when factorio loses focus. That way I could keep the game running in the background and do something else on my computer without being distracted by the sounds coming from the game. Currently I have to go to settings and lower volume all the way down manually every time and then raise it again once I switch back. Or please at least let us have a keyboard shortcut for mute/unmute.

[Dial-up]

great, you can finally sync sound with animation, but what about syncing sounds between machines? I'm currently developing a mod similar to labdancen, but the sound is completely synchronized, the only way I found is to create a special entity that is synchronized locally and poll the machine attached to it for its status, if the machine is stopped, then delete the entity. this is very harmful to ups, at least due to the fact that every second I need to go through a large array of entities polling the world, so if with the “persistent” property the sound was turned off when the machine was idle, then this would greatly simplify the task

[fishycat]

Can't wait for 2.0, really good job guys!

Also I like the ambient sounds of the water and the alien-bird. After zooming in, this lil dude showed up

alien-bird

alien-bird.jpg (52.48 KiB) Viewed 8215 times

Fun-fact: He was the first of its kind born in Prague

[DBotThePony]

Now the only thing we need is weather conditions, Nauvis is in big need for rain.

[protocol_1903]

After zooming in, this lil dude showed up

Blast. They've evolved! Send word to the western territories to be on high alert!

[protocol_1903]

Now the only thing we need is weather conditions, Nauvis is in much need for rain.

Ah, cleaning solar panels or changing outputs dependent on cloud cover would be fun

[Brathahn]

[...]
By the way, as someone who enjoys trains quite a lot and spends a lot of time around them I suggest adding a faint 'metal screeching' noise as they go around corners. Because the wheels will be grinding up against the rails themselves.

Oh and lastly (and certainly most importantly), can we get horns?! If only just for manual use, I wanna beep at the biters! (Also could include an automatic horn that plays if a player is close to train tracks whilst a train is approaching... then again making deaths by your own trains more easily avoidable sounds like a bad thing if only because of how funny it is)

also add the iconic clackety-clunk sound when going over a switch

[DomChaco]

Very nice, I love the new sounds, specially the foundry sounds amazing.

+1 to the mute when on background option, I've recently enabled something like that but had to go into experimental settings to change the sound backend back to allegro, and disable the global focus option on the hidden settings. I'm not quite sure what I'm losing by changing the sound backend, so it would be nice if this could be a regular option.

[Hares]

Great improvements!

Could you make rocks more smashy and metals more dingy-ringy-belly? Both sound too quite.

[protocol_1903]

[...]
By the way, as someone who enjoys trains quite a lot and spends a lot of time around them I suggest adding a faint 'metal screeching' noise as they go around corners. Because the wheels will be grinding up against the rails themselves.

Oh and lastly (and certainly most importantly), can we get horns?! If only just for manual use, I wanna beep at the biters! (Also could include an automatic horn that plays if a player is close to train tracks whilst a train is approaching... then again making deaths by your own trains more easily avoidable sounds like a bad thing if only because of how funny it is)

also add the iconic clackety-clunk sound when going over a switch

It would be interesting to have more ambient noise as a train moves. Maybe also thunks as it moves over a grade crossing, or little clicks and electrical buzz as it enters a new rail block?

[IronCartographer]

Also how dare you try to make us feel immoral for our ruthless exploitation of the planets and the mass genocide of it's inhabitants!

FWIW, until biters demonstrate some sort of cultural awareness, extermination is probably a better word. Genocide doesn't even necessarily mean use of lethal force--it can be something as insidious as raising a population's children away from the knowledge of their real parents' life experiences and preferences. Jokes about the subject relating to Factorio often both over- and under-sell the horrors of the reality by trying to apply it to creatures without such a sense of self (as far as we know--maybe the expansion will change this? Floating brains!).

Moving on...

The engine improvements continue to be impressive. The expectations of immersion potential in the expansion must grow.

Any word on whether sounds in space are altered by the vacuum environment and hearing them *through the structure* of a space platform, rather than via air? I'm not sure whether it would add or detract!