34 replies to this topic

[DeadlyFred]

The problem is with the sound of incoming damage, or lack thereof.

[Asmosis]

I think it sounds horrible. If they are going with a "moon base" map they should at least make it low-G to compensate how utterly annoying the lack of audio cues is, given that our pilots stuff their ears with cotton wool to mute in-mech sounds as well.

[Black Templar]

Lefty Lucy, on 17 December 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

The thing is that whatever is happening to you is happening to your opponents as well. It's potentially going to open up the map for different tactics than other maps. That's a good thing.

Modo44, on 17 December 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

Muting outside sounds on that map is awesome. No air == nothing to carry that. However, direct hits on your mech should always be audible, just like firing your own weapons is. The mech structure carries those sounds.

I also noticed that the alarm sounds are dampened on this map. They should really be the same as always, since they originate right where the pilot sits.

^this.

[Colonel Tequila]

Would like to point out that w/o sound notification you will absolutely NOT want Gyros on - the only notification you have is cockpit shake - gyros reduce that.

Personally I like the lower sound levels for this space based map, though I do think that damage done to your mech should be easier to hear.

A second pass on the sound levels for HPG manifold would likely seem to be required.

Edited by Colonel Tequila, 18 December 2013 - 07:22 AM.

[August55]

I think some sort of audible vibration noise should be enough if they want to keep the immersion in.

[Rushin Roulette]

Well, if we want to be all scientiffy here, then all sounds whcih your mech make should be amplified, as your hearing will be more sensitive to the overall silent soundscape. This means atht your engine, warnings, own weapon and gyro activations will be louder than normal.

Heatsinks should not work at all when standing in the light, as the solar radiation will be extremely hot and you will have nearly immediate cooling when standing in the shade. Heatsinks would also only work for a limited period of time, because the only way to lower the temperature in a space suit is to bleed off excess gasses such as carbon dioxide, and thus lowering the pressure within the suit which would in turn lower temperature. For heatsinks this would mean that they would have to vent excess cooling mass to lower the pressure for cooling.

Weapons are tricky. Lasers should work better than in atmosphere, becasue there is nothing to refract the light on the way to the target. Range would be limited solley by the quality of the focusing lense and not the power of the weapon.
Regular balistics and missiles would not work, becasue gunpowder will not ignite without oxygen (unless its a special explosive which has built in oxygen or another explosive gas chemically bound. Gauss rifles on the other hand will work better, as they only rely on magnets to propel the ammunition, the range would be slightly longer becasue there is no atmosphere to slow the projectiles down (this would probably be countered by the higher gravity causing more dropoff.

Weapon hits: Hearing impacts on your mech would be dampened, but stil audiable. What you would never hear is if you are being hit by a laser. the reason for this is that lasers are basically just light. You dont hear when a flashlight is being held at on you either, so the same principal would hold true for lasers. You might hear a slight pinging sound as the metal being hit by the laser is heated up and expands beyond its fracturing point.

TL:DR. The way PGI have implemented the soudns is a good compromise., If they went all out realism, then half of the things wont work or will work very badly and you would still not hear anything from outside... the warning alarms should be turned up though.

Edited by Rushin Roulette, 18 December 2013 - 07:48 AM.

[Doctor Proctor]

I have to agree that the lack of damage sounds is a bit of a problem. I've had multiple matches where I just randomly lose a side torso because I had no idea I was being fired because the mech firing wasn't in my field of view.

And saying "Oh, it's fair because everyone is like that" isn't really accurate, because this is a HUGE boon to AC mechs like the AC/40 Jager or something running multiple UAC/5's. They already rely on popping up and doing a large volley of damage and then retreating into cover, but now they don't even have to retreat. They just can just tear your mech apart in seconds with impunity because you don't know you're being hit.

Even if you ARE paying extremely close attention to your paper doll it tends to lag behind the actual damage being applied, meaning that you might see that something is hitting you, but you have no idea whether it's a single small laser or 3 UAC/5's going full bore into your back. Normally it's a lot easier to use the sound of AC rounds impacting versus the laser sizzle to get gauge on what exactly is striking you, thus allowing you to react appropriately to the threat.

Also, have to wholeheartedly agree that NO cockpit sounds should be muted at all since your cockpit should be pressurized.

[LastPaladin]

Alek Ituin, on 17 December 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

It's a moon. As in, no atmosphere chunk of rock in orbit around another planetary body kind of moon.

Sound doesn't travel through vacuum, this has been proven. PGI got this one right on the money and it's a refreshing change of pace compared to the usual fare, bar the gravity (then again, with moon gravity, tripping in a Light would mean you end up achieving orbit ).

There's no vacuum between your armor and your cockpit, though. Not all sounds should be muted.

[Modo44]

OK, this seems to be a larger issue, not just on Manifold. All sounds not generated inside your mech are muffled. AMS is very quiet, for example, and there are instances where you can hardly hear hit sounds. The problem is most obvious on Manifold, but it exists globally.

[Mad Elf]

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Well, if we want to be all scientiffy here, then all sounds whcih your mech make should be amplified, as your hearing will be more sensitive to the overall silent soundscape. This means atht your engine, warnings, own weapon and gyro activations will be louder than normal.

OK, starts off well, but the rest of it... I hardly know where to begin.

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Heatsinks should not work at all when standing in the light, as the solar radiation will be extremely hot

From what little information we have, our heatsinks aren't flat radiators, so although standing in sunlight would heat the mech more than in the shade, the heatsinks wouldn't be affected.

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

and you will have nearly immediate cooling when standing in the shade.

Totally not! You would get a net loss by radiation (lack of sunlight), and some by conduction through your feet, but not "nearly immediate" by any reckoning.

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Heatsinks would also only work for a limited period of time, because the only way to lower the temperature in a space suit is to bleed off excess gasses such as carbon dioxide, and thus lowering the pressure within the suit which would in turn lower temperature. For heatsinks this would mean that they would have to vent excess cooling mass to lower the pressure for cooling.

Given that our heatsinks appear to work in the same way as a PCs (blowing air over fins), they shouldn't work at all. Coolant flush will though!

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Weapons are tricky. Lasers should work better than in atmosphere, becasue there is nothing to refract the light on the way to the target.

Spot on, though the generally-accepted term is "scatter", not "refract".

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Range would be limited solley by the quality of the focusing lense and not the power of the weapon.

More limited by diffraction, but OK...

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Regular balistics and missiles would not work, becasue gunpowder will not ignite without oxygen (unless its a special explosive which has built in oxygen or another explosive gas chemically bound.

...like every variant of gunpowder since the original Chinese version. If gunpowder and its various replacements didn't carry their own oxygen, they wouldn't work at all. Once lit, they burns in vacuum perfectly well.

Ballistics: work better. No atmospheric resistance! (Normal guns should work perfectly in space, as long as you strip all the lubricant from them (otherwise it turns into glue).)

Missiles: work differently. Unless they have steering thrusters in addition to their main one (highly unlikely), they rely on aerofoils to maintain lift and manoeuvring. With no atmosphere, they would act like more glazer rounds: following a ballistic trajectory, with increasing speed over the flight path. No steering to hit the targets though!

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Gauss rifles on the other hand will work better, as they only rely on magnets to propel the ammunition, the range would be slightly longer becasue there is no atmosphere to slow the projectiles down (this would probably be countered by the higher gravity causing more dropoff.

True enough for this one.

The ones you missed:

PPCs: work much worse without atmosphere: the charged particles have nothing to act against their mutual repulsion, and the bolt blooms out into nothing.

Flamers: ha.

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Weapon hits: Hearing impacts on your mech would be dampened, but stil audiable.

Nope! When you're sitting in your mech, the sound made by impacts isn't transmitted through the air outside at all, it's transmitted by the mech's nice dense metalwork. (And then the air inside it.)

Rushin Roulette, on 18 December 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

What you would never hear is if you are being hit by a laser. the reason for this is that lasers are basically just light. You dont hear when a flashlight is being held at on you either, so the same principal would hold true for lasers. You might hear a slight pinging sound as the metal being hit by the laser is heated up and expands beyond its fracturing point.

Again, wrong. For a laser to have any damaging effect, it needs to vaporise the target area near-instantaneously. Ie. part of your mech's armour explodes off when hit by a laser. This would be very loud when inside the mech.


For more info on the real science behind SF weapons in-atmosphere and out, see here: http://www.projectrh...acegunintro.php

[Geek Verve]

syngyne, on 17 December 2013 - 09:43 PM, said:

Are you in third person? You don't get any sound when the point of view is outside the cockpit. Inside the cockpit, you hear muted sounds from your own weapons and your footsteps.

Nope. It happens in 1PV. It doesn't make any sense that you can hear your weapons firing (though muffled - and an awesome, cool effect at that), yet an AC20 round to the back of your noggin makes no sound at all.

[Ryoken]

Michael Abt, on 17 December 2013 - 01:51 PM, said:

Talking about realism when it comes to si-fi? Reminds me of all those discussions in so many other mmo's that wizards shooting fireballs out of their hands should do so much more damage because it is more realistic.

In one point you are definitely wrong though. I can do something about it, and that is giving my feedback.

Well if your proposal is to un-moon the moon map I also disagree. To a certain degree even in sci-fi physics are applied. Just because the authors make some exceptions to introduce technologies not researched yet, does not mean to abandon all laws of physics. A good sci-fi indeed obeyes the laws of physics while introducing new tech, by not explaining it with to much detail.

Maybe you have to wait for 2.0 where one will be able to choose a map. For the time beeing I would advise you to adapt to the situation, this is the way we mechwarriors do. You would not ask for those mechs or engines you do not like to operate to be removed from the game as well do you?

[Arcturious]

There's always been a bit of a bug with hearing sounds of incoming fire.

I think this map has leaked over and made it on average worse in other maps now also.

I've had a few games now where I've been playing almost in silence, my weapon noises but zero hit notifications.

Just had a game on Caustic, was in the Caldera and thought a Jager mech was missing me, as I was getting no notifications.

Then the paper doll caught up, and I was nearly cored. I ran, he chased. I made it out of his sight and he got distracted by someone else. Later in the match, he was sniping at me and again, no damage sounds or registration. If it wasn't for the puffs of dirt around my mech on the hillside I would never have known I was under attack.

I spotted him on the side of the Caldera, ran again and eventually got killed by some lights. However not once in that match did I get damage warning sounds from ballistics, and only sometimes from lasers and it was subdued.

Edited by Arcturious, 19 December 2013 - 02:46 AM.

[xyretire]

Lack of damage sounds is pretty awful. Makes me not want to play the map when it comes up. I don't care about realism, I care about the game being actually fun to play. Not having incoming damage sounds makes the map less fun. Actually, I think the sounds in general on the map aren't very good, but it's not actively detrimental like the lack of damage sounds.

[Therobomega]

Mad Elf, on 18 December 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

...like every variant of gunpowder since the original Chinese version. If gunpowder and its various replacements didn't carry their own oxygen, they wouldn't work at all. Once lit, they burns in vacuum perfectly well.

Ballistics: work better. No atmospheric resistance! (Normal guns should work perfectly in space, as long as you strip all the lubricant from them (otherwise it turns into glue).)

Yes for the gunpowder burns in space, and that ballistic weapons would work better in space, but we do have some issues with them in space.

While they'd work beautifully, we run into the problem that most (if not all) ammunition is made in a factory at atmospheric pressure. These rounds could either pop their projectile prematurely when exposed to near vacuum pressures, if not seated or glued in place. Or could bulge the brass cartridge outward, causing them to no longer feed properly through a semi-auto/auto mechanism or become jammed in the chamber. Could even pop the primer out the back of the cartridge.