Oolite Bulletins

Some thoughts that came as I was playing Oolite and listening to Sleep Research Facility's excellent Nostromo album which is full of starship ambient drones and such.

Is it possible to mod the game audio using the current OXP system? I haven't noticed anything such been mentioned.

Could we have extra sound events? Space is a very silent place, as the saying goes but spaceship interiors don't necessarily have to be. How about a loop for the in-ship drones (an engine hum, ventilation, etc for example), or randomly (or not so randomly) triggered sounds (like when you roll/pitch violently or shut the thrusters down or power them up real quick and when you activate hyperspeed). You know, simple bits that add up to the general feel - none of it has to be modulated/processed in real-time or whatever, and they could also probably be different for each ship (via the .plists ofcourse).

All the audio files currently in Oolite/Contents/Resources/Sounds can be replaced.

Any file with the same name in AddOns/Sounds will supercede the original file. Currently, everything is in Ogg Vobis format.

Oo, and can we have a submarine Ping?

The sound system currently doesn’t do loops. (The workaround used for the afterburner is kinda scary.) Loops, variants and other coolness are kinda on the drawing board, for some time after a random flash of inspiration exposes the current random buggering-everything-up bug.

Wiggy wrote:

Oo, and can we have a submarine Ping?

That would be nice when you used the advanced targeting computer (ship identification).

thanks xaotik, for the latest addition to OoSat.

a little collection of replacements sounds, MildAudio.oxp found inside the zip named oosounds3, are quite pleasant.

You know what? I'd like the original BBC Micro Elite sounds. They were pretty cool.

Murgh wrote:

thanks xaotik, for the latest addition to OoSat.

a little collection of replacements sounds, MildAudio.oxp found inside the zip named oosounds3, are quite pleasant.

Thanks for adding it so quick and I'm glad you like.
I'll be updating it as soon as I finish designing the rest of the sounds (probably redo the laser sound with a more "menacing" one I did).

xaotik wrote:

Thanks for adding it so quick and I'm glad you like.

NP

I got interested in the SRF-Nostromo album you mentioned above (I keep some of the spookiest tracks from Jerry Goldsmith's OST Alien in my OoTunes) and although it's not an album *widely sold in every store*, I found a sample d/l of A-deck on his site:
http://www.resonance-net.com/srf/mp3.htm
14 haunting minutes.

Hey... that's quite impressive if you crank up the volume!!! It makes my entire study vibrate!!

Yeah I like your sounds too, xaotik. Good job!

Thanks for your kind words everyone.
I've uploaded a revised version on Oosat that has new sounds for the laser (has more bite to it and also a 'recharge' release section which sounds neat with rapid-firing lasers) and laserhit as well as the hit sound (for shields, haven't made one of the armor sound yet).

(see here for more on the MildAudio.oxp)

Ahruman wrote:

The sound system currently doesn’t do loops. (The workaround used for the afterburner is kinda scary.) Loops, variants and other coolness are kinda on the drawing board, for some time after a random flash of inspiration exposes the current random buggering-everything-up bug.

Maybe is it useless or non sence, but why not using the fmod library for sounds ? It does loops and all kind of stuff, is portable, and is open source.

Well maybe the problem with looping and else is not livrary related but ingame structure related. So maybe is what I am saying rubish.

Ironic you should mention that, Oolite just moved _from_ fmod to Core Audio

Fmod isn't actually open source, and it's less multi platform than Oolite. Oolite now runs on FreeBSD as well as IRIX - neither supported by fmod. The Linux port has always used sdl_mixer (and never used fmod).

Ok

The specific reason for moving away from FMOD is that, well, it sucks. :-) Specifically, the Mac OS X implementation of FMOD is based on the Sound Manager, which is deprecated, and falls down horribly on systems which happen to be set to use a sample rate greater than 96 kHz for output. FMOD Ex had a different set of problems. So, now, we have my CoreAudio code which works perfectly as long as it’s running on my machine. :-) (I think I’ll rewrite its internal buffer queueing thingummy this weekend, which should either fix the problem or cause entirely new interesting errors…)