[FS Chump]

Howdy everyone! I'm Chump, a member of the audio team working on Resurgence. I'd love to get a little discussion going about what kind of features you would all like to see implemented in Res, as well as answer any questions you have, and answer any questions I have for YOU!


What features are missing from UrT that you would like to have in the future?

What aspects of the classic UrT do you really love, and want to see carried forward?


There are a lot of new possible ideas I have, as well as thoughts about what the direction should be for the game audio. But, hearing questions and suggestions from you would be a really great (and enjoyable) way to gauge if we're heading in the right direction, without overloading you all or influencing you with what I think :)

[rastablaster]

radio commands :).

[FS Chump]

rastablaster, on 04 July 2016 - 07:14 PM, said:

radio commands :).

Any changes to the current system? More lines? Less? Different versions in the same lines?

One thing I'd love to add a bit of personality to the different characters, give them accents and maybe slightly different lines between them!

[Mod Iye]

definitely not less lines. Basically one doesnt have to use them. (maybe the menu could be slightly refined, but that's a different story)

Different versions of the same lines (text wise) are a good idea, even though i personally would like to be able to control which one i get if i do a custom bind. thats a non audio thingy again.


Going one from the already said, i suppose a must have is directional audio. I'm pretty sure noone would really suggest removing/not adding that, but let me throw in another thought here. The current UrT has those fancy features where you can sometimes (with the right settings) hear enemies across quite some distance. Also, in 4.X you can hear enemies at the same volume, regardless of the number of obstacles in the way. Personally, thats something i would NOT change, it adds to the tactical gameplay quite a bit.

Also things like different sounds based on the dmg a nade does are an important thing imo.

Actually, while wiriting this, i figured that i would be totaly fine with the 4.X system carrying over 1:1. (maybe some of the sounds need some love, but thats "detail").


Oh. also: Hi :)

[FS Chump]

Iye, on 04 July 2016 - 08:17 PM, said:

Oh. also: Hi :)

Hey..

More is always nice, but at the same time the 4.X audio menu is a bit TOO whacky like you said.. I was thinking about implementing radial menu for the radio (see below), what do you think? If we were to have additional unused dialogue in the menus, people could still use them in custom bindings (what was a huge part in customising UrT before anyway), or even swap them out in their radio menu.



Directional audio will of course be kept, and there are lots of potential things we could do to improve on that (for example, playing with binaural audio).. I agree that stopping all audio going through walls isn't very good for UrT gameplay, so thats something we'll keep in mind :) "Fun over realism!" afterall! We will definitely have more realistic occlusion for audios sources in the map, but that isn't something which affects gameplay. Variance to player sounds come a lot through the reverb of different rooms, and through having different sounds for distant gunfire, so you can gauge enemy distance from more than just their volume drop off.

As for carrying over the audio system, I'm afraid thats a no-go. Even if we wanted to, it would require being re-implemented from scratch, but modern systems allow for so much exciting exploration with audio that it'd be a crime not to use it! I can assure you though that we will 100% not abandon the style of UrT, and aim to make it as reminiscent to 4.X as we can (ESPECIALLY with things like music, UI and narration). Just better, and brought up to date :)

[Mod Iye]

personally im not a big fan of radial menus. Possibly because im not used to extensive use of those. two more things to consider: there is a shittof of voice commands in urt. a single menu of that kind would either need a lot of crowded submenus, or an additional 4.x style menu.


Also, i didnt mean to carry over the 4.x sound system. just its conceptional features (sound through walls, stepsounds depending on the surfaces,...)

[KarlMariaSeeberg]

i use urt radio heavily. got the commands bind to keys (f1-f10 and additional keys). currently i am using 14 commands.
i would not reduce the lines on the contrary add everything you can think of.
the one key element is customizing controls.
people need to be able to bind radio commands in the menus.
right now in 4.2 it's a pain in the ass. i think the main reason are not relying on urt radio is the horrible customization:
1. you need to know about the possibility to bind the radio
2. you need to know you can edit q3conifg.cfg
3. you need to find the urt radio list and the command codes (1 1, 1 2, etc.)
4. you need alter q3config
5. changes take forever

customiziable presets would be nice, so you can create a layout for bomb and and another for ctf, etc.

This post has been edited by KarlMariaSeeberg: 05 July 2016 - 06:59 AM

[FS Zenity]

Just like the ideal for a game's difficulty is "easy to learn, hard to master" the ideal for UI basically is "easy to do the most common things, possible to do many things". A radial menu would be useful to provide quick access to the most commonly used commands, of which some could even be bound to keys by default (everybody needs "need a medic" for instance). Other commands could simply be exposed through an advanced key bindings menu or a separate advanced in-game menu for radio commands.

Setting overrides for gamemodes is a good idea I think. Overwatch does character specific overrides which is very useful. We don't need character overrides, so we could offer gamemode overrides instead. That's definitely "icing on the cake" level of priority, but would be cool to have for sure.

[KroniK]

Zenity, on 05 July 2016 - 09:13 AM, said:

Setting overrides for gamemodes is a good idea I think. That's definitely "icing on the cake" level of priority, but would be cool to have for sure.

This would be great. I already have a system like this set up where I can set what game mode I am playing, and all of my radio binds change depending on what game mode I have set.

One thing that I would like to see implemented is a CVAR that would restart the audio system for the game. I have played plenty of games that end up with sound glitches or you end up hearing one of the map sounds wherever you go or your gun stops having sound when firing or whatever. There are plenty of random audio glitches that can happen after a while of running any game, and having a command you can run that will restart the audio engine is something that I have seen in a few games, and it really helps when you are in the heat of battle and don't want to restart the game to fix an audio glitch.

As far as other audio goes I think the main thing is that I would like to see a voice chat system. I know this would be a pretty huge project but voice chat is pretty much essential in any FPS these days. Obviously I'd like a mute feature on the scoreboard so I can mute players, as well as a volume slider in the menus to set the volume of the chat relative to the game. I think it would also be nice to have the ability to turn off all voice chat if you don't want it or want to have everyone muted by default.

This post has been edited by KroniK: 05 July 2016 - 05:50 PM

[FS Zenity]

Something like resetting the audio system is really out of our scope though. If it makes sense for games in general than all games should have it and it should be a feature of Unreal Engine. Perhaps it already has it, who knows. Though in general you'd rather have an audio system that doesn't bug out...

Unreal Engine does have integrated support for voice chat, but it's not really documented yet and difficult to get to work. Once this improves it should be an easy feature to add.