Notice: I'm a bit tired so excuse me for the long post and perhaps the grammar errors.
So for me the audio in a game is nearly as important as graphics.
For example in games as Call of Duty is turn off the volume and play my own music because the sound design is somewhat bad in the later titles of the series while in games as Battlefield i just love listening to it since they spent so much time finetuning the audio and music which makes it a great immersion experience.
Moving on to Planet Coaster, how are things going regarding audio? What is the music like? Who composes it?
I'm gonna take Frontiers RCT3 game as a example on what i liked and what i not liked as much.
Original Sountrack
Let me start with saying that is absolutely super duper LOVE the song called Summer Air which is sort of the theme song of RCT3. For me it captures the game so perfectly, the gentle bongo/drum beat in the background, the smooth guitar riff and the the synth just playing along in the background along with the pitching sound that goes higher/lower throughout the track which makes a sense that you are flying. It gives me such a good fibe and when looking at my park from a distance, hearing this song while the sun goes down.. I love it [heart][heart]
This also goes for a few other tracks like Galaxy Trooper and Girls Like Spice. Each song fits its category perfectly.
Peep Ambiance
Now when i zoom in RCT3 you usually hear the buzzling sound of lots of peeps talking through each other and this does not really disturb or distract me but i would like to hear different levels of crowd noise. So lets see you have a spot with 500 people almost on top of each other then i want that particular location to be all chaotic with loads of noise like people talking, laughing, screaming while when we move over to a less packed environment with 50-100 people then we would hear less shouting and things are just a bit more calm. Bit on a side note but perhaps it could be a negative impact on peeps if there is too much noise or when its too busy at a certain spot which could for various reasons like all the peeps are going towards the food/drink stalls or most of the popular rides are stacked near each other and so this is for the player to fix out so that peeps are more spread out.
Coming back to what i earlier said, i would like to hear more echoing effects as well but this could perhaps be a bit too advanced, but just imagine zooming in near the entrance of the park and you could hear the echoing scream from one of the tallest coasters in the park which is perhaps on the other side of the park but yet you can hear the screams in the distance!
Ride Sound
Of course this is also really important, the sound the rides make and i think this should get just a bit more attention. In RCT3 a lot of rides use the exact same audio library for chainlifts, breaks and so on. Since i want each and every coaster i make to be a unique one i would love to see this changes with multiple sounds, perhaps at random or perhaps the user can select from a range of different sounds (perhaps by mods?), same thing for block brakes. Each time a coaster goes through it, i heard a pretty low quality pressure break sound which got annoying after hearing it for the hundredth time.
For example for a different liftchain sound:
[video=youtube_share;ZmmteiM_K1Q]https://youtu.be/ZmmteiM_K1Q?t=78[/video]
1:20
Or in fact nearly completely silent! These days the chainlift noise is pretty much minimal. Now this would not be ideal for a game but perhaps as a option this could be very neat if you try to create a coaster that orientated that the rider of the coaster needs to pay attention to the local surroundings or that a song/video is playing while going uphill
[video=youtube_share;9rjjNEAxMMg]https://youtu.be/9rjjNEAxMMg[/video]
The Baron 1898 opened just a while ago in the Netherlands in the Efteling. This beautiful coaster is a good example for how a coaster sounds like today. In the start you hear the sound of the two spinning wheels on the outside of the tower which are just for the looks and are not functional to the coaster but it does give a nice sound, once its on top you hear this repeating clacking noise which seems to come from the end of the coaster where the cart is set loose from the chain then once it nearly comes down you hear the small tires that push (or if there is a emergency, stops) the train.
Once its hanging down you hear the fog machines blowing fog and besides that you hear wind. For the rest of the video you hear mostly just that, the wind and the cart rattling about till the end of the video where it enters the station completely silent because of the air breaks.
For more larger and story driven coasters, the key sound points are usually given by speakers. Think of robots saying things, alarms going off, electronic buzzing and so on. Disney uses that all the time and they even made Thunder Mountain loud on purpose because it added to the experience.
Verdict
In the end what i would like to see in Planet Coaster is simply a more diversity of sounds, able to choose sounds or that it goes on random, doesn't matter as long there is more then the same old chain lift sound and the same old brake sound. Along with that there should be more options to trigger sound while the coaster passes a certain point. Look at RCT3 and the video people make. They have to use their video editing programs to add extra sounds to their rides because RCT3 does not offer it along with coaster sounds like wind and chain lift noise.
Perhaps none of this will happen in this game because its already bee thought through but i thought i would just give my two cents on this subjects.
Thanks for reading!
So for me the audio in a game is nearly as important as graphics.
For example in games as Call of Duty is turn off the volume and play my own music because the sound design is somewhat bad in the later titles of the series while in games as Battlefield i just love listening to it since they spent so much time finetuning the audio and music which makes it a great immersion experience.
Moving on to Planet Coaster, how are things going regarding audio? What is the music like? Who composes it?
I'm gonna take Frontiers RCT3 game as a example on what i liked and what i not liked as much.
Original Sountrack
Let me start with saying that is absolutely super duper LOVE the song called Summer Air which is sort of the theme song of RCT3. For me it captures the game so perfectly, the gentle bongo/drum beat in the background, the smooth guitar riff and the the synth just playing along in the background along with the pitching sound that goes higher/lower throughout the track which makes a sense that you are flying. It gives me such a good fibe and when looking at my park from a distance, hearing this song while the sun goes down.. I love it [heart][heart]
This also goes for a few other tracks like Galaxy Trooper and Girls Like Spice. Each song fits its category perfectly.
Peep Ambiance
Now when i zoom in RCT3 you usually hear the buzzling sound of lots of peeps talking through each other and this does not really disturb or distract me but i would like to hear different levels of crowd noise. So lets see you have a spot with 500 people almost on top of each other then i want that particular location to be all chaotic with loads of noise like people talking, laughing, screaming while when we move over to a less packed environment with 50-100 people then we would hear less shouting and things are just a bit more calm. Bit on a side note but perhaps it could be a negative impact on peeps if there is too much noise or when its too busy at a certain spot which could for various reasons like all the peeps are going towards the food/drink stalls or most of the popular rides are stacked near each other and so this is for the player to fix out so that peeps are more spread out.
Coming back to what i earlier said, i would like to hear more echoing effects as well but this could perhaps be a bit too advanced, but just imagine zooming in near the entrance of the park and you could hear the echoing scream from one of the tallest coasters in the park which is perhaps on the other side of the park but yet you can hear the screams in the distance!
Ride Sound
Of course this is also really important, the sound the rides make and i think this should get just a bit more attention. In RCT3 a lot of rides use the exact same audio library for chainlifts, breaks and so on. Since i want each and every coaster i make to be a unique one i would love to see this changes with multiple sounds, perhaps at random or perhaps the user can select from a range of different sounds (perhaps by mods?), same thing for block brakes. Each time a coaster goes through it, i heard a pretty low quality pressure break sound which got annoying after hearing it for the hundredth time.
For example for a different liftchain sound:
[video=youtube_share;ZmmteiM_K1Q]https://youtu.be/ZmmteiM_K1Q?t=78[/video]
1:20
Or in fact nearly completely silent! These days the chainlift noise is pretty much minimal. Now this would not be ideal for a game but perhaps as a option this could be very neat if you try to create a coaster that orientated that the rider of the coaster needs to pay attention to the local surroundings or that a song/video is playing while going uphill
[video=youtube_share;9rjjNEAxMMg]https://youtu.be/9rjjNEAxMMg[/video]
The Baron 1898 opened just a while ago in the Netherlands in the Efteling. This beautiful coaster is a good example for how a coaster sounds like today. In the start you hear the sound of the two spinning wheels on the outside of the tower which are just for the looks and are not functional to the coaster but it does give a nice sound, once its on top you hear this repeating clacking noise which seems to come from the end of the coaster where the cart is set loose from the chain then once it nearly comes down you hear the small tires that push (or if there is a emergency, stops) the train.
Once its hanging down you hear the fog machines blowing fog and besides that you hear wind. For the rest of the video you hear mostly just that, the wind and the cart rattling about till the end of the video where it enters the station completely silent because of the air breaks.
For more larger and story driven coasters, the key sound points are usually given by speakers. Think of robots saying things, alarms going off, electronic buzzing and so on. Disney uses that all the time and they even made Thunder Mountain loud on purpose because it added to the experience.
Verdict
In the end what i would like to see in Planet Coaster is simply a more diversity of sounds, able to choose sounds or that it goes on random, doesn't matter as long there is more then the same old chain lift sound and the same old brake sound. Along with that there should be more options to trigger sound while the coaster passes a certain point. Look at RCT3 and the video people make. They have to use their video editing programs to add extra sounds to their rides because RCT3 does not offer it along with coaster sounds like wind and chain lift noise.
Perhaps none of this will happen in this game because its already bee thought through but i thought i would just give my two cents on this subjects.
Thanks for reading!