Vampiro
Volunteer Moderator
Did you see the livestream the audio team did a while ago ? (few month's ago i think)
It was an amazing look behind the curtain
Coaster Audio : Feedback
- Thread starter Matthew Florianz
- Start date
Did you see the livestream the audio team did a while ago ? (few month's ago i think)
It was an amazing look behind the curtain
Did you see the livestream the audio team did a while ago ? (few month's ago i think)
It was an amazing look behind the curtain
Yes, one of the better livestreams for sure.
[video=youtube;Ph-7MTjKmFk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph-7MTjKmFk[/video]
Thanks! [up][up]
You're in luck!
We regularly visit the community streams (after hours, in our own time) and there always dev's on there, you can even ask questions during the streams too : ) I know that's not the exact same, but for us it's a "least" time consuming way to interact and talk about our work.
With regards to audio related talks/info; I collected most of it here:
http://www.matthewflorianz.com/audio/matthewflorianz_projects_planetcoaster.html
Scroll down to the community stream one : )
Edit: responded before reading the entire thread, thanks to Vampiro and Luuknoord for linking : )
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Thanks for this feedback, it certainly helps to hear your experiences and I will most certainly have a listen and see if I can do a mix and/or distance check pass.
Specifically to your finding:
Trains and Coasters use a different system to be reproduced from trains. We "reserve" slots for different types of audio objects which we have to do this to keep a tight control on the number of sounds overall. If you consider that a coaster can have up to 20 simultaneous sounds at the same time and a train has about 12 while crowds and individuals scales up indefinitely (but lets say each group of 10 has two simultaneous voices) . Flat-rides add about 10 to 20 per ride, music, ambiences etc. etc... all add...
so....
You can imagine that in a busy park there would be hundreds and hundreds of sounds at the same time. We can use distance to filter some of them out, but finding all those sound to filter, could also take a lot of time. In any case, most pc's cannot handle so much audio and would stutter or fall silent trying to decoding our soundbanks into audible audio > It's like trying to play 200 mp3 files at the same time! ; )
So, in order to keep numbers low enough (give or take : 120 simultaneous voices) we have bespoke solutions for different audio sources. On coasters; We only ever play 3 at the same time and we have two "reserve slots" to cross-fade should a fourth coaster become more "important" than the other three. The rules deciding what is more important means are a complex part. For instance, if a really fast coaster zooms beyond a few really slow ones > with just a distance rule, we would loose the fast one as it's further away, even though sonically it is much louder. So we need aggregate rules and find where emergent (unwanted) things happen. Lots of testing!
The reason you can hear the train and not your coaster is because trains/transport rides have their own set of slots.
Hope this explains it a little better : )
I'll listen to see if it needs a mix pass, no promises though : )
Train Audio
Thank you for your detailed explanation! Very much appreciated and an interesting read. The issue i'm experiencing with the train audio is not so much that there is a sound playing at all (although I must say the audible range is quite generous), but just that it is very loud and drowns out other sounds. Maybe mixing it will fix the majority of this, maybe it's a problem with the used audio sample. I'm not sure.
If you'd like I can send you a park file where the issue is noticable?
Thank you for your detailed explanation! Very much appreciated and an interesting read. The issue i'm experiencing with the train audio is not so much that there is a sound playing at all (although I must say the audible range is quite generous), but just that it is very loud and drowns out other sounds. Maybe mixing it will fix the majority of this, maybe it's a problem with the used audio sample. I'm not sure.
If you'd like I can send you a park file where the issue is noticable?
Having the ability to subscribe to a park on Steam Workshop is by far the easiest way for me to hear what you are hearing. That would indeed be very helpful!
Sure thing, here it is:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1173924646
I set it to hidden on the workshop to not clutter the workshop with irrelevant stuff, but if you cannot view it this way let me now, then I will set to public.
I think the audio is most notably out of place while hovering the camera over the pirate themed area (around the Arena, like this: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1173934251 ). At a certain height, most audio has been dumbed down but the train are still quite loud (for example, when the train exits the mountain on the other side of the log flume ride).
Unfortunately, at the moment of saving the Rival coaster has broken down, which makes it harder to compare. I had waited quite some time for it to get fixed, but that doesn't seem to be happening even though a mechanic is on site (does it always take that long or is this another kind of bug? haha).
After fiddling around more, the broken rival does appear to be bugged. Editing the track, removing the front part of the station and replacing it again appeared to fix it, so that way you can compare the audio with the rival as well. (maybe worth it to forward this bug to some other dev?)
Wow, this kind of feedback and back & forth is amazing. It would be awesome to be able to have this kind of post about gameplay/management to talk about. Thanks a lot for your time. Your work is amazing... the audio is really incredible in game.
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I set it to public, can you open it now?
By far one of tge most amazing threads ive read in awhile. As many others have said thanks so much for all the detailed rresponses Matthee.. I may not fully co. Prehand everything said but I get enough to go by.. And again.. This is what we need more of.. This is.. "devs working with the community" perfected in my opinion.. Also.. I knew there was something up with my rage coaster when i rode it the other day.. Lol. God to k ow its a bug and getting fixed.. Also good to know that the other coasters have been upgraded in sound. Keep up the fantastic work. This.. And your comments about the work and situatiin is what we need more of
Yes, that worked, thank you ... beautiful park : )
So there are a lot of trains in the level and talking to Ian (our audio coder) we identified an unwanted behaviour and indeed, I can tighten the mix up a lot!
I dropped both Connie Express and Iron Horse from -2db to -9db at 0 meter distance - which is a lot! They are still more than loud enough, but that drop certainly helps a lot in them no longer dominating so much. When I mixed the game, it was on a 5.1 set and there is a lot of space for them on surrounds to not interfere with any audio coming from the fronts, but I admit that on stereo headphones it was dominating.
I also reduced the distance where they are audible (now 250meters max). This is a little weird in your map, when moving to the empty corner as you can no longer hear it at furthest distance, but that's such an edge case I think the advantage (performance, mix) outweighs it.
With regards to the mentioned unwanted behaviour. We sort on priority for the slot system (as mentioned in an earlier post) and one optimisation we did is to not-assign an idle ride to a slot. However, Steamtrains make noise when they are idle and that is cut off when the train stops if there are more than 2 other trains in audible range. The mix helps with the cutting out, but we'll probably also want to start to sort on distance exclusively with trains, unless qa finds that hurts performance : )
Thanks for the help in making this better, much appreciated!
Ps. One of the reasons we (=audio) can interact / fix issues easy for the community is because there are few dependencies on audio volume levels. Imagine if guests in our game world could actually "hear". Any change in audio volume levels would immediately change game-play and I'd have to be very careful in making volume changes and then spend ages testing every possible permutation for unwanted side effects. That's why it is so much easier for me to come here and talk about fixing things : )
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Thank you! I was indeed listening to this on stereo headphones, where the trains were quite dominating like you experienced. That was especially noticable when trains were on one side of the camera (eg. left or right).
I am glad that I could help you reproduce the problem and that you have a fix for it!
Is the fix going to be in the anniversary update or is there going to be an earlier/later patch for that? I will have a listen again once it's in a release build and let you know.
Thanks again for the transparancy in your explanations and responses, very much appreciated!
If it passes our audio qa testing it will go from our audio branch into "trunk". That's technobabble for, yes it should unless there are problems with it. But I don't want to make promises; not because I have something to hide, but more that I'd hate to dissapoint if for valid reasons we'd have to revert this : )
Thank you Matthew for all your feedback and given information. Thank you also for pointing out that this kind of feedback is "easier" for you than for devs from other departments and for explainig all that. It really helps me to understand that there are way more problems and stuff to think about in the background which I might have expected but not in such an extent. Also thank you for your own free time you spend to give us this information. This is nothing we can take for granted, so thank you again. [big grin]
Joël
Volunteer Moderator
I am with Klötenkieker on this. Thank you, Matthew, for taking the time to explain things to us, and for making Planet Coaster even more enjoyable : )
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1000% agreed! And also very interesting to learn some things about the sound design of the game as well!