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Azteca's Daggerfall Sound Replacement (ADSR)

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 9:15 pm
by Azteca
Original post from Pango's Soundclips thread spoilered below.
Spoiler!
I've had Pango's cleaned soundclips sitting on my drive for a while and I'd skimmed them before. Today I listened to more and started browsing Freesound, downloading and bookmarking sounds. This will go beyond Pango's mission of presenting the best version of vanilla. I will create a thread when I make some progress and it's worth sharing.
My current thoughts are:
find higher quality replacements for the most common "real" sounds - doors, footsteps, nature sounds. This will be somewhat boring but 1) these are some of the most frequently heard sounds in-game and 2) there are many quality sounds available. This should provide a lot of immediate benefit without the need for too much creativity.
find or create enemy sounds. My initial browsing of Freesound shows promise. Many of Daggerfall's enemy barks and attacks are animal sounds or humans acting spooky, just pitch-shifted downward, occasionally with reverb. Some enemies like the Spriggan have a combination of a pitch-shifted dog or human sound with a tree branch/foliage sound, or the orc sergeant growling with footsteps. This is too specific to just find out in the wild, so I'll have to mix it together myself.
The sheer number and complexity of sounds means I'm going to start a spreadsheet as I review sounds. For the enemies, I will write what combination of sounds I hear. I will track what sounds I settle on and their Freesound links and license info (especially those that ask for attribution). There are also oddities like Halt and Halt2 being the same sound, bat and rat having the same sounds, etc.
Even with the Arena sounds removed, you're looking at ~330 sounds. I honestly doubt I will get anywhere near replacing them all, but I do seriously want to do enough to warrant a release, get some feedback from you guys and hopefully generate some enthusiasm or find out if I am on the right track. I'm open to collaboration but I know there is an awful lot of subjectivity involved in this particular task.
Anyhow, I hope I haven't hijacked your thread, but this is sort of the catch-all SFX thread for the time being!
EDIT: DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE.

Here is a testing release of the 37 sounds I did. They have been level-matched with the originals as much as possible and conformed to 16 bit, 44.1kHz.
To install, unzip and copy to StreamingAssets (where you can find your Mods folder). So it should be /StreamingAssets/Sound.
I had to start over and am very inexperienced with playing Daggerfall so I haven't been in situations where I can test all the sounds. But I did run around the opening dungeon and outside to make sure the sounds were loading.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5ztv61pxzqga ... 7l9Va?dl=0

Current progress: 48/341, or 14%.

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 9:14 am
by King of Worms
Nice initiative,
I agree this one should aim at the more hifi remake/replacement

Pangos sound clips restored the original art as well as possible.
And I will try to work on top of that plus replace the duplicates and bad sounds with the sounds from 90s while keeping the sounds which defined the Daggerfall original (door open sound, skeleton, etc lol)

This way we will have 3 different mods:
  • restored vanilla (Cleaned Sound Clips)
  • remastered/updated vanilla based on the above (DREAM - Sound)
  • remake (your mod, lets call it ASERP :D )
Good luck, keep us updated pls!
And yea, listening to the soundcloud you are on track

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 11:55 am
by Azteca
King of Worms wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 9:14 am
  • remake (your mod, lets call it ASERP :D )
Lol, given that it’s medieval maybe Sound Effects Replacement Force - SERF ;) there’s only one person in my force tho :D I’ll figure out a suitable name when it’s ready for an initial release.
Thank you for checking it out.

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 4:35 pm
by Azteca
Got another 15 done today.
https://soundcloud.com/elmaslo/daggerfa ... n2/s-VYL4b

In the demo:
ActivateGrind
AmbientDripLong
AmbientDripShort
AmbientPeople9
AmbientPeople10
Ignite
OpenBook
PageTurn
SpellImpactFire
AmbientPeople6
AmbientPeople8


Did more layering and effects work this time around and it was fun, and I feel the sounds are strong :) I have gathered the raw materials for the remaining AmbientPeople and the Parry sounds but it was all running together today.

Please, do let me know what you think. :oops: I can be a bit insecure. I'm having fun making the sounds but have no idea what Daggerfall players think!

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 8:03 pm
by pango
I like what you did so far, good work!

The ultimate test is always to test them in game though, to check consistency and stuff.
Sometimes you may have surprises too, for example the coin sound is used a lot in shops and banks, but it's also used as ambient sound in dungeons...

Anyway, I'll keep an hear on this project, this is really exciting :)

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 8:16 pm
by Azteca
pango wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 8:03 pm I like what you did so far, good work!

The ultimate test is always to test them in game though, to check consistency and stuff.
Sometimes you may have surprises too, for example the coin sound is used a lot in shops and banks, but it's also used as ambient sound in dungeons...

Anyway, I'll keep an hear on this project, this is really exciting :)
Thank you for the kind words, Pango! Your cleaned soundclips really help.

You are absolutely right. Unfortunately, my desktop (where I do my gaming and can use Windows) is unavailable to me for a few months (the office is now a nursery). However, I just realized, duh, there is a Mac version! So I can try it out on my laptop.
This will help in testing the sounds as I am flying blind so far. I have no idea how the audio engine works in regards to looping, interrupting sounds etc. The way some files are named, I really have no idea when they come up.
For example, I was working on the crowd sounds when I realized one had a distinct outdoor, Middle-Eastern market vibe rather than the indoor pub chatter of the other sounds.

Plus, now I can finally play DFU! I haven't even played it despite following the project for a couple months.

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 12:45 pm
by King of Worms
This new demo is good. I like that!
And exactly, you need to test ingame and finetune the sounds according to what you hear there :)
Sometimes things look/sound good outside the game, but dont actually fit there when you run it and contrary

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Mon May 27, 2019 5:01 pm
by King of Worms
Just wondering, any progress? :D
Im just curious, no pressure!

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Tue May 28, 2019 1:45 am
by Azteca
King of Worms wrote: Mon May 27, 2019 5:01 pm Just wondering, any progress? :D
Im just curious, no pressure!
Thanks for the interest. Since I realized I could play on Mac, I decided I should play some DFU with Pango's cleaned clips and get used to how they sound in game: the animations they accompany, how often they are triggered, etc. Unfortunately I've been too busy to do anything but mess with the opening dungeon and run around outside a bit.
I will need to test my sounds in-game, which requires conversion and volume matching to the original sounds. Not a huge deal, but a bit tedious, and best done on my office speakers in one session. I hope to have some time late this week or early next week. We will see.
The more I worked with the original sounds, the more I started to appreciate them, and ask myself "how badly does this sound need to be replaced?" But it is too early in the project to be doubting! I will prepare sounds for testing and see how they feel, and I may share them for you or other interested parties to give early feedback.

Re: Azteca's Sound Effects Replacement Project

Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:09 pm
by Azteca
Since it's been another month+, an update: we are closing on a house and will be moving at the end of next month. Once we are settled in there, I will eventually have some space to play games and work on sound. There just isn't much point in me working on the sounds without getting more familiar with Daggerfall and when and how sounds are triggered, how the game mixes them, and being able to load them up on my own machine to try out. That will take time I just don't have right now.
So, it's on pause but DFU isn't going anywhere! Whenever I do get back to it, I will try to release a small pack to get it in people's hands and gather feedback.