Immersion Mod (Sound)

[loosebruce 10]

NOW PART OF PR ARMA 2 MOD

Ladies and Gentleman it is with great pleasure to announce the start of the "Immersion Mod" for ArmA2, which will be worked by myself and a friend outwith this community in collabarating a large sound bank with the goal of giving each object or action within ArmA2, a minimum of 4 variable sounds or more.

You may be thinking, "not another sound mod," but sound/hearing is one of the most sensitive senses within the body and is normally the first to detect and identify a threat. Therefore I believe it is crucial to make a addon that both quantitatively and qualitatively meets the requirements of the human hearing and brings the player to a deeper level of immersion within the game.

The mod will prioritise in these areas:

-Emitters (Diverse natural sounds of animals, residential, industrial, military)

-Consequential Sounds (Sounds made by players e.g. weapon discharges)

-Ambient Sounds (Raging battles in the distant)

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-Elemental Sounds (Earth, Wind, Fire and Water etc.)

However the Immersion mod also bolster the following areas:

-Communicative Sounds (Radio and Vocal sounds with a large number of emotive responses)

-Game Music (Range of new and interesting musical scores)

++++++++++++++++++++

++++++Released++++++

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Immersion Music Mod (Alpha):

-This is a quick addon I made to see how well Arma 2 copes with different Musical pieces. This was a very hash bash job and is incomplete but I have released it to anyone who is interested.

I have added some nice music to it.

Installation:

Place pbo file in Addons Folder in Arma 2 Directory. (Remember to Backup your old Music.pbo file before overwriting with new one).

Mod Stages:

-Collection of sounds - Achieved (239,474,003) sounds in MP3,WAV, OGG

-Shortlisting and selection of appropriate sounds - In Progress

-Conversion of sounds to optimal format for Arma2 .WSS - Not Started

-Configing and Scripting of sound bank - Not Started

-Packing to PBO - Not Started

-Testing - Not Started

-Key Signing - Not Started

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The Mod will follow similar formats and ideas of other Sound Mods and try and improve on them and learn from their shortcomings.

Other aspects which will be of concern is:

Quality/Size of Sound Mod

Appropriateness of the sound

The risk of overflooding the user with too much audio.

===================================================

Some food for thought:

You spawn into the game, as you take your first footsteps you can almost feel the ground with your ears. As you move towards the HQ vehicle you hear rattling inside and comms chatter on the relay box sitting outside. Then suddenly you hear the sharp distinctive noise of the M4 bolt chambering a round in a rifle as your team mates lock and load at the gear armoury nearby. You hear your ride into the battle half a mile down the road with the rumble of its V8 diesel engine.

As you embark on your journey to the frontline you hear the creschendo of war as artillery shells bombard in the distance. Your heart begins to beat faster and breathing become heavier as the bullets whizz over atop....what will you hear next?

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-Note-

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This mod will not have a release date until we are atleast half way through.

I would like to stress that I will not be using other addons sounds within this mod unless necessary and providing I am given permission to use them.

The community will have many oppurtunities within this developmental journey to shape the mod and help me realise the needs of Arma 2 players. However I want to make this a solo job myself so I can learn at my own pace.

Also I would like to make you aware that I am happy to give sounds towards addons in development, just PM me although I will be unable to give you music due to copyright.

Well I will be posting back soon,

-loosebruce[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

Edited March 19, 2010 by loosebruce

[jasonnoguchi 11]

I am extremely particular about sounds ingame and so far, no sound mods have gotten it right. You seem to be heading down the right direction and your "sharp distinctive noise of the M4 bolt chambering a round" really gives me high hopes as I am an experienced firearms user and I can tell when it is chambering or not just by listening to the sound of the bolt. So far, most sound mods have used dry cocking sounds which really breaks it for me as there is obviously no round chambering in those sounds. So, eagerly awaiting. :) Always room for more sound mods in my drive! :)

[Wire 0]

Mate, so far ive got high hopes aswell about this.

Tho, one thing Id very much like to see is the ability to drop a sound loop for townships so that u can hear a bustling village with the animals, cheap radios playing, people chatting and going about their business, and even the laughter of kids. gives it more of a feel of the town being "alive". And when the first shot is fired, even have chaos and hearing panic and doors shutting.

Just food for thought, not sure how hard it will be to make or incorporate, but i think its alot more interesting than another patrol inwhich u are walking thru a piss-quiet village with AIs just standing ther looking dully at u.

[loosebruce 10]

Well thats something I am hoping to implement:

for example: in the forest you hear chirping of birds but after a weapon is fired you hear some shrieks and fluttering of wings and then silence for a period.

[bushlurker 46]

the ECS mod for Arma1 included a lot of stuff like this... transformers hummed, fountains splashed, LOTS of little audio touches you never really realised were there, until for some reason you couldnt use the addon... it was a permafixture for many people...

I like the whole sound :D of this new mod - look forward to hearing about it's development!

B

[jasonnoguchi 11]

Yup, ECS set a standard in environmental sound in ArmA1 which is still unbeatable here in ArmA2. Wonder which sound mod will ace that? :)

[-)rStrangelove 0]

Well thats something I am hoping to implement:

for example: in the forest you hear chirping of birds but after a weapon is fired you hear some shrieks and fluttering of wings and then silence for a period.

Good sounds don't make a good game. :)

So what you're talking about here, is a full blown SFX mod and missiondesigner package. A config alone won't do it, you'll need mission designers who will put your scripts into their missions as well etc etc. Good luck.

I like the idea though, if this works out it will boost ArmA2 experience to 300%.

[loosebruce 10]

Well the dynamic sounds i.e. the ones that will react to player actions will be supplied with scripts once the main core of the mod is completed. Thankyou for pointing that out though Dr Strangelove.

I would also like to point out my inspiration of this mod from the Dynamic AI Chatter addon. I will be including alot of similar sounds in my mod

e.g. Get shot in the leg "Holy s**t my f***ckin leg....MEDICCCCCCCCC, ahhhhhh!" , throwing a grenade "FRAGGG OUTTT" , AI spots hostiles infront "Enemies at 12 O'clock , get some fire down there!"

Edited December 8, 2009 by loosebruce

[kremator 1065]

Will be watching this one with GREAT interest. ECS was a staple mod for me in A1 days. Good luck on this venture.

[Peonza 10]

Damn Arma 2 game is getting better and better.. So many cool mods made and upcoming

[LugNut 10]

Looking forward to this!

[grub 10]

Keeping my eye on this for sure. Sound very promising.

[loosebruce 10]

Okay just an update, I have had a few PM's of people asking me about this mod and not fully understanding me.

So I will be making a prototype for demonstration which will be available for download and will give people a taster of what to expect in the coming months. The protype will be in the form of a mission with scripting done for sounds. This will not be what the end result and performance for the mission might be poor due to the sounds being scripted but as I said this is just a prototype.

Stay tuned on Sunday!

[kremator 1065]

Looking forward to it loosebruce !

Don't worry about performance. A taster will be great.

[loosebruce 10]

Ok just a quick status update,

I started my first selection and categorization of sounds during the weekend and boy was it hard.

Starting alphabetically I started with the main Branch called "Animals" and the sub-branch "Birds". After 4 hours of sifting through my soundbank I managed to collate 27 Bird sounds from single chirps to morning bird songs.

This was both sobering; in the sense that it took so long just to find 27 decent sounds for only a small category, and interesting as it gives me options to play around with some of them possibly even merge or combine some to add more variation.

The worst part for me now is that I will have to decide which will go and which will stay as we cant have them all in sadly (unless your happy with a 1Gb sound addon).

The other problem I found was with what was the best format to present the audio. After fiddling about for a whole day I decided that .OGG format in Mono setting will probably be the best for quality/size and performance.

I know Arma2 likes .WSS but in terms of hassle for conversion and for the end result it doesnt seem worth it.

I have still to work on a prototype to show the community but due to being ill (possible swine flu?) that has delayed it a bit. However it will come.... soonish :)

-loosebruce out!

[-)rStrangelove 0]

I'd focus to get something released asap tbh. For a prototype 3 sounds in each category would be enough i guess. Once you have released something and got all the feedback from the ppl you could go for it and add more sounds to various categories.

Are you planning to have city sounds too?

- large city at daytime / nighttime

- little village at daytime / nighttime

- distant combat snds in woods, on a plain, in a city would be great

[loosebruce 10]

Okay been having problems with OGG sounds with lag to my machine. So I will now be implementing .WSS as it seems to be the most optimized for the Arma engine.

The problem seems to be a sort of phasing effect with the OGG sounds which spoils it. Glad I noticed it though at this early stage.

Dr Strangelove to answer your question.

Yes there will be different sounds for different environments.

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

Please make multiple recordings of various twigs, pine-cones and branches snapping when stepped on. Also the sound of rocks sliding on mountainous terrain.

[loosebruce 10]

Status Update

First bit of news: Sifting through sound files right now

Also I have released some music that you are welcome to try out in Arma 2.

Download Here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/327228375/music.pbo.html

How To Install:

Place pbo file in Addons Folder in Arma 2 Directory. (Remember to Backup your old Music.pbo file before overwriting with new one).

Edited December 29, 2009 by loosebruce

[PTV-Jobo 820]

Oh oh.......overwriting an original game pbo? Something tells me that won't be very popular in comparison to releasing in the standard user-friendly addon/mod folder format.

Even though directions stating here to backup the original, accidents always happen to the best of us to start with. I'm sure the much more knowledgeable in the community here can also share why this may not be the best way to go when it comes to messing with pbo's in the main AddOns folder.

[Alex72 1]

Yes this sounds really cool, but as told above - overwriting stock files is not good.

Please mark the line saying "back up the original file" in very very bold. And big. And maybe red.

This is a really good idea and i hope someone can help you out so there is no need to mess with ARMA's original files.

[loosebruce 10]

Well I have been trying to create a new config file based on a Sound Mod template but I have had no luck.

Perhaps someone could contact me to let me know how to do it through a addon.

This is the reason I am doing this now so I wont have this problem with the bigger files.

[bunnyman 10]

Nice one (RS is playing the premium user trick on me right now...) will get back to you, looking forward to seeing how this pans out

[loosebruce 10]

Ok this is a request to the community, and its a plea of desperation

I have all my sounds that I want to use all ready and good to go, but I dont know where to proceed and don't know whats to be involved. I have looked at addon making tutorials but they have little relevance or help to my task.

So im asking for guidance and mentoring from people who are experienced with this sort of stuff to get it going, otherwise I will just be sitting here with a pile of sounds and no addon and I am sure most people dont want that as I know this will be awesome if it picks up.

So any scripters, configgers out there please get in touch with me so I can start making real progress.

[Mark XIII (DayZ) 18]

Hi,

You on skype or MSN ?

If so get intouch, I can help you with some of the config stuff, but scipting requires more brainpower :/