[CF-Devel] Re: [Freeciv-Dev] FreeCiv sounds

[Mark Wedel]

 Seems like this pops up periodically.

 While any new sounds are cool, I'm not sure if gunfire is going to do much good
for us.

 In fact, there already is gunfire sounds with crossfire which are used for the
magic bullet spells.

 The general problem with combat spells is the frequency of which they might be
used.  most reasonably characters get 10-30 attacks per real time second.  The
sounds get repetitive pretty quickly.

 Sound for melee combat also get tricky.  You basically have 9 potential sounds
for attacks.  The attacker could either be using a flesh (hands) weapon, wooden,
or metal.  Likewise, the defender may have any of those three things.

 Having metal clanking would be a bit odd of the character is attacking an
unarmored foe with a club for example.

 That said, where I would like to conentrate sounds for:

 1) spell sounds - they are not cast quite as often, plus the information can
actually be useful (if you are hearing lightning bolts, you have some idea what
may be upcoming.  This doesn't work for melee sounds very well, because
creatures will not attack anything unless its next to them, but they will often
fire spells.  Also, many sounds are duplicated for many spells - would be nicer
for more unique sounds (102 sounds apparantly use the magic sound effect).

 2) Effect sounds.  We're still missing a good sound for the opening/closing of
gates and grates.  The sound for handles right now is a bit iffy (the boink
sound).  The player is killed sound often is not played, because it is too long
and fails a test in the code (same is true for players joining).  The gong is
probably as good as any in terms of player dead sounds.

3) Background sounds - while less important, some water sounds could be useful
for both rivers and fountains (which may help players know there is a fountain
in a dungeon for example).

 At some point, how sounds are played needs to be redone.  But I think the above
might at least be a decent shopping list for what sounds to look out for.  But
one thing is that the sound really needs to be distinct.  Some sounds are such
that when mixed with other sounds, it almost more sounds like static or non
distinctive to what it really is for.