Hello again! It’s been a few weeks since the last dev blog, as we took a break while you all were playing the demo (which we really hope you had fun with, we plan to do more in the future!) but we’re back with more.
We’re kicking things back off with something you may have already noticed a bit of in the demo: sound design. A lot of work has been done to make SimplePlanes 2 sound nicer than our previous games.
Due to this site not having a built-in video player, at the end of this post there will be a link to a YouTube video showing the subjects discussed in here.
User Interface
To start, Andrew has given the user interface (aka UI) a total auditory makeover, with every interaction now having a satisfying sound to it. You’ll notice little mouse clicks and other diegetic noises as you navigate the UI, which helps a lot in making it feel nice to use. It’s hard to talk about this with words, so I’ll let the video do the rest of the talking.
Part Sounds
Next up is the parts. Every sound emitted by parts in this game has received some much-needed love. In some cases this means simple processing improvements for existing sounds which you might or might not notice, and in other cases we’ve completely replaced sounds with new ones. All sounds now also fade with distance, such as the little clicks made by buttons in your cockpit.
One thing you’re likely to notice is the improvements to the Cannon part. Its firing sound is replaced by something that much more closely resembles what you’d expect a gunshot to sound like, but not only that; its sound also changes according to the properties of the part, so a relatively small autocannon is going to sound less powerful than a full-blown tank cannon. Perfect for letting other players in multiplayer know you mean business based on sound alone.
If you happened to check out the cockpit views of the stock crafts during the demo (if you didn’t, imagine I’m looking disapprovingly at you, because the cockpits are awesome), something else you might have noticed is that the first person view muffles audio now. By default, this is just a static effect that muffles all of the craft sound, but in your craft’s chair settings you can change the intensity of it. For the more advanced players, you can go a step further and use FunkyTrees to dynamically change the muffle intensity based on your craft inputs, allowing for sound to be muffled only when a canopy or door is closed.
Environment Sounds
As part of our effort to improve the overall immersion in the game, we’ve been working on environment sounds. As you might expect, these are sounds that play in the world that aren’t necessarily coming from the player and they help to make everything feel more alive.
To start, some parts of the map will have reverb, making all the sounds you hear loudly reverberate like you might expect in, say, the massive cave in Middleton.
Next, water is noisy now. When you’re next to a body of water you’ll notice a gentle sloshing from the waves, and when you go under there’s more sounds to, er, immerse you. I won’t apologize for the pun.
Video Showcase: https://youtu.be/sVGijTu2qB8
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Will big battleship cannon have massive boom now?
Will engine sounds be updated?
@Whaet In fact cannot,because if submarine cannot be safty hiding under the water,that will be meanless.But if stealth under water can be "Work", the first thing is we must have something like sonar or anti-stealth aircraft radar (With this words,I have those techknowledgy,so you can be sure that I may give you a industrial revelution on the history in this game :) )...
But that is to diffcult and worse to most of the civilian aircraft players.So why not just let more guys join the game not the war? For a game who called SimplePlanes of course,it must be simple absolutely, right?
May i ask, will there be an easy way to switch said sounds to modded ones? Sound design update reminded me of sound physics 4 minecraft, which is really cool, but something I would love to see for SP2 is at least some way to install mods which will override (/ prioritise) added sounds on the client side. I don't know much about programming other than beginner's C++ (arrays, matrixs, delay & pwm, int vs float, bool, for vs while,) but I moreso wish for things such as menu sounds. yes, this is a very stupid want, but I think it would be really cool :)
Also, i thought "Would it be cheating for sounds to be client side on the lines of being able to detect someone else's sound? Would it be too complicated to render sound physics from someone else with a client's choice of sounds?" i think it makes sense that when sending a packet to client from server informing on someone else's sound creation, location of said sound, & whatever distance it is to be considered "far away". If instead of triggering a 'play whatever sound it's called.wav', could it trigger something like 'play (Directory where sound list is stored)' or such?
(Edit:) I also don't know whether sound physics are rendered live i.e. filtering reverb on client or simply sending out a request to fetch a set of prefiltered sounds. i.e. smallJet0to50air.wav , smallJet51to150air.wav, smallJet0to50echo.wav
A question There will be submarine parts in SP2.
@M109simp We’re all a bit insane.
@Graingy whoops
But still, I would also die a ton and my friend (who has never played SimplePlanes) would call me insane
Could you add sound emitters like horns for cars, stall horns, sonar sounds, or even clicking sounds for other things?
LOL I just realized the thumbnail is the Nevermind album cover
@M109simp I mean I kept getting destroyed by missiles I couldn't see coming.
@Graingy same, everyone said I was crazy
@M109simp Was getting bullied because of that.
So, has there been any improvement on the issue where vehicles do not have any interaction effects with water, both underwater and on the surface?
If anyone else noticed, did you guys not get the missile warning half of the time in multiplayer? I had this problem and I want to know if it’s not just me
What about the dynamic lighting of the objects that emit it?
Jet sounds, prop sounds, and engine sounds when? 🤨
Jk if there the old ones it’s fine
@vSoldierT Quite the opposite, I've been making a ton of stuff in SP1 to prepare for SP2m though I have been posting less frankly
@PlaneFlightX The blog seems to have been less active since the demo.
Please add more tank parts🙏🏻
@vSoldierT How so?
@Randomplayer Maybe a modernized version of Tiny, probably resembles an LHD boat like USS Wasp or USS America (LHA-6)
Rip USS Tiny
@vSoldierT bro that’s sadly true 😔
This demo seems to have completely killed off SP1 players.
@LM0418 yeah man you got it