mtomato
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 17
Registered: 05-16-2016
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Hey all,

I'm fairly new to this game series and been playing the games obsessively past few weeks.

Now that I have finished The City Beneath, I would like start playing The Second Sky, but there's one thing that really bothers me.

By default the sound effects are just way too loud, so I lower them in the settings, but it affects some of Beethro's voice too (when you clear a room or bump into obstacles), which I don't think happened in the previous games, since I never noticed it until now.

When the loudness of other sound effects is at the level I'm ok with, Beethro's wall bumping or his victory laugh is barely audible, and the contrast with the normal dialogue feels really weird.

Is there something that can be done about this?

Xindaris
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1531
Registered: 06-13-2015
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Well, the most recent version of the DROD engine, which comes with The Second Sky*, has separate sliders for voices and sound effects. If you bought your games direct from here (Caravel Games), you can even get the earlier games that you own as holds playable inside of that newer engine.

*-Depending on where you buy it from you may need to install and then patch the latest version? I'm not sure. I think the separate sliders may have even been in there in the original 5.0 engine.

____________________________
109th Skywatcher

Here are some links to Things!

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 06-01-2016 02:06 AM]

mtomato
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 17
Registered: 05-16-2016
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I bought the games from GOG. Had I known the benefits of buying them directly from here, I might have chosen to do so instead.

The version number is 5.1.0.6512.
I'm assuming that's the newest.

The problem was that some voices are counted by sound effects when to me it makes much more sense to be affected by the voice slider.

I just tried this in JtTRH, where I muted voices and died on purpose: no death scream.
I then muted voices in TSS and I could hear the scream; it's counted as a sound effect.

Why this change?

GerAvos
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 51
Registered: 05-28-2016
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I actually noticed this too, but I personally don't mind. This game does almost everything right so I can forgive that Beethro's voice sound effects are so quiet compared to other sound effects.

Hopefully a game developer sees this and explains the change.

ThemsAllTook
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 207
Registered: 06-23-2014
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Incidentally, the audio balance of voices in DROD has always bothered me. I have to turn music and sound effects WAY down and have voices at max volume to get them to feel even close to balanced. I know there's not much to do about it short of boosting the amplitude of every voice clip in the official holds, but still...

The orb toggle sound also stands out as something very much louder than everything else. Sometimes I have to turn off sound effects if I'm in a room where it's going to be playing a lot of times.

Someone Else
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1300
Registered: 06-14-2005
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Yeah, the first thing I did after starting was go into the settings and mute the music.

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[Last edited by Someone Else at 06-02-2016 04:12 AM]

mtomato
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 17
Registered: 05-16-2016
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ThemsAllTook wrote: The orb toggle sound also stands out as something very much louder than everything else. Sometimes I have to turn off sound effects if I'm in a room where it's going to be playing a lot of times.

Yeah, this is pretty much the only sound effect that makes me turn the volume down.

If there's a way to replace this one with something quieter, I'd like to know.

Moo
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 224
Registered: 10-14-2006
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mtomato wrote: If there's a way to replace this one with something quieter, I'd like to know.

You're in luck.
There are several ways, and the easiest is to place ogg files, named "orbhit.ogg" and "orbhitQuiet.ogg", in the "Sounds" folder of the DROD data folder. This would normally (under Windows) be at "C:\ProgramData\Caravel\drod-5_0\Sounds".

orbhit is used when the player hits an orb, and orbhitQuiet when an orb is activated some other way (mimic hitting it, character activating, etc.).
If you have a DROD engine 2 install (JtRH/KDDv2), looking in the Data\Sounds should find you the default orbhit.ogg (and orbhitQuiet.ogg), if you want to make quieter versions. The original orbhitQuiet isn't that much quieter than the normal one, so simply replacing the "loud" one with the quiet one probably wouldn't make enough difference, and would also lose you the distinction between the two volumes. Another one you may want to replace is "explosion.ogg".

mtomato
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 17
Registered: 05-16-2016
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Thank you very much.
That was much simpler than what I thought it would be.

Also thank you for mentioning the explosion sound.
I had forgotten how much it startled me in the previous games.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2670
Registered: 07-11-2014
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I always found the roach splatting sound to be slightly too much on the loud side also. Especially becuase that one often plays rapid fire when you're holding down the battle key.

Moo
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 224
Registered: 10-14-2006
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Roach (and most monsters) splat sound is HeavyZap.ogg, HeavyZap2.ogg, and HeavyZap3.ogg (randomly chosen).