Sound effect when a large or mid-sized roid breaks

[undone swift]

Just a simple low "whump" or "thud" sound, nothing loud or annoying.

[vestal ridge]

Ever heard about this thing called vacuum?

[queen trellis]

Unfortunately, this is part of the hard sci fi aesthetic.

I get that it may be more dramatic to have everything produce sound, but we're pretty committed to the audio physics.

[undone swift]

I figured it was possible, after all, we hear our mining lasers, nanodrones, etc

no worries, was just a thought

[vestal ridge]

Yeah, the stuff that involves player ship.

[queen trellis]

All sound you hear in the game is either on your ship or in contact with your ship.

[vestal ridge]

Big roid shattering can be both loud and dramatic. Just point a ZAP at one.

[undone swift]

fair enough, hadn't quite realized that yet

[queen trellis]

No worries. A lot of details like this are pretty subtly done, and recognizing the depth over time, while being able to pick it up and game pretty quickly, is by intent.

[vestal ridge]

What other space games keeping this realistic sound aesthetics are out there, BTW?
I only know of , COADE and, from more mainstream ones, Dead Space.

[analog gull]

While I'm against the idea just like this, what about some piece of onboard equipment which simulates the predicted sounds outside as if it was in atmo?
So instead of hearing the rock actually break open, you have some speakers play a "rock break open.sfx" effect onboard your ship when you break one open, based on, say, what the cameras see

[vestal ridge]

Nooo.... That way lies derp.

SW and its ilk have deeply ingrained in me an uncontrollable desire to punch people when this is proposed as explanation for sound in space.

Never forgive, never forget, never again.

[neat forum]

some less realistic games make an "arcade" vacuum that just muffles the sound effects
but this game tries to lean towards realism as far as possible

[scenic badger]

when you are close to a ringoid and shatter it with high powered mining gear your hull would be hit with dust and gravel which would certainly make for nice ambient sound

[stark plank]

...Feels weird having never even considered anything "missing" or sounding "wrong". Great job, team 👍

[neat forum]

I only ever noticed the silent reactor explosions

[pulsar hedge]

Sound synthesizer in Hardspace Shipbreaker

[vestal ridge]

Doesn't it also have psace friction? I'm pretty sure I saw fragments slowing down in vids.

[stark plank]

Yep

It's very soft

[pulsar hedge]

There's a "microatmosphere" in the bay, but yeah

If you don't buy the synth you can't hear shit though besides your own thrusters

[stark plank]

Or by touching the ship with the hands 😄

That was a cool thing

[pulsar hedge]

Though the company radio is polite enough to add some synth to the music when shit is going wrong.

Yeah, you used to have to put your hand on fuel lines to determine if it was pumping or not

Then they added lights to them because the whole "use your hands" thing wasn't obvious.

[neat forum]

elite dangerous also has the same explanation iirc
the ship's computer generates sounds to boost the pilot's situational awareness

[quartz narwhal]

Space Engineers has a realistic sound mode (enable in settings) where you only hear outside sounds in atmosphere or when in direct contact. Despite the many other realism shortcomings in the game (just burn ice) the sound is pretty solid imho.

[vestal ridge]

Fuck E:D.

[neat forum]

never played it

[vestal ridge]

Would have played it if it didn't:

1. Fuck with flight physics
2. Required to be always online to play

[neat forum]

i heard it's horrendously grindy

[vestal ridge]

Too, but I'd have had to play it to confirm.

The other two dealbreakers I could know up front.

[willow ginkgo]

ED is very grindy, and it definitely suffers from the "mile wide inch deep" syndrome, but I really enjoy the slow burn of content and just cruising around solar systems and planet surfaces for hours. It really depends on if you like the gameplay it has to offer.
The flight model is very unrealistic, so I understand if that's a deal breaker.

Another problem some people have is trolls in high level pvp gear blowing up newbies and non combat players outside popular stations and event zones if you play in open mode, as opposed to solo, which also requires an internet connection

[queen trellis]

If this were to be done, I would say it should not be sounds that try to be realistic. Like the collection sound when ore enters the bay. Notification dings and chirps, sure, but not actual breakage sounds.

Too good, and people will think we're doing what we want to explicitly not have people think we're doing.

Not good enough, and people will just think some of our SFX suck while we're doing what we want to explicitly not have people think we're doing.

Even that has its issues, though, because nothing in the game 'just knows' stuff. There are simulated sensors for things. So Koder would want to implement a sensor or a logic for the on-board computer that could tell what was ice breaking -- and your display is basically a camera, it doesn't know what things are. Your tags are all human-applied.

[neat forum]

there's flight of nova,which wants to be something like elite except realistic
it has orbital mechanics n stuff
seems promising but the mouse controls are utterly abysmal and way too bad for me to play
you can't change sensitivity and the craft likes to pitch up on it's own,so you end up sliding your mouse across the whole room when trying to hover for 5 seconds

[plain compass]

Flight of nova is great, it's best to play with a controller or hotas though, kbm is a bad idea

[neat forum]

yeah I can tell

[stray vortex]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we hear the impact of a mass driver round hitting roids? Or is the “thunk” at the end part of the firing cycle part of the machinery?

[pulsar hedge]

That's the driver itself

[quartz narwhal]

Regardless if you hit a roid or fire into open space, the sound is exactly the same

[harsh cove]

inside the ring the dust would allow enough of a medium to actually hear something

not much.

When randomly a massive ringroid comes in at mach fuck and shotguns the local area it would make a sound with even its own debris.

as for the elite dangerous discussion: Its got a bit of grind.

[queen trellis]

You don't really have much of a medium in the rings. TECHNICALLY the rings have an atmosphere, but it's just not enoguh to punch your hull so hard you'd hear anything over the sound of your own blood flowing.

[brittle canopy]

Hmmm

How about a delayed pitter-patter of ice fragments raining on your hull

Surely a fragmenting asteroid would send some small debris all over the place

Could sound a bit like rain just more metallic

[quartz narwhal]

Yeah, that would be cool. I've always imagined it would sound like hail in a caravan or metal shed.

Delay and intensity would need to scale both with distance and power of the asteroid explosion.

Like with a microwave you'll get nearly 0 fragments. With an overpowered mass driver you'll get a hailstorm.

[brittle canopy]

Yeah that should be not too hard to implement I think, both are values that are already measured for different things

[high hawk]

Wouldn't the combination of debris shield and layers of other materials significantly reduce the sound coming in as well? I'm assuming you're not mining space rocks with a 3mm steel hull

[brittle canopy]

True but sound reverberates

Smashing into a roid gets some noise through, surely tinier smashes would make a little noise

[quartz narwhal]

I felt like i had suggested that before and i actually did: #community-ideas-archive message xD

Would be cool to have more sound effects that come from our ship

[harsh cove]

Explosions are incredible, you cannot discount the fact we are splitting ringroids with flashboiling the water with microwaves adn laser, or shooting 10-2kg projectiles at 8-27 times the speed of sound (speeds at default spec for tuning). or just straight up unleashing vents of plasma and fissile material. The forces played with in this game are IMMENSE and the ring has tons of crap floating around. atleast some feedback for breaking the biggest ringroids with anything but the hull of your ship should be possible.

[pulsar hedge]

Ngl, crashing into stuff has some of the more interesting sounds in the game.

I can also see a case for you to add sounds for when the ship is holding a rock via manipulator.

Like, for the most part when you're using the grinder to grind stuff you don't hear anything.

[queen trellis]

Still, you're making molecules bump into molecules which hit other molecules, and these molecules are neighbors to space. If there were enough density to effectively carry sound, it would be enough pressure to disperse into space. There's an argument that, if you're really close(shock waves dissipate at super short ranges in space), you might get a momentary hum or a howl.

But there are two issues with that. One, it's really hard to say we're realistically representing that without a good reference for what it should sound like. Two, most players would merely be confused by it, since they'll either be expecting the noise of the crack, or expecting nothing. They aren't, mostly, aware of the atmosphere of the rings or thinking that "hey, that growl must be because hypervelocity impacts translate into lots of heat, thus water vaporization, thus a hard wind is hitting my hull right now."

And being honest with ourselves, any sfx that try to represent hard sci-fi are wasted or counterproductive if the player won't understand what it represents.

Come to think of it, I'd be interested to know if there's any research on how far shockwaves do propogate in vacuum vs 1 bar of atmo.

And, shame on me for not googling first. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/921528