Sound devices (Yolol Midi vs. Pre-made Sounds)

[Dingodang]

Hi everyone!

This one seemed like a big one on the discord server, so I thought that I should bring it up here. I had been told that things such as alarms would not be in the game, which ended up destroying my dream of making a dramatic space bank robbery. A system like this would be bound to be abused by someone eventually, but there could just be a separate sound option to mute them, or maybe it could run off of pre-made sounds. I'm not sure if it is just me, but not having sound systems at all in a game like this sounds bizarre.

Any thoughts?

 

[[QS] Combustible]

I think there should be a few pre-made alarms, pings, and warnings(?). Having a few sounds would be nice in the game to make a more responsive ship.

 

[PopeUrban]

The only way to "abuse" custom audio would be some kind of EULA violation. Adding custom sounds (not accounting for the extra development resources it takes to implement) is no more abusable than text chat.

The worst you can do is annoy people or broadcast hate speech and get banned.

That said custom anything is generally a pretty hefty undertaking as you have to build a whole server back end, submitting systems, file conversions, figure out if you're going to stream or cache the custom content, etc. so its probably a much more realistic expectation to get some built in alarms or warning klaxons.

How about a middle ground? "warning" alarm devices that also broadcast a text alert to players in range of the sound at the top of the screen? This would take far less resources to implement, have much more customization for warning states than audio only alerts, and still fulfill the goal of having dramatic and informative alerts.

 

[Dingodang]

The only way to "abuse" custom audio would be some kind of EULA violation. Adding custom sounds (not accounting for the extra development resources it takes to implement) is no more abusable than text chat.

The worst you can do is annoy people or broadcast hate speech and get banned.

That said custom anything is generally a pretty hefty undertaking as you have to build a whole server back end, submitting systems, file conversions, figure out if you're going to stream or cache the custom content, etc. so its probably a much more realistic expectation to get some built in alarms or warning klaxons.

How about a middle ground? "warning" alarm devices that also broadcast a text alert to players in range of the sound at the top of the screen? This would take far less resources to implement, have much more customization for warning states than audio only alerts, and still fulfill the goal of having dramatic and informative alerts.

Well I did not entirely mean custom noises from outside sources, that would be WAY too far. What I mean by this is something along the lines of different yolol sounds that play during an event set by the player. When I say custom, I mainly mean making specific notes (kind of like a minecraft noteblock) for yolol, which could allow people to make things along the lines of music, company jingles, and custom notification noises.

On the other hand, pre-made noises would be almost impossible to abuse in most cases with volume caps and cooldowns, just slap a few alarm noises and a notification noise in there and call it a day. Space engineers did pre-made noises and it turned out pretty well.

And lastly, I am going to have to disagree. Text alerts on the players screen is more of a cheap way of re-implementing the alarms already in the game. As it is now, I am pretty sure that alarms in game are currently flashing lights and screens displaying the warning message. It is understandable that alarms and notification noises are not needed because word will spread through chat and you can just use visual elements to see the progress on machinery, but people who might be editing a yolol chip, or in their own ship would be absolutely clueless if they hid the chat to work in peace. Although the text alert would cover that, sound devices just sound very useful and would open up a lot of new opportunities for the more creative players.

My main predicament here is that they have not discussed sound devices yet and I would like to have conversation on how in depth sound devices should be allowed to go.

 

[Dingodang]

I updated the title to be a bit more specific, the last one was a little too far off

 

[PopeUrban]

ideally the "alert" tex wouldn't be in the chat window. It would be on a large overlay at the top of the screen. The whole point there being that any time you can hear a sound, you can also receive "alert" messages regardless of what you're doing.

Anyway, my thinking on MIDI based/sequential tone devices:
Tones (like minecraft note blocks) that run on a server dependant clock are irritating and half assed implementations for their purpose.

Noteblocks are super fun and cool, for instance, in SP Minecraft because you've got a constant clock speed running the sim from your machine. If I design a noteblock device on my PC, I know that its going to play back at the same rate every time I use the device.

The same noteblocks end up being a stuttering incomprehensible mess when you go online because the timing of those pulses is inconsistent due to the way internet protocols work. A delay of a fraction of a second due to a few packets lost in transit having to be resent, multiplied by multiple lines of execution results in a stuttering and unpleasant experience that's like hearing someone with no rhythm try to play the notes. There's no way to guarantee the precise timing of server/client communications to the degree required by music.

These miniscule timing errors are largely unnoticeable for most things, and a lot of prediction and interpolation and other tricks are used in online games to smooth them out but the issue with music is that its nature prevents it from being programmatically predicted in the same was as movement, gravity, etc.

For this reason I don't think YOLOL, or indeed any server based sound timing for sequences like this is a good idea. Every game with 'live" midi style instrucments has the same problem for the exact same reason. Music is heavily dependant on precise timing, and the internet's Ip protocol is engineered to sacrifice timing for stability of connection.

If in stead we had a device that could package a sequence of sounds, and then transmit the ENTIRE phrase, complete with timing, you'd get a much better result. In the case of "transmit the entire sequence" you can verify sending and receipt of the entire thing before the client plays it, ensuring that it always plays back in exactly the timing it was intended. In stead of multiple notes being .002 seconds off piling up to the whole sounding janky, you just have a .002 second delay before a smooth playback is triggered, and its not even noticeable.

If you use standard MIDI for something like this, your file size is really quite small since you're not actually transmitting sound, just a MIDI note sequence, and you could easily construct these kinds of alerts with such a device and have them always play back in a cohesive and pleasant manner. Hell you could even use a version of this device that's essentially a sound board if you wanted, with various recorded words/phrases. The down side being, of course, that you'd have to have an interface separate from existing interfaces and YOLOL to author the content.

 

[Dingodang]

ideally the "alert" tex wouldn't be in the chat window. It would be on a large overlay at the top of the screen. The whole point there being that any time you can hear a sound, you can also receive "alert" messages regardless of what you're doing.

Anyway, my thinking on MIDI based/sequential tone devices:
Tones (like minecraft note blocks) that run on a server dependant clock are irritating and half assed implementations for their purpose.

Noteblocks are super fun and cool, for instance, in SP Minecraft because you've got a constant clock speed running the sim from your machine. If I design a noteblock device on my PC, I know that its going to play back at the same rate every time I use the device.

The same noteblocks end up being a stuttering incomprehensible mess when you go online because the timing of those pulses is inconsistent due to the way internet protocols work. A delay of a fraction of a second due to a few packets lost in transit having to be resent, multiplied by multiple lines of execution results in a stuttering and unpleasant experience that's like hearing someone with no rhythm try to play the notes. There's no way to guarantee the precise timing of server/client communications to the degree required by music.

These miniscule timing errors are largely unnoticeable for most things, and a lot of prediction and interpolation and other tricks are used in online games to smooth them out but the issue with music is that its nature prevents it from being programmatically predicted in the same was as movement, gravity, etc.

For this reason I don't think YOLOL, or indeed any server based sound timing for sequences like this is a good idea. Every game with 'live" midi style instrucments has the same problem for the exact same reason. Music is heavily dependant on precise timing, and the internet's Ip protocol is engineered to sacrifice timing for stability of connection.

If in stead we had a device that could package a sequence of sounds, and then transmit the ENTIRE phrase, complete with timing, you'd get a much better result. In the case of "transmit the entire sequence" you can verify sending and receipt of the entire thing before the client plays it, ensuring that it always plays back in exactly the timing it was intended. In stead of multiple notes being .002 seconds off piling up to the whole sounding janky, you just have a .002 second delay before a smooth playback is triggered, and its not even noticeable.

If you use standard MIDI for something like this, your file size is really quite small since you're not actually transmitting sound, just a MIDI note sequence, and you could easily construct these kinds of alerts with such a device and have them always play back in a cohesive and pleasant manner. Hell you could even use a version of this device that's essentially a sound board if you wanted, with various recorded words/phrases. The down side being, of course, that you'd have to have an interface separate from existing interfaces and YOLOL to author the content.

Unfortunately technology limitations ruin great possibilities. Thanks for the in depth explanation, its a lot better than the usual "wont work" answer. As much as I want to make music in starbase, I'm afraid you are most likely right about this one.

Thanks for responding to this! I swear I was never going to get any replies. I'm still going to keep this up so others can talk about it more if they choose to do so.

 

[PopeUrban]

Unfortunately technology limitations ruin great possibilities. Thanks for the in depth explanation, its a lot better than the usual "wont work" answer. As much as I want to make music in starbase, I'm afraid you are most likely right about this one.

Thanks for responding to this! I swear I was never going to get any replies. I'm still going to keep this up so others can talk about it more if they choose to do so.

I mean making music is still possible, its just a matter of executing it properly. Warframe's DJ frame Octavia (My personal go-to for defense style missions) has custom MIDI style tracks that play back flawlessly. The game is actually so confident in its execution of the timing that her abilities reward the party for timing actions to the music, and it works! This is because it has both an interface to compose the music locally, and then uses those compositions sent all at once to play back. This results in not just one, but multiple octavias being all in sync and having cool jam sessions where you kill thousands of people with the power of phat beats.

Contrast that with their "live" instrument, the Shawzin, whiuch is played on the fly nad has a little guitar hero minigame to it. For the person playing, getting a perfect on a song sounds great, but for anyont observing the timing inevitably feels a little off.

The key to getting custom music to work well online is in the act of recording it basically. if you can record a sequence, you can transmit that "sheet music" and any other player's lient can play it back flawlessly. if you transmit notes as they happen, however, clients can only play them back as accurately as their connection to you is fast and stable, which in terms of the internet varies greatly user to user.

 

[Vis]

Yes, sound devices are a must have in a game like this. But I would have used Factorio's Programmable speakers as an example instead of Minecraft's note blocks. The speakers in Factorio have a few alarm/warning sound effects built into them aside from the musical notes.