And now, for something completely different...

For collaboration between the different artists creating music and sound for vegastrike.
Turbo
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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by Turbo »

CLoneWolf wrote:Even though I knew the script already, I found it funny and I liked a little detail especially: the chicken and jump sounds as they're first mentioned;
Thanks.
CLoneWolf wrote:...and by "stormy" i'm *not* suggesting to add galactic weather forecast, that'd be too much even for my insanity.
Too late. :D

Unfortunately, if we had news about an ion storm (I am not sure if such things exist in space) in some system, then players might think it was (1) something they could act upon or (2) something that might act upon them. So what if we reported it as a past thing and focused on its effects? That might lead players to try to bring cargo there. So while the idea of weather in space is, at least, possible, I'm not sure how we would do it without other problems.
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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by CLoneWolf »

Turbo wrote:Too late. :D

Unfortunately, if we had news about an ion storm (I am not sure if such things exist in space) in some system, then players might think it was (1) something they could act upon or (2) something that might act upon them. So what if we reported it as a past thing and focused on its effects? That might lead players to try to bring cargo there. So while the idea of weather in space is, at least, possible, I'm not sure how we would do it without other problems.
Not too late at all, since you noticed it wouldn't be easily doable without consequences :) That goes with what I was saying about news without game impact that can be added without trouble; these would instead have consequences or at least build player's expectancy of 'em; the same would happen with traffic reports.

On a side note, I don't think the lawyers' firm name you mention in the commercials thread needs to be more subtle as long as GNN clearly states they've been faking correct information for 72 years ;)
But if you ever need a slightly subtler name for a scientist, how about Raymond Ecks?
Turbo
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News: Confed Senate Convenes

Post by Turbo »

Team,

Here is the first of the 'canon' news recordings from the news.py file. I'd like to get feedback. I am particularly interested in whether you like what I did with the music.

In the first one, I faded the music when the anchor starts talking, and bring it back at the end, like I had done with the "beachhead" story.
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/VSvoice/ ... smarts.ogg

For the second one, I kept the news music playing, muted, while the anchor read the story.
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/VSvoice/ ... nvenes.ogg

Which is better?

Edit: I'm flying around testing what we have recorded so far (3 news and 2 commercials) and it's a bit repetitive. We will want to (1) weight the music at least double the non-music items, and (2) get more content before committing it to SVN.

I am also concerned about file sizes. We may have to reduce the audio quality, perhaps to 22 KHz.
Turbo

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CLoneWolf
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Re: News: Confed Senate Convenes

Post by CLoneWolf »

Turbo wrote:Team,

Here is the first of the 'canon' news recordings from the news.py file. I'd like to get feedback. I am particularly interested in whether you like what I did with the music.

In the first one, I faded the music when the anchor starts talking, and bring it back at the end, like I had done with the "beachhead" story.
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/VSvoice/ ... smarts.ogg

For the second one, I kept the news music playing, muted, while the anchor read the story.
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/VSvoice/ ... nvenes.ogg

Which is better?
Personally, I'd go with the second; IMHO, ongoing music avoids emptiness feeling, and clarity of the speaker is not a concern as you can keep the background music as low as it's needed.
Turbo wrote:Edit: I'm flying around testing what we have recorded so far (3 news and 2 commercials) and it's a bit repetitive. We will want to (1) weight the music at least double the non-music items, and (2) get more content before committing it to SVN.
AFAIK, the playlists have no support for different chances of appearance, but you might try a little trick (unless the playlist loading code eventually strips out duplicates): make every normal music appear at least 3 times in the playlist and see if the news occurrence goes down significantly; quite rough, but it'd be a cheap way to implement "frequency weight" without touching the source code.
Turbo wrote:I am also concerned about file sizes. We may have to reduce the audio quality, perhaps to 22 KHz.
My voice acting was already downsampled to 22KHz with that exact concern in mind; Shaper and ISO are at 44 but I can resample them if needed.
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Re: News: Confed Senate Convenes

Post by Turbo »

CLoneWolf wrote:Personally, I'd go with the second; IMHO, ongoing music avoids emptiness feeling, and clarity of the speaker is not a concern as you can keep the background music as low as it's needed.

AFAIK, the playlists have no support for different chances of appearance, but you might try a little trick (unless the playlist loading code eventually strips out duplicates):

My voice acting was already downsampled to 22KHz with that exact concern in mind; Shaper and ISO are at 44 but I can resample them if needed.
1. Thanks.
2. That's what the dev instructions say we should do.
3. Let's make it official. I'll update the wiki now and downsample what's in SVN later.
Turbo

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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by Turbo »

I recorded 4 new sponsorship snippets derived from the splash screens, bringing the total number of these short recordings to 6:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... p_Snippets
Each of the 4 has a "theme song" included.

If we can get our full-length commercials done (4 scripts written so far), we can take sound bites from each of them to construct corresponding sponsorship snippets. What we need is more voices. Commercials are at:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... ommercials
Turbo

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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by CLoneWolf »

Very appropriate theme song choices, well done! :)
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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by Boaal »

I like the news reels, but sometimes the speech can seem really disjointed and broken up.

I might try and create some music for vegastrike, recently purchased Logic Express so I'm getting to grips with an initial project on that one.
The Twitching Pattern - http://www.last.fm/music/The+Twitching+Pattern
Have a listen.
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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by Turbo »

Boaal wrote:I like the news reels, but sometimes the speech can seem really disjointed and broken up.

I might try and create some music for vegastrike, recently purchased Logic Express so I'm getting to grips with an initial project on that one.
Which one(s) specifically has a problem?

More music is always welcome!
Turbo

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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by Turbo »

CLoneWolf wrote:...ok this draft is nowhere near it, but I got carried away with orchestra hits... :roll:
http://olografix.org/groucho/vs/JingleDraft.ogg
I don't know if it fits the sports theme
Sorry to bring this up a year later. Do you still have the master files you used to create this? I was looking at the sports stories we have, and I need the jingle to be 60 or even 90 seconds long. I could cut and splice but I'd rather have the original musician make the changes. It doesn't sound that much like AeraThemeBattle (the title song) and I still like it for the sports music.
Turbo

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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by CLoneWolf »

No problem, I kept the original project files, so I can edit it at will and make it last as long as needed, looping the tail.
Don't worry for the excessive volume of the original, it was just a draft, next version will be properly equalized :roll:
I'll make it 90 seconds or even longer if you have no trouble in fading it out earlier for shorter news.

-- Edit:
Here it is, in FLAC format, 2 minutes, ~13MB. Audacity should handle it, but in case I can provide it as WAV too, though it'll be ~20MB. Enjoy! :mrgreen:
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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by Turbo »

Thanks. Downloaded. VLC wants to open it, but Audacity imported it fine. The loop is a bit under 1 second long, so I think I can "cut" it to any length I need while preserving the ending. The volume is fine.

You'd think that 2 days home from work, because of ice, would give me more time to work on this stuff. But no, the boss is sending me work over email. :x Maybe next weekend.
Turbo

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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by CLoneWolf »

You're welcome :)
As a backup plan, in case you're not satisfied with the cut'n'paste, I can cut any number of measures at project level and post new renders of any desired length.
About the ending, well, it's not a real one, it's just the instruments stopping... :roll: If you think a real ending would be more proper, I might try thinking of one (though I don't guarantee success :) )

About your work, you might try faking an automated reply (Ah, the wonders that could once be done with .delivery and the power of bash ... :mrgreen: )
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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by Turbo »

We now have 4 "canon" news recordings, plus the "beachhead" I did last year. I fixed up the wiki's news section with better instructions, made other updates, and posted the "news" music so others can use it:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... News_Items

I also posted the news files into SVN, but not the playlists yet since we need a lot of material to avoid being repetitive. But if you want to test them in game, the playlists are not hard to update. For example, /data/.vegastrike/peace.m3u would look like this:

Code: Select all

#EXTM3U
#terran-specific
../music/terranpeace.ogg
../music/terranpeace2.ogg
../music/Machina.ogg
#common peace/away files
../music/steel_p.ogg
#fix weights so music plays more than news, by re-listing your favorites
../music/steel_p.ogg
../music/Machina.ogg
../music/Machina.ogg
../music/Machina.ogg
../music/terranpeace.ogg
../music/terranpeace2.ogg
../music/terranpeace2.ogg
../music/terranpeace2.ogg
#news items
../communications/news/gnn_beachhead2.ogg
../communications/news/gnn_teenage-boy-outsmarts.ogg
../communications/news/gnn_confed-senate-convenes.ogg
../communications/news/gnn_freighter-missing.ogg 
../communications/news/gnn_slavers-guild-exposed.ogg
#advertising (these sound files are not posted to SVN yet, so ifyou want them get them from the wiki or remove this section from the playlist)
../communications/commercials/sponsor_gnn-1.ogg
../communications/commercials/sponsor_fuzzys-chicken.ogg
../communications/radio-shows/call-in_fuzzys-chicken.ogg
../communications/commercials/sponsor_shmrm-mc.ogg
../communications/commercials/sponsor_confed-navy.ogg
../communications/commercials/sponsor_travel.ogg
../communications/commercials/sponsor_tripezian.ogg
Only 23 more "canon" news items to record! We definitely need someone to be our news anchor since "Jenny DeWilde" is no longer available.

Edit: Hey, when did I become an ISO party member? I was a special operative just a few hours ago. I'm not sure I like this. Before, I watched the forums. Now, the forums watch me.
Turbo

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Re: And now, for something completely different...

Post by pheonixstorm »

Just another forum rank ;) Not sure whats next or how many posts until it changes from one to the next either.
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
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