FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

2015-11-08
Since I've been replacing more than footstep sounds alone, I'm calling this a soundpack. Most of my previous sounds have been replaced with new recordings, I payed some more attention to noise, artifacts and volume.

There's still work to be done: snow and sand footsteps still need new recordings, and I'm not sure about the dirt and stone footsteps yet either.

2015-10-18
I had some fun today recording footstep sounds and while it turned out far more exhausting than I imagined,
I ended up with 4 footstep sounds for each surface type.

I have no idea how to get them properly into the game. I guess I could just replace the default files,
but I noticed not every surface type actually has 4 sounds. Editing the source might be required to get that working.

GitHub (based on master)
https://github.com/IngarKCT/minetest_game/tree/ingar/soundpack

Old downloads
http://ingar.satgnu.net/files/minetest/ingar-sounds-footsteps-2015-10-21-minetest.zip
http://ingar.satgnu.net/files/minetest/ingar-sounds-footsteps-2015-10-18-minetest.zip
http://ingar.satgnu.net/files/gtkradiant/ingar-sounds-footsteps-2015-10-18.zip

I did some quick testing:
- the dirt effects are too loud
- the glass effect is awful
- the snow effect is too loud and distorted
- one of the grass effects sounds out of place

- the gravel effect might be a bit loud, but is generally ok
- the hard surface effect (stone, ...) sounds ok to me
- the sand effects volume might be a bit low, but sounds ok to me
- the wood effects sound rather hollow, not sure if I want a more flat sound or not

Your gravel sound is certainly an improvement. The current default one has a subtle, awful sound in background coupled with the gravel's clatter. Nobody seems have noticed this...

I like your grass_4 piece. But with the glass ones, try to only capture a single surface collision per step.

Hmm, nice.
Maybe a little too quiet, and stone sounds like a someone tapping a piece of wood :)

Some of them are way better than the default sounds, especially the gravel! The sand could be a bit louder, though.

After some more reading and snooping I have the git version running now. The game sourcecode defines a gain for each sound, solving volume issues should not be too hard. Having 4 variants for each footstep doesn't seem to be an issue either, the engine loads the variants as it finds them. I'm stuffing everything in git branches now, then I can just push everything to github.

kaadmy wrote:Hmm, nice.
Maybe a little too quiet, and stone sounds like a someone tapping a piece of wood :)

That's my sports shoes on a concrete garden path :-)

Updated version:
http://ingar.satgnu.net/files/minetest/ingar-sounds-footsteps-2015-10-21-minetest.zip

- new stone sound
- new wood sound
- used previous stone sound as glass sound
- tweaked dirt, grass and snow

It is starting to sound playable, grass and dirt need new recordings though.

Ooh, these are really good. I hope they get merged. Ingar, do you live in an area that gets snow? I'm not sure if it would be easy to replicate but snow steps really should have a muffled sound of snow compressing underneath your feet. This is the best example I could find.

I made a branch on GitHub, it contains the sounds and the gain adjustments.I also ran all OGG files through vorbisgain, this seems to improve the overall sound quality a lot.

AnxiousInfusion wrote:Ooh, these are really good. I hope they get merged. Ingar, do you live in an area that gets snow? I'm not sure if it would be easy to replicate but snow steps really should have a muffled sound of snow compressing underneath your feet. This is the best example I could find.

Chances for snow are 50-50, but not for another two months. I once saw a DVD extra where the sound guy
used a box of (clean) cat litter to simulate the sound, but my box was too small, resulting in a 'drain pipe' effect when the pellets hit the side of the container.

Updated grass footstep sounds.

New GitHub branch.

I've noticed some mods use the dirt footstep sound as grass fotostep sound, best to test this in a vanilla world.