[modpack] Ambiance Sounds [ambianceplus][wip]

[burli]

This mod adds ambient sounds to the game. You can hear the ocean waves, the rivers are bubbeling and birds fly from tree to tree.

In progress:

• Jungle
• Ocean
• Rivers (currently only Valleys MG)
• Forests
• day/night cycle

Planned:

• Grassland
• Deserts
• Snow/Ice
• Caves
• Lava
• Torches
• Furnace
• Player sounds (swimming, fall damage)
• mymonth support
• background music

Supported mapgens/mods:

• All Mapgens are supported.
• Valleys Helper Mod

Not supported, but planned

• Etherreal
• moretrees
• plantlife

More ideas are welcome

This mod is a modpack so you can select which ambiance you want for your game (to reduce download size on servers). Multiplayer is not supported until now

Feel free to add, remove or replace sounds. Just follow the rules. A great free multi platform tool to edit sounds is http://www.ocenaudio.com/

All samples taken from http://www.freesfx.co.uk or http://www.freesound.org/ or recorded myself
All samples are convertet to 22kHz mono and exported as OGG Vorbis, 128kbps variable bit rate (VBR) and cut to a maximum lenght of 30 seconds

Rules for own sounds:

• Sound must be mono!
• Sound must be in OGG format
• Maximum length 30 seconds
• Use the given file names, but with a new number (e.g. ambplus_forest.1.ogg ambplus_forest.2.ogg ambplus_forest.3.ogg)

Code License: DWYWPL
License of samples: http://www.freesfx.co.uk/info/eula/

The code is pre alpha and only for testing.

Github: https://github.com/MarkuBu/ambianceplus
ZIP: https://github.com/MarkuBu/ambianceplus ... master.zip

Known issues:
If the player is in caves above sea level he can hear sounds from the surface
If the player stands still for a while it might be silent for a moment


Videos
Forest Mod https://youtu.be/1sekjVZp_ik
Caves Mod https://youtu.be/F3gFGSrm_1g
Water and Jungle https://youtu.be/V36y08PHYGk

[TumeniNodes]

Yeehaa! Gonna test this out
I feel using the "medium waves on a lake" track may sound nicer than the ocean? It's a cleaner sound. Just a suggestion
http://www.freesfx.co.uk/rx2/mp3s/1/1027_1246632071.mp3

[burli]

I feel using the "medium waves on a lake" track may sound nicer than the ocean? It's a cleaner sound. Just a suggestion

I'll try it out.

Added sounds for default trees and pine trees. Sounds change at night. Have to balance the volume for some sounds and I will replace some sounds, but you can get an idea

[TumeniNodes]

Nice work so far.
I would like to have the sounds decrease a bit better though. Maybe by "x" number of decibles for every 2 or 3 nodes until it fades / blends into the next trigger for the nearest sound?
I realise it is most likely not as easy as it sounds just a suggestion. and I have no idea about limitations /options with the engine sound/fx wise.
I do like it a lot though

[burli]

That's a limitation of the engine

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14807

It is not possible to set a real max hearing distance or to fade out the volume. I try to make the sounds shorter (about 30 seconds). Did that with the forest samples. So they disappeare faster.

I still have the issue that sounds are played if the player is in cave above sea level. I will try to use the path finder. But I don't know how smart he is. The path finder would be a nice solution because you can have such effects like hearing sounds from the surface if the cave has a tunnel that hits the surface. Or I count the number of nodes in the line of sight and reduce the gain

[TenPlus1]

Nicely done, I like the jungle sounds video... May I use some of the jungle sounds for my Ambience Lite mod as well ?

[burli]

Nicely done, I like the jungle sounds video... May I use some of the jungle sounds for my Ambience Lite mod as well ?

Didn't know that you are also work on an ambience mod. Of course you can use them. But what if we work together?

[TenPlus1]

Yeah, I've had an ambiance mod for a while now, been using it on Xanadu :) Here's the code:

https://github.com/tenplus1/ambience

[burli]

Yeah, I've had an ambiance mod for a while now, been using it on Xanadu :) Here's the code:

Ah, ok, you use find_nodes_in_area. I want to avoid that as much as I can and I want more "natural" sound by placing sounds "to the nature" instead of just playing it to the player. And I think ABM's are more efficient then globalstep

My problem is, that I can't get any informations about the biomes because nothing is stored. And get_heat and get_humidity are removed, as far as I see.

[TenPlus1]

As far as I'm aware 0.4.14 has the minetest.get_biome_id() function that can be used to check which biome a player is inside ?!?!

As for find_nodes_in_area... on my own system (which is a slow net-top pc) it runs at 0.0004 lag which is pretty damn good for what it does :) but I'm going to figure a way to make it more positional soon enough as well.

[burli]

As far as I'm aware 0.4.14 has the minetest.get_biome_id() function that can be used to check which biome a player is inside ?!?!

This function just get the ID from a biome name, similar to

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

local c_air = minetest.get_content_id("air")

[burli]

Tested my mod with V7 mapgen and Etherreal. There are some issues like ocean sounds playing in large rivers or lakes, because they are at sea level and use normal water source

[TumeniNodes]

Tested my mod with V7 mapgen and Etherreal. There are some issues like ocean sounds playing in large rivers or lakes, because they are at sea level and use normal water source

This is why I was mentioning to use a more subtle water sound. To hear a large ocean, and see water with slight animation is a bit odd to the mind. Even the medium lake waves I showed you, is a bit rough.
IMO Minetest does not create bodies of water actually large enough to consider an "ocean". I honestly think a very simple, subtle, small waves lapping sound would fit perfectly all around.
It may blend in with the river sound nicer too?

[burli]

This is why I was mentioning to use a more subtle water sound. To hear a large ocean, and see water with slight animation is a bit odd to the mind. Even the medium lake waves I showed you, is a bit rough

You are right. I can change this laten. Maybe I can find some other sounds

But first I have to demystify the ABM. It seems that the function of the ABM makes some odd results

[TumeniNodes]

But first I have to demystify the ABM. It seems that the function of the ABM makes some odd results

hehe... good luck with that.

[burli]

hehe... good luck with that.

I'm on the way

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14802&p=219974#p219963

[burli]

Modified the ocean mod. Now I first catch a number of positions and pick one random. This spreads the sounds more evenly around the player to get rid of the "south/west issue". I will use this issue for the other mods too where it makes sense

For the forest I use now the path finder. If the path finder can find you you can hear the sound, even in a cave. If you can hear the birds, there must be some way out of the cave. But I will use the "ocean method" for the forest, pine trees and jungle

[burli]

I feel using the "medium waves on a lake" track may sound nicer than the ocean? It's a cleaner sound. Just a suggestion

Found lots of good samples at http://www.orangefreesounds.com/, also some calm wave sounds and lots of birds and other stuff.

This mod becomes large, but because I don't use specific file names it is simple to add or remove sounds as much as you want. Maybe I will move some sounds to a separate folder to keep the default set small and you can add sounds if you want

[TumeniNodes]

Found lots of good samples at http://www.orangefreesounds.com/, also some calm wave sounds and lots of birds and other stuff.

This mod becomes large, but because I don't use specific file names it is simple to add or remove sounds as much as you want. Maybe I will move some sounds to a separate folder to keep the default set small and you can add sounds if you want

Nice site, never came across it before.

That sounds like a good idea.

[burli]

I made some updates and add a lot of new sounds. But I will make first something different before I continue.

I'm totally unhappy with the lack of any kind of map informations like heightmap or biomemap. I will make a mod that stores these infos while map generation to disk

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14890

[burli]

So, I want to continue with this mod, but I can't/don't want. To make this work as I want I need informations about the biome and the heightmap. I try to store them myself, but because of the lack of lots of functions everything is a dirty hack :-(

Any suggestion what I can do next?

[xeranas]

Ambience sounds does not need to be perfect. During development raising issues and which parts of lua api need improvements is better than blindly applying inefficient workarounds. There no deadline either you can get back when you feel that new lua api improvements will let you moving forward.

At this point background sounds does not need to be precise it should try not annoy player (unless specific sound is designed for it). Maybe few general background tracks which will be played regardless of player position/biome and dozen short up to 10s environment specific sounds with random occurrence. These shorts sounds also should try not overdo (I did not like birds sounds on original ambience). For example if player is high enough and there around at least few stone block once in a while it could appear stone falls sound something like this. Long neutral tracks for all biomes and short sounds depending on environment around player. Later on some neutral tracks could be replaced with biome specific once this info will be available on lua api.

[oleastre]

A better way to get this working is to start working on the engine and get the biome info from there :)

Don't lose time working around the problem, fix it at the root ;)

[burli]

Well, it's better to say "it's available, but I don't like it" than you have to say "I want that, but it's not available"

I know that it doesn't has to be perfect, but it should be nice. I like it to walk on the beach or in a forest with this ambience. It feels more "natural". If I step out of my house I always hear birds.

The most annoying thing with other ambience mods is, that they only play one sound and just cut that sound to play another

I will continue with player sounds like swimming and I want to replace some of the default footstep sounds like the glass sound on ice. To change the sounds depending on the height is also a nice idea

[TumeniNodes]

I usually just hear the Mr. Rogers theme song echoing, eerily in the distance and the sound of random drops of water in my head while on Minetest. Normally only when I am running low on my meds :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtc7A67kZlQ

[burli]

I'm currently reworking my ambience mod to make it more stable and add new features and sounds

[Diamond knight]

Finally a better ambience mod, I have been using a modified copy of minetest-ambience for ages. It was kind of annoying hearing birds in a stone wasteland ( you should add ambience for that (wind) ) and it would be cool if you could make "extra downloads" (so the mtg download does not get too big) of support for many mods (scifi_nodes, marssurvive, moonrealm, cityscape, streets mod, etc) it would also be cool for a sound player block that has music disks for every minetest game sound and sounds from this mod and music from this mod, make too many run on sentences.


A little birdy told me I was going to make an epic fork of the 30 biomes mod so be prepared to add support (it is going to use pedology mod, going to replace default stone like I'm mineralology mod for minecraft and make the biomes orderly placed by tempature (you spawn at the "equator" and the edges of the maps are the "poles") and there will be overheating and freezing and realistic mineral deposits and new plants and maybe new trees, there will be new ores and new soils and grasses, there will be playereffects support and new "wet" and "on fire" status effects and more...)

[burli]

It was kind of annoying hearing birds in a stone wasteland ( you should add ambience for that (wind) )

It's hard to make an ambiance mod in Minetest. I use ABMs, which works well for trees, but is useless in grasslands because there are no unique nodes.

[Diamond knight]

maybe use biome overrides?

[burli]

maybe use biome overrides?

The ambiance mod should work for any default mapgen, as far as possible. So no modification to the defaults