Someday soon we are going to be able to buy different components for our ships, which means we can change out the engine, the power plant, et cetera. Will the sounds of our ship change when we do this, as they are different components?
TL;DRYes, ship and weapon sounds are meant to reflect swapped components, but how to do it is still up in the air because every combination must sound good together, possibly via the spectral-aware mix system.
Yes. It's always been on the radar to do that because you want it reflected, right? And especially when we're looking at revising some of the ship audio anyway. And I think if you want to hear the difference it makes to your ship, the ship is where you live, especially at the moment, apart from Port Olisar, obviously, Jared. Your ship is kind of almost an extension of you. And I think if you customize it, you want to hear that happen. It's a bit like if your car depreciates or something over time... I've only had one car in my life, and I got quite attached to just the general sound of it. And anything I did, if I got it fixed up, it was quite satisfying to hear the change being imparted to it. How we approach that is still slightly up in the air, because I don't want people to actually just create an audio mess, put a few different components together and it just becomes unpleasing. So we have to look at how we manage that again and how we limit that but still keep it good.
Yeah, I think about all the Need for Speed games that I played growing up. And every different modification you could do to that car, like you get a turbo, you hear a turbo and stuff like that. I fully imagine we're going to realize that in the game. And same with weapons and stuff. I know the Mass Effect series did a great job, and Dead Space, for having customizable weapons. And each customizable element changed the sound. But like you say, it's a difficult job because you've got to introduce new sound, but you don't want to just have a combination that doesn't work. We have to make sure every combination will work together.
Yeah, I think it kind of almost goes back to that mix system, where if we have something that knows the spectral footprint of these sounds, we'll know how they can come together and which one should win. And if they impinge upon each other, how one needs to duck down a bit. And recombining lots of elements in ways that we can't possibly predict is partly what this game is about. So we spend quite a lot of time on that.
Systemic audio.