Friday Facts #332 - More sounds & Map color tweaks

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-332

[Gergely]

My thought when I first heard those new bot sounds:

Today isn't april fools day is it?

[Vectura]

Personally I think that's a really bizarre choice for the bot sounds, it's like a broken midi player or something.

[xng]

"they don't sound very different but they are smoother sounding and less annoying."

In reality though, these super high pitch sounds are really headache inducing, especially if hearing them for more than a minute at a time. Like scratching on a blackboard with your nails or the dentist drilling the teeth of the guy next to you.

[deef0000dragon1]

possible really dumb question, but would it be possible to add an advanced graphics tab or something in the settings where we can set the colors for different things on the map ourselves?
Not only would it allow for users to customize the map to their liking, making what they view as important more prominent, but it might also increase accessibility by allowing colorblind users to adjust it so it is useful for them too.

[Serenity]

It certainly takes time to get used to the different and often much louder sounds, but the high frequency sounds of some things like belts are really, really bad. Even with the fix to the belt sound it'S still annoying. It's not a good thing when the player wants to move somewhere more quiet

As for map colors, have you ever considered coloring the different belt tiers? Instead of all belts being yellow. There is a mod that does that and it looks very nice. Also really useful sometimes when you want to upgrade belts.

[bc74sj]

I really dislike that refined concrete is the darkest after upgrading my base from stone brick to it and seeing the colors reverted.
The screenshot you posted has less than 30 roboports in it, I even more strongly dislike the pale yellow color of it with my 7000 roboports sitting on top of the darker refined concrete. Not really a fan of pale yellow or artificial banana flavored candy, which this reminds me of (wacky wafers not runts, but they are both awful).

[Reika]

I have to say, I hate the new belt sounds. They sound much more "metal on metal grinding" than the "whirring" of before, and unlike the combat robot sounds you mention right below, there appears to have been no effort made to make the different types harmonize (as much as a sound like that CAN be made to harmonize). As a result, if you have mixed belts, as is common in the midgame, you are subjected to two or even three dissonant grinding tones at once.

You mention a "whine" in the blue belts, but it is in fact the red belts that I find most bothersome, meaning what is bothering me is either escaping your notice or seems unproblematic to you.

I appreciate the effort of this, but the results are markedly worse than before, so much so that I am *certain* that if this sound makes it to release as-is, I will be modding it right back out and will never look back.

[IronCartographer]

Regarding map colors, there's some question about consistency with previous definitions on a technical level:

I don't get why they put the new pipe, beacon, etc colors in default_color_by_type, when all the other unique building types are in default_friendly_color_by_type

Maxreader is responsible for the lovely Custom Map Colors mod so he's more tuned into this than most.

As for sounds... I can't say that I agree with an entirely new direction, with changing the theme and feel of things seeming almost like a bait and switch at this point to some. The "dirty/muddled" effect may not be as exciting as the new ones, but for some people that is the point: They were relaxing...rather than exhausting.

I get that opinions will vary, universal appeal is impossible, and people will inevitably mod things to their liking, but please take the long-term effects seriously as well as immediate "shiny appeal" of the new sounds. This all reminds me of how some audiophile gear is so good at generating precise high frequency distributions that it makes music more fatiguing than cheaper, more muddled speakers to many listeners. Consistency and relaxation are desirable too.

That said: I have a rather distinctly amusing memory of one player who felt cheated that the exciting trailer music was not used in-game when near factory areas...so if you want more excitement and dynamism, I hope there's a chance you can look into making the soundtrack more dynamic and responsive to events on a per-player basis. Maybe not something that can be done for 1.0 at this point, but something that could be incredibly powerful if done right.

[BattleFluffy]

I have described this game as a sound designer's dream... and also nightmare. So try and bear with us while we get the balance right.

I agree. And we players want this to be right too, and I'm so happy to be able to join in with the discussion to make sure it's as good as possible. Thankyou for all your hard work, and for engaging with us. :>

I want to say at the outset, I love the majority of what has been done so far. I haven't spent much time with the new (EQ'd) belt sounds yet, so I'll reserve my feedback on that for later. I think that the listener position should be at the player's position. Having it at the screen center makes me feel disconnected from my body, and removes some of the feeling of looking at a distant radar image.

In this post I mainly want to talk about the Combat Robots.

The 3 chords effect is a cool idea... but really... when will that ever happen in real play? As far as I'm aware, the player normally uses only the best type of combat robot they have available.

Chords/tones in general might be a false economy for sound effects. What if Spotify is playing a song in the background, and it contains a totally different set of chords, forming a massive dissonance? That's gonna sound bad. It might be best to avoid tones/chords wherever possible simply to avoid conflicts with background music.

Also I feel like this might be a missed opportunity. Real life robots make some really cool sounds. Why not use some of those sounds? These are also "flying robots", perhaps they should sound like Racing Drones ? There are dozens and dozens of examples of amazing robot sounds in games... synth tones is just not right here.

While we're on the subject of Combat robots, I think the "orbit the player" mechanic and "swing them into the nest" combat style are unsatisfying and could do with a rework. I've played with a lot of new players who have been excited at the prospect of Combat Robots, and subsequently sorely disappointed when they found out that a) they have a limited lifetime and b) they just follow the player around and don't actively "engage and terminate" nearby enemies the way we might have hoped for.

[eradicator]

In reality though, these super high pitch sounds are really headache inducing, especially if hearing them for more than a minute at a time.

I have to confess that perhaps one of the very first mods i ever made was "turn off belt sound". To me the omni-presence of belts just means that - regardless of what sound you give them - they will always produce and immense level of constant background noise-pressure that i just can't tolerate as a (self proclaimed) noise-sensitive person. Every other sound is localizable (assemblers, inserters, etc all "move" when i move) which makes them far less annoying to me than the constant belt-noise-torture.

[IronCartographer]

As far as I'm aware, the player normally uses only the best type of combat robot they have available.

It may not be as common now, but the oldschool common practice was maxing out on destroyers, and throwing distractors in all directions to ... do exactly what their name suggests.

So while defenders may be replaced by destroyers, there's potential for the two upper tiers being used together rather than mutually exclusive.

This raises an interesting question: How are sounds being tested? Are there test-cases scripted to generate a certain sequence of events and player interactions for comparing how the sounds flow?

[fishycat]

I don't know what you guys hear, but you should definetely wear headphones while testing new sounds. Belt sounds are still threatening. Also please go over the offshore-pump, too. It sounds terrible. The new bots sound like from an asia-spa, ommm.

But the new map colors are really great, I like them a lot.


edit: the more I think about it, I feel you should revert to the old sounds, which were absolutely nuts and just right.

[PaszaVonPomiot]

Hey devs. I must say that this iteration of sound redesign isn't good. New belts' sounds are not bad but worse than original. The original belt sounds seems better and they are, I must say, a hallmark of Factorio. New bot sounds just doesn't fit to the game and I simply dislike them. Previous sounds were much better. I think bots shouldn't generate continuous sounds.
On the other hand map colors is nice touch and >500 players game proves that you are doing damn good job.

[JekoRhino]

Don't know if this was asked already
but are there going to be sounds for damaged structures?
Like a sudle difference that you could hear and notice.
Would bee a fun thing to have.

[conn11]

Contrary to some of the so far expressed opinions, I do like most of the the new sounds and think they are an improvement. Not yet entierly perfect, but definetly the right direction. Things most bothering me, are the new entity destroyed alert sound and the somewhat weak sounding locomotives. On the other hand, the new offshore pump sound is definetly an upgrade.
With the now much clearer audio, same transitions do feel to "sharp" (like offshorepumps to reactor/heatpipes in close proximity), maybe the audible distance and fading of sounds has to be twaeked some more.

Edit: clarification of examples.

[Nefrums]

I also line the new sounds, except the biter attack alert sound, that will take some time to get used to.

Nice to see you featuring good streamers in the fff!

[torham]

Those Bot sounds are dope! I really like them!

[Xuerian]

As long as the sounds remain able to be overridden I suppose it's fine, but I'm sad to say I'm really not a fan of them either. :\

[Rahbek]

I got 3 things I want to leave here as feedback. Now while this is mostly negative feedback that doesn't mean you haven't been doing an amazing job with the game so far, but I feel a bit unhappy about the changes mentioned in the dev blog and for that reason want to share my thoughts. So let me start off with the worst offender - sound:

1) While I applaud the effort of wanting to re-work the soundscape of factorio I am not really sure you've been going into the right direction with this. At least the latest changes as outlined in the dev blog are the worst ones so far and I agree with the criticism raised by others before me about the belts but its really the bots that to me feel really out of place.
I understand the general idea of wanting to create a soundscape that "sounds" well together - especially for a whole busy factory - but here's some food for thought that I hope can explain why to me the new sounds feel so out of character for the game (even taking away from the experience):

When Albert set out to re-do the graphics it was mentioned in one of the dev blogs that one key aspect of the game and its graphics that he aimed to preserve was - as best as I remember - something along the lines of this: It is a messy dirty place, it's a factory it's not polished and nice so while the graphics might be HD after the rework and redesign they should still reflect the nature of the game and the environment it's trying to set the player in.

I think this approach is missing from the new sounds. That "dirty" low-fi you described might be exactly why - to me anyways - belt sound was never something I criticised before.


2) Not a huge fan of the map colours you picked (like the roboports) - but the idea of updating the colours is a good one.
Personally I used this mod for long time and I feel like for the most part it works quite well in terms of colours and received a lot of user feedback as well over the years: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/osldgoth ... Map_Colors

3) Definitely not a bad idea at all what deef0000dragon1 suggested here:

possible really dumb question, but would it be possible to add an advanced graphics tab or something in the settings where we can set the colors for different things on the map ourselves?
Not only would it allow for users to customize the map to their liking, making what they view as important more prominent, but it might also increase accessibility by allowing colorblind users to adjust it so it is useful for them too.