How to do sound effects for an rts game?

Hey guys,

I have a specific question regarding sound, sound effects, and rts games in general (or any game where there could be hundreds of units).

My problem is that I have lots of warriors/swordsmen in my rts game. They ALL have a sword "clanging" sound for when they're fighting or in battle. When all of them are fighting at once, the game tries to play all the sounds at relatively the same time. This causes the sound to be amplified sometimes, and in some cases even combines with each other to produce a new sound. In small numbers (of units), the sound effects sound okay. But in large numbers, it kind of gets annoying hearing all the sounds playing at once (especially if they're the same exact sound). The shear number of swords clanging becomes somewhat overbearing and repetitive.

How do you think RTS games handle sound effects like this, where they might all be on the same unit, but in large quantities?

Thanks for any advice.

 

you could have it so that no matter how many units are fighting at a time, there is only one sound track for them playing the right sound fx in a certain order and frequency.

you could also do something like, for every x units, have one instance of the sound.

you could even say for every x units in y range have one instance of the sound.

you could even get into stuff like basing it on distance from the camera, so you would only hear the ones your looking at, or it would be quieter when zoomed out.

 

Yeah, make a "battle sound" instead of individual sounds. It seems Total War games do it that way, you are not actually listening to every sword strike but to a single source for group of fighters.

 

Make sure to have same exact "roger that" or "acknowledged" track play every time player clicks on unit or orders it to do anything. (joking ofc)

 

I would create a SoundManager script/object that would take care of all the sounds, like banreaxe above said.

 

Thanks for the ideas. I'm just starting with sound in my game, so I'm really new at this.

 

Create a SoundManager class that implements buses with a maxPolyphony property on each bus. Then a PlaySFX method that checks if the maxPolyphony has been exceeded or not before playing. When playing a new sound you need to add it to increment a currentPolyphony property, and then when the sound finishes playing reduce the currentPolyphony count.

There are assets in the AS that provide this sort of implementation, but we haven't tried them.