Hows my audio

http://thrivecreations.com/Buggy tech demo.html

CONTROLS:
WASD movment
DOWN ARROW: Lets you stick to walls, and not fly off jumps as much
UP ARROW is a jump that right now is unlimited
RIGHT/LEFT ARROWS: barrel rolls


Before unity and game-design audio was my thing, and during that time i learned that after a while your ear gets used to w/e sound its hearing repetitively and its harder and harder to hear mistakes or problems, well after 2 days of work on this audio thats whats going on so i would really appreciate comments and suggestions on how to improve this



one thing i know is problem right now is when you rev up the engine the lower frequency pops and rings haven't changed enough to notice so when you drop back down to idle it feels like they have always been there, and it makes it seem like the idleing is not a result of the cars speed


but like i said, ive been listening to it for hours so if you notice that too let me know


also this terrain mesh is huge, hows it running in your web-players?

 

The performance ist outstanding. Its running smooth and fast in Safari using an Intel 2.0 Ghz with NVidia 7300 GT 256 MB.
The sound is quite cool. Gives a nice feeling of control as it instantly reacts and the sound itself is also very convincing and fitting the "car" perfectly.

The controls and the game feeling are also very good! With yet nothing else to do but to drive around, it kept me driving and trying for some time... and i might test it again...

Very well done. This will become a nice game!

 

Hi!
I'm testing it in a win2000 p4 3.2ghz, firefox 2, geforce fx 5200
The fps should be somewere near 10-20.
Are you left-handed? It would be nice to have a option to control the car with arrows and a fps counter.
This pc don't have a soundcar, I'll test it at home!

 

cool im glad you guys liked it, i posted another in its place with the audio a little different and an FPS counter

COOL thank you very much for the compliment, the only problem is now i play my game instead of continuing to make it...



im surprised it runs at all in a web page, that mesh is 30,000 polys plus, bravo OTEE bravo

yeah i didnt think about that, im just so used to FPS style games i kinda got used to WASD. right now WASD and all 4 arrow keys all serve separate functions but there should defiantly be a way to switch which ones which



and also there is a twist ramp behind where you start, and a wall right after it.... if you manage to barrel roll of the twist ramp with the LEFT/RIGHT arrow keys and the stick to the wall with the DOWN key and drive up

there just might be a giant ramp at the top.....

 

I get constant 50 Frames / Second... This really rocks!

... and STOP KEEPING ME AWAY FROM WORK!

Damn I found the tunnel...

 

nice morgan!

the sound in general works well IMO - the only thing i would change (if i'm hearing it right) is you have your idle engine loop still running below the rev sound - maybe lower the volume on it when the rev is triggered?

i know its just a demo but i'll comment on some other things too:

-the controlls are excellent - they have a very "loose" feel which is both fun kinda realistic at the same time (i spent alot of time just doing J-turns ; )

-it took me going up the side of a hill to notice it but your top image in your skybox is at the wrong rotation.

-i'd add a bit more noise to the terrain mesh - nothing too crazy where you can't pick up speed - just enough small dips bumps so it looks more natural.

this is very cool so far, well done ; )

PS steady 25 FPS on an intel imac

 

This is really quite cool, the sound fits perfectly. With alot of finesse this can turn out really nicely.

Take care,

~t

 

yeah thats what i was talking about in the first post, the audio is layered and a third of it goes up slower than the rest so it dosent sound "ringy" and maintains a deeper sound, the problem is one clip of audio of the engine has such a huge low to high range in frequency the sound doesn't seem to go up uniformly, so it seems like it was always there even though to pitch has probably quadrupled

im gonna break out my old audio books for some ways to fix that, but im glad some one else heard it to, i thought it was just over-criticizing my work

everytime i go up that hill and i say to myself " oh i gotta fix that skyox....." then i just keep playing....

yeah that lvl was made with sculpt in 15 minutes in blender, right now im working on nothing but one big level and ill defiantly do that

NO i will NOT stop keeping you from work, what a ridiculous request...

 

Wow thats pretty fun! If I am not mistaken you are using my car physics rig (go you! ) because you can drive infinitely fast backwards which is something I forgot to fix

I think the audio is great, but for some reason it didn't play anymore after I reloaded the page.

You should use the up direction of your car as the up direction for the camera look at. This will solve a lot of camera problems it was having.

I know this isn't supposed to be official or realistic but I noticed that you can fly quite easily by holding the down arrow once you are upside down

Nice car model. It would be awesome if you could add boned wheel holders that move up and down with the wheels.

 

Morgan,

I agree with others in saying this is pretty cool ... it has good potential to be the sort of game to keep you playing ( I tried it for about 15 mins ) especially when you get the gameplay sorted ( is it going to be a racing game ? ) Good luck,

Jaz.

P.S: Jump is a cool thing and sticking to walls rocks!

 

This is very cool! Reminds me of an old game from years back, Powerslide from the now defunct Ratbag.

Had a lot of fun trying to get out of the pit o' doom!

 

yeah its going to be a racing game, the idea of it is to have really wide levels about as wide as this little demo mesh that has different obstacles going across its width, so you can choose which ones you'd rather take on based on the vehicle you are using, where your rival is, were your pit crew is, where the air dropped power ups are and alot else I haven't completely worked out yet

yup thats yours alright, i liked the way your offroad suspension looked better than the regular car wizard, its very slightly modified and the only thing I added was a spoiler effect to keep the car pushed towards the ground as long as 3 out of the 4 wheels were touching, that also lets you keep the steering radius high at faster speeds without flipping over in turns, but bravo on that script it works really well


and your motor-speed variable made it amazingly easy to apply the audio as that variable dived during turns and climbs already which saved me alot of work

yeah camera was the next thing on my list, right now its just the basic smooth follow, thanks for the tip, how should i go abut doing that??

what im doing right now is i have the axle as a hinge joint which is attached to the car and i have a look at script that makes it look at the center of the wheel, im still working that stuff out, right now it works but it shakes like crazy and i cant figure out why

I have alot of plans for this game so im really glad you guys like it

 

What you should probably do for an axle is either:

A: Create a boned mesh that has a center bone for the car and one child bone for each wheel holder / axle end. Then move the bones according to the wheel position.

B: Use a script to point a cylinder at the wheel, and scale it depending on the distance to the wheel from the base of the cylinder.

 

i'd second the idle sound still running when driving
and just add that it would be cool to be able to see
where you're going - for me the camera is a little too high, and as the steering's so responsive it's
difficult to get a handle on where you are/going once
you get off the flat.
Neat model.

cheers

 

Overall this is pretty cool, but I get constant clicks. I would recommend running the idling sound through a low pass filter, because all the important stuff is rumble anyway. This may be masked with decent speakers, by I'm only on headphones right now, and it's kind of grating.

The rev sound also causes clicks and pops, but I think this is a technical problem rather than a flaw in the sample like with the idling. The revving also happens too quickly, in my opinion.

(Edit: Nevermind. I was testing the audio over and over after I had driven off the edge. The revving is much more convincing on the ground.)

Like I said, it is good on the whole, so please just take this as constructive criticism. You've got a good thing going.

The camera also went through the terrain for me here and there, near hills, but it was also good in general.

 

no worrys im not sensitive, i posted this precisely so i could get criticism



and yeah the camera defiantly needs to be improved, its just the basic smooth follow right now, ive always had problems with camera stuff and im working pretty hard on it right now

 

so this whole time ive been working on this through powered studio monitors, i just listened to it on a set of lap top speakers and the idle just sounds like static, and it sticks out even more than i thought


what kind of speakers have you guys been testing this on?

 

I'm listening to it on plain iMac (newest) speakers and it sounds fine. I really like the game by the way. Incredibly fun to open up and mess around with for a few minutes here and there.

 

iMac built-in speakers = sounds fine
Harman Kardon sound sticks = sounds fine too

Jaz.

 

Results in a new environment:

- The MacBook Pro speakers are so pitiful that I really can't hear a lot of the frequency range. As such, I may not have been able to pick out problems if I hadn't heard them under other conditions. (I assume this is why the people above didn't hear problems either. I had two iMac G5's and hated their speakers almost as much as the portables'.) With listening specifically for artefacts, you can notice them, but it's not a big problem in this case. I have previously described these as the worst speakers I have ever used, but I never thought about the mistake hiding properties before. Audio engineers would pay big bucks for such an effect.

- The game sounds pretty nice through some Samson 65A studio monitors. The lower frequencies that these put out cause a better balance to occur. Artefacts still occur, of course, but are less noticeable because the lower frequencies are so much louder.

Cheap headphones are the real culprit. I would recommend removing some highs from the idle sound to make it sound better there, or putting a speaker/headphone output select on a menu screen, so you could keep the regular sample in if you like it. Hopefully you can figure out some other solution for the revving, possibly incorporating very quick crossfading. Good luck! This one could be great!