Painful sound effects
 

I was an avid fan of Dominions 2, and I like what they've done with 3. My biggest complaint right now is the lack of real volume controls. It's not possible to adjust music volume and effect volume independently, which is rather important considering that I do like the music but I have a severe issue with one of the underwater races.

I can't remember the exact name, but they produce tons of mindflayer-ish magical creatures that soul burn every turn. Unfortunately, as I tend to mass lots of them, when you get about 10+ (and I like to have hundreds in a battle) the sound they make all firing at once is overwhelmingly sharp, even at a very low volume. To finish out the game I started with these guys, I had to turn all the sound off for the game.

Does anyone know a way to maybe replace the sound for soul burn so it doesn't hurt my ears? Or just adjust the volume for it? Or maybe remove it completely? Personally, I think the sound effect just needs to be retooled completely so that it isn't so sharp, none of the other ones in the game have given me any problems.

That aside, I'm interested in playing some multiplayer games. After reading on the forums I feel like I'm finally ready to start playing outside of single player since I've started to really crush the computer every game I play.

Any suggestions on a good game that is going to start soon for newish people? I haven't played but a handful of the races, and I'm not terribly good, but I'm fairly adept at strategy games in general, though this one is terribly complicated!

I do love Dominions 3 though, I'm vaguely reminded of all those sleepless nights lost playing Masters of Magic.

Jazzepi

Re: Painful sound effects
 

a.) check out the multiplayer sub-forum
b.) get on the IRC channel

Welcome aboard.

Re: Painful sound effects
 

I play with -nosound, but IIRC you can turn of just the effects from the sound menus.

Re: Painful sound effects
 

Make a mod where you mod the Soul Slay, Enslave Mind and Mind Burn spells as well as the mind blast weapons (86 and 311) and use a different sound effect for them.

Edi

Re: Painful sound effects
 

Soul Slay, Enslave Mind and Mind Burn (the spells) probably can't be massed in high-enough numbers to cause an effect such as this. Sound 21 (a short sound used in spells, or maybe fire breaths or something).

Here is an example mod.
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
#modname "Save Thy Ears"

#selectweapon 86
#sound 21
#end

#selectweapon 311
#sound 21
#end
</pre><hr />


In case anyone else wants to use it, create a new text file into your Mods folder, add in the mod commands, then rename the file from e.g. newfile.txt to thisisamod.dm . You have to change the filetype, so make sure you didn't rename it into just thisisamod.dm.txt.

Re: Painful sound effects
 

I'll have to try the mod out. Now that I think about it, the sound effect in general was generated by mind blast weapons.

Thanks for the help,
Jazzepi

Re: Painful sound effects
 

Those little fairies with their sleepshot are horrid on the ears too.

Re: Painful sound effects
 

Elf Shot is weapon #228 if you want to add that to the "Save Thy Ears" mod.

My personal dislike is #182, trunk, which is the elephant and mammoth weapon.

Edi

Re: Painful sound effects
 

And lets not forget the negative side effects of gigantic armies of maenads. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Painful sound effects
 

Ah, the death scream. That needs unit modding.

Edi

Re: Painful sound effects
 

Generally my wife politely ignores my gaming, but she made an exception for the maenad death screams. I was not so politely instructed to turn off the sound effects.

Re: Painful sound effects
 

Lol, ditto to the elephants. I have to plug in my headphones if I plan on playing anybody with elephants. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Painful sound effects
 

I always just play with the sound off.
Seems like maybe they're using addition to combine sounds, where it might make more sense to do some kind of averaging (maybe with an allowance to get, say, up to twice as loud as a single unit, as you mass more and more of them? Maybe also with some jitter on the timing of the sounds?)

Re: Painful sound effects
 

Generally speaking, I either play Dom3 with no sound, or just the music, or headphones. The sound effects are not exactly the most soothing out there, and my girlfriend sometimes wants to hear her own PC's sounds...