The Blue Sun Mod

[Kyle]

Ahh! You're absolutely right IceShade! I totally forgot that sounds are not heard at their sources unless they've been identified.

You know what? That's pretty WEIRD that they made the game that way!

On a certain level, it makes some sense, IF...
...the round is being fired from a far distance
...echoes and occlusion can, and FREQUENTLY do make sounds seem like they're coming from somewhere else

Two real life examples I experienced this summer are:
(1) I was outside doing repairs to mortice that fell out between the blocks that make up our foundation. I was on the west side of the house, lying completely flat so that I could look up underneath the lowest layer of vinyl siding, to see if fresh mortice needed to get pushed up underneath it. All of a sudden, I could hear my wife talking to my kids. The sound was a little distorted and muffled, but I stood up, and couldn't hear it anymore. I checked the windows on that side of the house, and they were all closed. So, I got back down to keep assessing the foundation. I could hear my wife again, and my daughter whining about one of my wife's edicts. I stood up, checked the windows again, walked to the back and front corners of the house, and my family were not outside, and the windows were closed. Now I was spooked. I got back down on my belly, and a few minutes later, my wife was talking again. This time, I stayed down there, crawling around on my elbows and knees to see where the sound was coming from. I found the source. Me NEIGHBOR'S wooden fence post which was 3 m. from the side of my house! NO, I'm NOT kidding! My wife's voice became louder and clearer when I got to one of the posts. I went inside the house, stunned, and I asked my wife if she had done a lot of talking with the kids while I was working outside, to which she replied "Yes." I then recounted what I heard, and she confirmed that what I heard is what she said. And my daughter confirmed her whines. What's even stranger, is that they held most of their conversations in the living room, which is easily 15 m. away from the exterior wall. The original conversation was being conducted on the East end of the house. Altogether, their voices were picked up and transmitted by a fence post that was 18 m. away from the source of the sound! BIZARRE! I tested this out with my wife, and she picked up my voice on that fence post as well, so I'm not crazy (well, mostly).

(2) We had a our street and intersection worked on for most of this summer. There were several times when I was working in my backyard when I could've sworn that a bulldozer was just a couple of feet of me, roaring towards me. Whenever I looked, there was nothing but the garage. The sounds of the vehicles would bounce allover the place, and be loud somewhere else. Occlusion and reverberation--it's hard to overestimate just how severely they can throw a person's sense of direction off.

(3) Several of my friends participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. One of them in particular told me just how hard it could be just to determine where small arms rounds were being fired from. He said "You'd think that it'd be easy, but it's not. Sounds can seemingly be coming from your right flank, when they're really coming from your left..."

Over the years, we'd both find some mostly uncensored war footage, and time and again it would confirm what he had tried to convey to me with words. We watched this British reporter get caught up in an ambush on some Marines in Afghanistan, and for the first 20 min. of this blistering firefight, the entire squad was responding to its right flank, and lo and behold, it was really coming from center-left of their original starting position when the attack first started. You also saw the soldiers falling down a LOT. Something my friend had told me of earlier, "Kyle, you just wouldn't believe how often we fall down. Seriously, we look like a bunch of circus clowns, tripping over everything and nothing. Stepping on each other accidentally..."

So, maybe the developers made a wise choice in setting it up the way that they did?



Sound
Is it possible to add some reverberation to the weapons' sounds? I know that this would be a time consuming endeavor, but while it's been a long time since I last shot a firearm, I do know that it's virtually impossible to hear a weapon firing as "cleanly" as they do in the game. That STALKER mod that I'm contributing to, I directed LoNer1 (the chief modder) to video footage of weapons firing, and I pointed out the reverberation outside and/or the echo inside, and he posted some footage of the alterations he made, and the difference... Oh man, it's huge! Far more immersive and honestly, it ratchets up the sense of danger. Now, due to the engine's limitations, he can't "model" reverberations that are unique to how the environment is shaped, but that's fine, because just assigning one type of reverberation to each shot fired does an amazing job, and is far more convincing than the default super-clean sounds. Who knows, if you'd want some help with this endeavor, he may be willing to share his work with you (let me know and I'll ask him on your behalf).

Could the sounds of rounds snapping by be added? That too would really increase the sense of danger.

Tracers
As much as I loved playing the game last night, I became even more convinced that the tracers should be replaced with a smoking trail effect. For gameplay purposes, perhaps they should be exaggerated a bit from their real life counterparts so that they're more easily trackable due to how they designed how sounds are "not" heard in the game.

Feedback
Wow.

It seems like a lot of very smart steps were taken to make the gameplay more flexible and less cumbersome. From being able to access any locker on a map whenever one is dealing with a trader, to being able to leave a sector at any point to travel across the world-map. VERY smart decisions.

Yes, these things were modeled more realistically, but when realism becomes an annoyance, then from a game design perspective, should that realism be maintained? You made some very intelligent calls on such matters. I'm enjoying the game much more just because of that.


Questions
Do the weapons manuals act as a shortcut to develop complete familiarity with a weapon, so that one no longer has to fire off 100 individual rounds to become totally proficient with a weapon? If so, what a VERY smart decision. I hated firing off rounds individually so that a member of the squad was more adept at using it (keep in mind this was BEFORE I learned what the "Record" button was for!). If not, what does one gain from studying a weapon manual?

Is the environment more destructible than before? I got in a firefight with some bandits who actually fired their rounds deliberately through crates at me, which quickly shattered! I actually took a hit before the crate shattered, meaning that the round was penetrating the wood and coming out the other side. I don't ever recall the default game ever doing this, or am I mistaken? I liked that one's not safe behind every type of cover!

Any way to toggle on/off the "Shocked" icons, and other such icons, from floating above the heads of one's victims? Doing this would force the player to have to use his own judgement as to when a target has been put into shock from getting struck.

The same holds true for displaying the hit points that are being lost by a target. I'd love to be able to toggle those off as well.


There was one more thing that I meant to mention, but can't remember it now. In any case, what huge improvements have been made. This game truly is epic now! Good work, and thank you!