OpenArena Message Boards

Hi all,
first of all, kudos to you all for such a great work!
I played OpenArena for some hours. Great fun. But what's not so great is the sounds. Since I'm a professional soundengineer (and studio-coowner), I want to ask if you are interested in some new sounds for the game. We (our studio team) is quite experienced with working 'for money', but not so much with working on a community-based project. So, while I think we could supply you with higher quality sounds, someone would have to help with how to integrate into the developer-community. We are used to supply on demand (f.e. 'we need all sounds for a RPG as wav, 48khz, stereo, 24bit, length 0:12'). I don't think it works that way here, does it?
So, if the community is interested, maybe s.o. could tell us how we could help you :)
I hope you get the point..
First 'real' question: Does the engine support 5.1 sounds (for music, ambience, FX?)
Looking forward to hear from you,

Sebastian (www.ml-audio.com)

Yes, through OpenAL, which should work across all platforms if it is installed.  Recent versions of SDL also support 5.1 channel mixing (ioq3, the engine we use has moved from DirectX audio + input to SDL on windows.  The 0.8 should be based upon that).


Most people will just upload the sound files to a place and post a link here.  As long as the sounds are licensed under the GPL v2[1]  we can use them.  For music we would need source, usually the tracker format that is used for your mixing software.  For sound effects the wav files should act as their own source.

[1] This means anyone and everyone can change your sounds but any distribution of the sounds must be done under the same license and modified sources must also be distributed along with the sounds _or_ access to the modified sources must be provided for three years.  Basically once the sound file is out there it will always be out there for anyone to use but only under the terms of the GPL, so you will always have access to the changes no matter what happens to the sound files.

If it means using commercially licensed libraries like the Sound Generals and not original recording and mixing then you can forget it

So... Does anyone have a list of missing sounds or sounds that should be replaced? That's probably as good a place as any for ml-audio to start...

on the top of my head,k yonshi/arachna/angelyss  needs replacements

That's all i know

The missionpack menu ogg is an earsore.
The winds can be redone.
The nightmare sound can be replaced.
The gauntlet could sound less like a chainsaw (but not a leaf blower :P).
The shotgun could sound less like a bass drum.


As for the list of sounds that haven't been done yet... working on that.

that was a menu system test ditty
I thought my mouthed wind was adequate :(
cmon, it's even 666kb :(

I know, but the xylophone gets annoying quick.


adequate, yes, but they can be better.   :)


It should be shorter in length and be spooky/nightmarish the current one just isn't creepy, IMO.

Other than the menu ditty, none of the sounds are really horrible, but they can be improved.  Which pretty much goes for all of our content.

I'll 2nd this one. I'd love to contribute, despite being tone deaf and talentless. :)