Kwama sounds WIP

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Hi folks,

I've got together a bunch of sounds that I'm going to start playing with but I need some feedback on what you think will sound best. So I've organised my samples into three sets and the attachments are a selection of each set. I may end up only using a few original recordings and just modifying them with different effects but I'd like a basic impression from you guys as to what baseline I should start with.

My first choice, of course, was insect noises so you can hear a few samples here, but I wasn't too pleased with these, especially when you consider the fact that there are so few decent 'attack sounds' for insects. Nonetheless, the cicada effect has potential.

The second category was human noises. The first bunch of these come from my custom Dremora voice for when the character is attacked and gets hit. Something like this might work for the workers or warriors. I definitely want to use the baby voices because I want the player to feel seriously unnerved when they hit the forager and possibly the Queen too because there's that Alien-based protective mother thing going on there (you'll know what I mean if you're familiar with the Alien film series).

And the third was simply monster noises but this includes animals as well. These samples have been modded a little but I do have base files that consist of various growls from wild cats. I was thinking of only using the animal stuff when it's needed for attack sounds.

After speaking to people about the range of sounds needed, this is a list of possible events for which sounds may be needed: attack, aware, death, foot, idle, injured and world.

Thoughts, people?

[nick_op]

I've had a listen to those samples, I think some of the more growly ones might be of use for the worker/warrior (I'll have to go back and listen to the Morrowind ones to be sure).

I'm not sure any of them fit for the forager, none of them are quite alien enough. I think the baby sounds might have potential. Perhaps some smaller creature's sounds might also work - cats, rodents maybe - the moans and wails of these creatures might be good.

Just my take on things.

Also, you waont need to create any 'world' sounds, I've only seen that used once, from a mod, I don't think it's applicable here. The other categories are all possibilities though.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

As I said, these aren't anywhere near the final sounds because I haven't done much at all to them yet. They're just base sounds to look over a general idea of going about creating a full set for each Kwama.

I've toyed with cat sounds before but I didn't think they really applied here but I'll look for smaller animals, anyway. Cheers!

[Ibsen's Ghost]

More experiments. I'm working on my own voice here and tried going through a few sounds using the generic moan effect. Moans 01-04 are basically: forager, worker, warrior, queen. They're all pretty much untreated at the moment but I'd like a little feedback if possible.

[Hegemege]

I liked the forager and queen moans, they fit pretty nice for those creatures. The warrior and worker were also good

:goodjob:

[nick_op]

Nice one, I especially liked the forager and queen ones. I'll try to check the ES3 worker and warrior sounds in game - I have a feeling they were more grunty and growly. Did Gez send you the other Kwama sounds? If not I can get them to you.

Let me know,
Nick

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Thanks, dudes! Yeah, I got the files. I'm going to look into mixing these up with some of the more alien-style recordings I've got. I don't have much in the way of special FX-creating software so I'm just going on my own voice and some little tricks and novelties.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Okay, that should be it. I have a full set ready here. Being restricted technologically-speaking with my samples, I've tried to keep a degree of consistency but I found that some of the files for individual Kwama appeared not to match very well so that the whole set didn't work together.

For stuff like the Worker, I tried to keep it to a sort of 'cattle-lowing' sound but couldn't resist using the cricket-like twittering for the 'foot' sound. The same goes for other foot sounds where I was trying to emphasise the insect origins of Kwama.

The forager sounds a bit like a baby lamb rather than a human now but the echo effect on the idle sample here seems to work okay for me. My favourite is the mating cry of the queen and the warrior foot sounds. Bear in mind that, for Guardians, I may try some additional sounds as I did here by giving the normal Warrior foot sound an echo effect.

Anyway, I didn't know if you wanted wavs or mp3s. Although I hardly think you'll be lip-synching them, the wavs are nonetheless better quality files so here they are: http://files.filefront.com/Kwama+SFX+wav...einfo.html

And here's the mp3s: http://files.filefront.com/Kwama+SFX+mp3...einfo.html

I've attached some of my favourites here. Let me know what you think about the whole set though as well.

P.S. Some of them are a bit long so I may have to cut them down even further from the original samples.

[nick_op]

Nice, those sound fantastic. :goodjob:

I'll agree that some are a bit long, I think I'd aim for 5 seconds maximum.

All creature sounds that I've seen (Bethsoft and modded) have been wavs, so you don't need to convert them to mp3s.

I'll have a go at implementing some of them later, I've got a rather nasty problem with an animation right now (the Kwama Forager gradually gets bigger every time it plays the fastforward animation).

[Ibsen's Ghost]

I don't think I mentioned this before but you can see that I created multiple files for some of the recordings and named them 01, 02 and so on but 01 is often the original file from which the following files were spawned. Here are my thoughts on the multiple files:

'Forager Foot' - I would ditch the first one and just use files 02 and 03. Could you let me know if it'd be okay to use them both so that they play randomly when required, one or the other? Or, failing that, I would choose file 03. In which case, should I cut it down a little from the total running time of 6 seconds?

'Forager Idle' - Likewise, I could cut down file 02 so that you just have the moan or add a cut-down second file that consists purely of the squelching noise or have both options and use them randomly as mentioned above.

'Queen Idle' - Should I really cut this down? I like the long version. Of course, I could always take out 1 or 2 of the 'whoop' sounds from file 02 and just use those.

'Warrior Attack' - I'd go for file 02. Agreed?

'Warrior Aware' - 01 (w/out echo) or 02 (with echo)?

'Warrior Foot' - I could cut this down to two stomps but which of the three do you like?

'Warrior Idle' - The threatening file 01 or the more subtle file 02?

'Worker Attack' - The last two fit the worker set better because they're more cattle-like but you may want the more aggressive first one...?

'Worker Aware' - I think cutting down file 02 to just the second howl would work best. Agreed?

'Worker Idle' - It's either the 'wookie-like' file 01 or the wetter sound of file 03...?

Please vote...now!