[Mod] Ambience 975 - Cave Sounds: Pack 1 [ambience]

[AlexD975]

Hello everyone! One day I install mod named Immersive Sounds, and it was awesome modification, but when I visit caves I find one stupid thing in this mod. It have only six very boring sounds for caves and nothing more.

I remember, how scary was cave sounds of Minecraft. Every freaking second I stops and listen sounds what digs into soul! And why Minetest can't have them?!

And that how I created this mod!
Download mod from blog-site!

What inside:
50 new sounds for caves created from records of real world things, like iron sticks, stones on wood, silly yells of kids, buttons of coffe machine, and more.

This is my first mod what I send in this forum, and it make me so happy!
Please when you play with this mod, tell me what you think about it?

You also may watch my demo-video with Russian comments.

PS: Sorry for link on Yandex.Disk. I tried work with Github but I can't understand how use it... So, sorry please.

Thanks everyone for attention! Have a nice gameplay!

[FreeGamers]

Underground caves and other realms compose a big majority of the world. I'm using a trimmed down version of ambience to play a lot of sounds for players. I was thinking of adding more cave sounds myself at some point because the two or three that play get very repetitive. So this is definitely something I think has potential to be useful for servers that use the ambience mod or would like to enhance cavedigging experiences.

I'll give it a try today. The only thing I'm worried about is that 50+ sounds seems like it may add quite a bit of media loading time. I hope the sound files were compressed. I'll write back after I test it or if I have any questions.

Good idea. This is marked as pack 1, are you planning on making some for other biomes?

[FreeGamers]

I went through the audio files. There are a lot of ambient surreal sounds. I think it'll work well for a lot of people.

Its noteworthy to mention that some of the sound files are over a minute. I'm not sure if they all the sound files are compressed. I was able to crunch the biggest file in the audiopack from 1.6MB to 360KB by using the lowest export setting for .ogg in Audacity. The audio files I checked are mono track so they are already pretty slimmed down as much as possible. As of now, all the sounds in the pack are about 15.6MB of space. (there is a .sfk file in there, I'm not sure what that is for).

I will give this a try later but I'm not sure how I feel about the surreal sounds, I prefer natural sounds like water drips, gusts of wind, or echos, but there is a lot to work with here and I'll give it a try. I haven't actually messed around with the ambient mod too much yet and have been meaning to build an expanded set of sounds for my server.

I really do like the idea of sound modpacks to enhance people using the ambient mod, sound is a big component to the game that I think is overlooked a bit too often.

[AlexD975]

Good idea. This is marked as pack 1, are you planning on making some for other biomes?

I think about two other pack with different sounds. And yeah, weight of mod is problem for me. I thought make 150 sounds but after 25 MB, my Minetest loading takes too many time. So I decide devive it to three different packs.

About compress files I not sure. I Don't want lose quality of sounds, and I still don't know what type of audio better use... Maybe change all sound to mono?

[FreeGamers]

I run mods in a server that is hosted on the Internet. I have to keep media files small because it has to load for everyone that connects and my connection doesn't have a lot of bandwidth right now. If you're a modder that runs mods locally on your computer, the file size isn't as big of a deal. But best use case would be to compress them use less data. You can find a balance for Quality vs Size that you are happy with. I use a pair of studio headphones when I do work on sound files. I think that usually compression doesn't lose too much sound quality but it depends on the type of audio being used.

I'm no audio engineer, but If I were to use this mod, what I'd do for my server is open up each file in Audacity, check to see if its mono (stereo is two tracks instead of one), and then I'd export the audio and lower the quality for the .ogg file. I usually set music to about "1-2" and lower quality stuff to "0-1". It's a tedious process and there is a lot of stuff you can adjust to get the size lower. Exporting the files setting the slider at the export bar is the way I typically just deal with it and it usually gives good results. Ogg format as really improved over the years. I think it is comparable or better to MP3 file size these days. A lot of these sound effects use distortion and interference like effects that would sound very good still with compression (in my opinion). Its not like its a high fidelity master track recording or song from an album.

Its up to you, its your mod! I don't want to tell you how to make it, but I don't mind sharing ideas. I'll look forward to the other packs when you have some time to get around to them.. I'll definitely be considering using some sounds from it when I have some time to merge them into my "ambience" mod.

Here is a track that I compressed. Feel free to compare the two and see how it sounds. I used the "0" setting in Audacity. It lets you set the compression when you use the "Export Audio" option from the File menu.

[AlexD975]

I run mods in a server that is hosted on the Internet. I have to keep media files small because it has to load for everyone that connects and my connection doesn't have a lot of bandwidth right now. If you're a modder that runs mods locally on your computer, the file size isn't as big of a deal. But best use case would be to compress them use less data. You can find a balance for Quality vs Size that you are happy with. I use a pair of studio headphones when I do work on sound files. I think that usually compression doesn't lose too much sound quality but it depends on the type of audio being used.

I'm no audio engineer, but If I were to use this mod, what I'd do for my server is open up each file in Audacity, check to see if its mono (stereo is two tracks instead of one), and then I'd export the audio and lower the quality for the .ogg file. I usually set music to about "1-2" and lower quality stuff to "0-1". It's a tedious process and there is a lot of stuff you can adjust to get the size lower. Exporting the files setting the slider at the export bar is the way I typically just deal with it and it usually gives good results. Ogg format as really improved over the years. I think it is comparable or better to MP3 file size these days. A lot of these sound effects use distortion and interference like effects that would sound very good still with compression (in my opinion). Its not like its a high fidelity master track recording or song from an album.

Its up to you, its your mod! I don't want to tell you how to make it, but I don't mind sharing ideas. I'll look forward to the other packs when you have some time to get around to them.. I'll definitely be considering using some sounds from it when I have some time to merge them into my "ambience" mod.

Here is a track that I compressed. Feel free to compare the two and see how it sounds. I used the "0" setting in Audacity. It lets you set the compression when you use the "Export Audio" option from the File menu.

Well, thanks for test on server, and look like I got one idea about mod: I just make two different version of this mod, firs with standart sounds, and second - with heavy compression. I think it will be good solution.

[FreeGamers]

Sounds good, that would help server operators like myself, but its up to you if you want to do something like that. You can call the other version "Lite" to differentiate the two if you do do something like that.

Audacity has a feature that lets you apply the same processes to multiple tracks. I think it uses a tool called "Chain" which has a function called "Compressor". That would help you quickly squash them without all the tedious labor.

This tutorial gives some tips about those tools and some other ones.
https://www.howtogeek.com/57571/how-to- ... -audacity/

[AlexD975]

Okay, I catch some free time and optimise all sounds in mod. Now everyone may download LITE version, it have only 5 MB compared 15 MB on default version. And I cheek it later.

Link from Yandex Disc

By the way, I see nobody cares this mod... Even the author of the original mod... It very strange for me.

[FreeGamers]

Did you use RAR 3.0? I can't seem to open this on Linux with unrar-free. Could you please share it as .zip or .7z? I think rar3.0 is a proprietary format.

I'd be interested in using this if the sound clips are short and too long when they play. I'm working on ambiance in my server soon.

Also, I've learned how to compress things in audacity in bulk and its much easier than I expected.

Just load all the files up into Audacity, then use the "Export Multiple" option. Its that simple.

Also, there are some good cave sounds the pack here (under "/ambient/cave/"), which are licensed under Creative Commons Share Alike (CC-SA).

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22735

[FreeGamers]

The problem I've had with most of the ambient cave tracks I've seen is they are long. 1 to 3 minutes is most likely too long to be playing an effect to a player. It gets old after 10 seconds or more. Most of the MC sounds (at least from when I used to play, long ago) are not so long. I'd be curious to see how you coded this in your mod or if you just added the full tracks.

I'm looking to start adding ambient effects to my world. I've just gone through "mpd" 's code and looked at how it plays sounds per biome. Most of them are just water drips, and are very short. I suspect I'll have to chop up cave sound effects to be shorter. I'd like them to get more spooky or isolating as the player goes deeper underground. I hope to find some natural cave noises for the near-surface elevations and use more dreadful ones deeper. Your pack and the one in snowsong may really help me with that.