# Ambient sounds

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710>\
**Category:** The Lab\
**Created:** [May 31, 2015, 8:52am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710 "2015-05-31T08:52:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 8

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**Author:** ![Aavak](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/aavak/32/933_2.png) [@Aavak](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Aavak)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 6:15pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/141 "2015-10-24T18:15:34Z")

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Cheers for going to all that effort to check through the Repo and back through the thread Midaychi, it’s enormously appreciated 😃

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**Author:** ![Gideon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Gideon](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Gideon)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 6:24pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/142 "2015-10-24T18:24:25Z")

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The sound effects add MASSIVE amounts of atmosphere to the game.

I very much hope that all copyright issues are cleared up on these. Should absolutely be mainstreamed.

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**Author:** ![Midaychi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Midaychi](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Midaychi)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 6:26pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/143 "2015-10-24T18:26:12Z")

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Just wish I could have done more. YT strikes are a royal pain in the Tingle, especially considering that it’s really difficult to get punished for using them facetiously against people. “Oh yeah, Machinima somehow owns this content.”

It’s not like a DMCA, where you can get in trouble with the law if you use them without actually having a legit reason. (Or at least, you’re SUPPOSED to, anyways.)

I tried contacting the author but haven’t heard a peep.

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**Author:** ![Chezzo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/chezzo/32/429_2.png) [@Chezzo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Chezzo)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2015, 8:58am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/144 "2015-10-26T08:58:02Z")

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They ARE copy written, Midyashi. They are from Jagged Alliance 2 and other games.

Vulkans was gonna start recording his own and using legit sounds, and maybe did more on the cars version, but on this version the only things legit from Vulkans are the walking noises, and I think the version that is out may have my addition of a couple legit metal door noises by me.

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**Author:** ![Midaychi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Midaychi](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Midaychi)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2015, 10:44am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/145 "2015-10-26T10:44:56Z")

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Well, if someone wants to cruise around gpl websites like freesound and public domain sounds and replace everything then that’d probably be a big help.

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**Author:** ![Enke](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/enke/32/274_2.png) [@Enke](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Enke)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 1:14pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/146 "2015-10-28T13:14:38Z")

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I made the mistake of using this for a few days, and now I can never go back to console.

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**Author:** ![Litppunk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/litppunk/32/409_2.png) [@Litppunk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Litppunk)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 10:46pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/147 "2015-10-28T22:46:38Z")

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Ok I can’t stand it anymore I gotta try this. For convenience sake could you keep a link to DL for latest in OP?

O.o Er… Suddenly realized I have no idea how to read github. Barely a clue what Im looking at. Can I get a link for file(s) DL and little note of where they go. Getting better at reading files etc… but I feel certain that just when I feel I’ve got it I’ll end up summoning the nether into my hard drive via doing absolutely nothing wrong except tinkering with computer files.

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**Author:** ![Midaychi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Midaychi](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Midaychi)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 10:53pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/148 "2015-10-28T22:53:02Z")

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That would require editing Vulkan’s post.

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**Author:** ![Litppunk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/litppunk/32/409_2.png) [@Litppunk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Litppunk)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 11:05pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/149 "2015-10-28T23:05:37Z")

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yea… He can do that. He is op after all…

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**Author:** ![Midaychi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Midaychi](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Midaychi)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 11:15pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/150 "2015-10-28T23:15:13Z")

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Well if you see Vulkan around here somewhere, you should say something. Sort of the problem inherent, there.

If you really want an OP post with a link to the zip, I’d make a new thread.  
I’d also probably download the zip and repack it and reupload it so, as the OP, you can control its contents incase you need to patch or alter it.  
You might also want to list the things and problems that need addressing, Ie:

1. Current iteration json are unnecessary. You only need one json in the sounds folder. Maybe two if you want to be clean and separate the music out, and the json in the json folder is unnecessary. I didn’t understand this at the time (re: the one in the json folder being unnecessary), and I was too lazy to go through merging the differences between the vulkan and the normal json, so I left it as is after fixing up the syntax. It still _works_, but it adds about 10 seconds of loading overhead every time the game wants to go through json loading.

2. Current iteration is full of soundclips of nebulous origin. “The internet” “Similar places that jagged alliance 2 took from.” It would be best if at some point, someone went through and replaced or substituted the already defined sounds with at least free use sounds and had a list of the soundfiles with their licenses and origins attributed for. It would be a bonus, though unnecessary, if the sounds were CC-BY-SA 3.0 compatible.

3. The code itself is basically in tech demo stage. It’s got a framework, but the framework isn’t entirely modular or completely finished and consists of a lot of hard coding. The Json really doesn’t do too much besides define the volume and file location of these hard coded events. Someone picking up the code and running with it could expand what you could do with the JSON greatly.

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**Author:** ![Litppunk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/litppunk/32/409_2.png) [@Litppunk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Litppunk)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 12:17am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/151 "2015-10-29T00:17:28Z")

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ok I think I understand. I managed to merge all the files in replacing ones that “needed” to be. Only side effect I have noticed is ALL THE debug errors. I may not have guns anymore O.o. You said only one .json change necessary? could you tell me which one?

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**Author:** ![Midaychi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Midaychi](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Midaychi)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 1:27am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/152 "2015-10-29T01:27:54Z")

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That is not what I meant at all.

I meant that the only two jsons you need are musicset.json and soundset.json in the sound directory. Technically you only need one, but it’s cleaner to separate them out.

It also doesn’t matter what they’re named; Catadda will just load anything that ends in .json in that “sound” folder.

The one in the “json” folder specifically is unnecessary, but is also loaded by cataclysmdda because it just straight loads all jsons in that folder instead of looking for specific ones. In my zip, it is literally a copy paste of the soundset.json in the sounds folder, and can safely be deleted. I did this because this is how the original zip was like, sorta? The soundset.json in that one in the “json” dir was out of date and cobbled and weird. I left it in ‘just in case’, and now that I know better, I haven’t removed it because it would cause disparity issues with people who’ve already downloaded and used it.

The reason that I left both soundset.json and vulkans-soundset.json in is because they both have entries for all sorts of sound events, but they’re not consistent on what ones they do have and what ones they don’t. Vulkans has entries for things that soundset doesn’t and vice-versa, and I was too lazy to comb through them both and merge them into one file, so I just left both files in and let cataclysm sort through them and figure it out.

There’s also that the framework for weapon attack and reload and stuff is actually slightly modular, and this was exploited in soundset.json for some (but not all) weapons. You actually can define new weapons and the like and what sounds they make on their various actions. There’s some examples in soundset.json somewhere down mid-endways where there were sounds added for a lot of weapons including the lajakang (sp?)

Edit: Also, fyi, pay attention to case. Windows might be lenient, but if you define a file in json differently to what it’s actual file case is (like, derp.ogg vs derp.OGG vs Derp.ogg) then it will throw a debug on linux.

Edit2: I also, when converting everything to ogg, left the compression settings really high quality. I was using audacity. You can probably safely milk a bunch of disk space out of it by using lower quality compression, but I’d warn against too much because you might turn some of the treble into static noise and cause weirdness. .wav is a valid format to use instead of ogg, but… WHY? That just seems _silly_. All that wasted disk space.

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**Author:** ![Litppunk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/litppunk/32/409_2.png) [@Litppunk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Litppunk)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 2:32am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/153 "2015-10-29T02:32:51Z")

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where is soundset.json? is that the default stuff thats already there? If so I haven’t ever noticed sound from it before. Though it might be newer than I realize. Also I normally play with Pandora in the background so I might not have heard it even if it was 😕 oh well. So vulcan’s is no longer being updated… is there any one keeping up with the sounds anymore? My impression is no ☹

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**Author:** ![Midaychi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Midaychi](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Midaychi)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 3:31am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/154 "2015-10-29T03:31:28Z")

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the soundset.json that comes with the zip I created and put up on a page or two back comes from the zip uploaded prior to that by Tom. Specifically the one located in data/sound/ within the zip. It seems that Tom attempted to update the sounds to include more weapons and events, but did it in a really weird way and didn’t seem to fully understand how the json format was laid out, and called it a day after some halfway-implemented thing. Either that, or one of the editing tools they were using severely guffed the formatting up.

Either way, I can’t really fault them. It was MOSTLY functional and even had added content over Vulkan’s repository, and I have had both priorly stated problems learning JSON before.

All I did was go through and convert everything to ogg and clean it up and reformat what was there using various batch tools (audacity and notepad++, mostly. Yeah I used notepad++ through wine on linux to do this. It’s just a great tool.), then repackage it. The only thing I added was to re-add the clink clink little menu sound that was left out and to fiddle with a few bits to aid in cleaning it up.

Edit: I guess I wasn’t very clear, but all my comments were referring to the separate repackaging efforts of both Tom and mine. The version that comes with the game by default has nothing defined and isn’t really hooked up.

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**Author:** ![Litppunk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/litppunk/32/409_2.png) [@Litppunk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Litppunk)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 3:44am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/155 "2015-10-29T03:44:58Z")

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nice ^.^  
I have been growing to love Brackets myself, Though I also have Qt and a few others I DLed in my search. Also gimp. Because Gimp is manditory, even if you don’t draw, also Unity because Ohhhhh… Unity. Now to learn to use them…

ok. I’ll have to look into all that then and see if I can understand it well enough to not ruin Cata when I merge it. I doubt I can go 2 for 2. Might set some kind of self-record.

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**Author:** ![Midaychi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Midaychi](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Midaychi)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 4:06am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/156 "2015-10-29T04:06:42Z")

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it might be easiest to just, smash them together somehow and then delete duplicates and fix up the formatting.

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**Author:** ![Litppunk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/litppunk/32/409_2.png) [@Litppunk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Litppunk)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 4:12am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/157 "2015-10-29T04:12:21Z")

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thats what I did when I “merged” vucan’s

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**Author:** ![DBrickShaw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@DBrickShaw](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/DBrickShaw)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2015, 2:31pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/158 "2015-11-02T14:31:35Z")

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Wow, having sound effects really is more of a game changer than I expected. Prior to this I really didn’t realize how often gunfire and explosions were happening near me. Thanks to everyone who contributed to adding the sound support / creating the sound packs, and keep up the great work!

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**Author:** ![Wyzack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7bcc69/32.png) [@Wyzack](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Wyzack)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 9:10pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/159 "2015-11-10T21:10:45Z")

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I cannot seem to get the sounds to work. Grabbed the latest experimental a few days ago and decided to try catasounds at the recommendation of a friend. Extracted the datafile into my directory, got nothing. Tried the alternate file two pages previous, also got nothing. Is there an option i need to toggle or something?

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**Author:** ![nadia911](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/45deac/32.png) [@nadia911](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/nadia911)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 9:38pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ambient-sounds/9710/160 "2015-11-10T21:38:54Z")

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Launch Cataclysm and open the Options menu to the Graphics tab and change the Sound Effect Volume to 100.

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