Missing Sounds in Panzer Campaigns

[Philippe]

While I was testing some new images for Panzer Campaigns Smolensk I noticed that something was missing. When you send out an aerial recon mission it's conducted in absolute silence. After consulting Volcano Man I found that there are about twenty sound files that show up in the more recent titles that aren't present in Smolensk. The culprit is the air recon file, which I've added to the latest update of my Smolensk mod, and which you can get here if you don't feel like pulling apart one of your other Panzer Campaign games:

http://tfe4.wordpress.com/graphics-and-s...ps-titles/

I don't know what the other twenty-odd files do exactly, but I'm not going to worry about it until I notice something else missing or someone else notices and lets me know about it, in which the case the fix will go into my next update. That's the real reason for this post.

I've also been wondering how to get the movement sounds from the Total War Series and France 1914 into the Panzer Campaign games without having to wait six years for another full round of patches. I'll probably have to wait for the next release in the series before I start cannibalizing, but in the meantime (and also for the benefit of our Testinggruppenfuehrer) I have a few quick observations.

If you load the movement sounds from the First Blitzkrieg into a Panzer Campaigns game you get weird results. All the correct sounds are in there, but the key to which sounds get played when is obviously different. After moving three different ground units and getting helicopter sounds each time I gave up.

Then I tried loading the movement sounds from France 1914 into a Panzer Campaigns game. It almost worked. Infantry made the right crunching sound and the vehicles were either right or close enough. Not too surprising since the game engines are very similar. Then I encountered something which stopped me in my tracks: I made a motorcycle unit go on foot, and to my delight it stopped making motorcycle noises and started crunching along. But then I clicked on a light armored recon vehicle, and it made foot-crunching sounds as well. The sound type getting played was sticky, perhaps because I used the go on foot command, so I bagged the experiment.

I may have found a bug, or the programming for getting the sounds to play correctly in the Panzer Campaigns games wasn't completely in place, or maybe there's just enough difference between France 1914 and a Panzer Campaigns game to skew the movement sound effects.

I'd be really curious to know if the Sealion game has the movement sounds, and if so whether they work without a hitch when transferred to a game that's received a patch in the last year or so.

Anyone have any insights on this?

[Glenn Saunders]

Wow - all this on sounds.

> Anyone have any insights on this?

Certainly

> I'd be really curious to know if the Sealion game has the movement sounds,

No it does not.

> I may have found a bug, or the programming for getting the sounds to play correctly in the Panzer Campaigns games wasn't completely in place,

No Bug - PzC was not coded with Movement sounds although it will be in the next new game.

> When you send out an aerial recon mission it's conducted in absolute silence.

Right - these sounds were not part of the Series when the game came out. Sounds for the recon has been written to the code so the newest ver of the game would play it if the files were present, but the files were not sent in the patch - likely due to file size.

You can copy the entire \MEDIA folder from a new PzC to an older one - as long as you don't mix titles from different series, it should be OK.

> I've also been wondering how to get the movement sounds from the Total War Series and France 1914 into the Panzer Campaign games without having to wait six years for another full round of patches.

LOL - you can take them out of one series, but I have no idea why you would think the code would play them correctly using the PzC COde.

> I'll probably have to wait for the next release in the series before I start cannibalizing,

Actually we have movement sounds in the next game we release.

> but in the meantime (and also for the benefit of our Testinggruppenfuehrer) I have a few quick observations.

I'll bet you do.

> If you load the movement sounds from the First Blitzkrieg into a Panzer Campaigns game you get weird results.

Ya - don't do that - dumb idea really. The PzC EXE is not coded to call those files - so God only knows what you would get.

> Then I tried loading the movement sounds from France 1914 into a Panzer Campaigns game.

Ya - don't do that either.

Wait for the next game to come out and buy a copy of it and you will have correct PzC Sounds for the PzC Series - what a novel idea! :)

FWIW, the issue is not just a few small recon air files - rather a policy of keeping the updates small or as small as possible.

Airborne sounds (and sea invasion) were added in Normandy, so even though there is Airborne in S41 there are no sounds for it in this title.

Storms and the assocated files for this was added with Rzhez so you won't have those files in titles before the 8th title in the series, even though the code has been added for programmed weather and the storms to all the games.

Anyway - on the comment re the time between updates - we update all the games with all teh new features and codes changes on an as needed bases based on input from the guys who play the games and require the features we added for one reason of another.

For example we added the Nuke code to ME67 when someone asked me about some scns they were developing where the feature was needed to support the scns.

[Lowlander]

No doubt these are all specific files, but to take a step back so to speak try this.

I bought a ACW game from a bargain bin in a shopping centre it was a ODD AGE game if you get my drift as I don't want to name the company as it was crap IMO.

Anyhow I changed all the songs/ tunes music files to Wav and popped them into my HPSSIMS ACW games they work really well.

Now I'm on the lookout for their Nappy game.

[Gasbag]

Hi Philippe:

I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to include the sound in your mod. It saved me from digging around in my other games looking for a file.

[Volcano Man]

I can give you a hint (since I created the movement sounds in the FWWC, PzC, and MC series), all the movement sounds are numbered with a prefix from 0 to 12+ with the prefix number being the.... *drum roll* {Unit Class} from the OOB, sequentially. So, if it is "Foot" class, then it will be 0MovementX, if it is the "Ski" class then it is 1MovementX... if the "Bicycle" class then 2MovementX... and so on. So maybe that helps. ;) This same holds true in the MC series, with additional unit classes of course for helicopters and such.

The fact is however, as Glenn said, the next PzC title (whenever that is), and hopefully the next MC title, should have movement sounds - it will probably save you a lot of trouble to just wait for that. At that point, everyone should be able to just take all the sounds from that game and put it in the other game's Media folder and voila, it *should* work. However, keep in mind that whether or not they "work" directly depends on when that particular title was last updated since this was a feature added in recent years.

[-72-]

Considering that anyone that has actually played any of the larger scenarios, knows that the sound load times bog down the play considerably; while the sounds are, I suppose a nice touch, in reality do many people really play with them on?

However, from a purely technical standpoint, if a program is making a 'call' for a particular sound file, and someone has a lot of time on their hands, I suppose if you identify that particular sound file that you want replaced - can't any file of an equal format (say .wav to .wav) be called on -if it is renamed to the file name of the file being replaced?

Which I suppose leads me to the conclusion that if I were to convert Stairway to Heaven in to a .wav file, then assign it the appropriate file name to be called upon by whatever program -then- well, I suppose the load time would be pretty long. (They ought to have a smiley with glasses taped together at the bridge ... I could use it at this point).

Ah well, whatever, seems like making a lot of work for not really all that much of a return -but then again, whenever I assigned air support points in War in Europe -the paper version, I never felt compelled to make airplane noises either. I suppose that's one of those "mileage may vary" non-issues.

[Volcano Man]

Well sure, there are two schools of thought: speed versus immersion. I personally would not dream of playing without the sounds, because it is difficult to get immersed into the colored block shuffling otherwise. But there are those who don't care, all they want is speed in playing the game - however, I have never had a problem with waiting on sounds to play; they don't take that much time and I do have a relatively new PC at the moment.

Oh well, to each their own eh. A good point is made however, it probably isn't worth the effort to do all that is required to make your own sounds, especially since the next game will have them.

[Philippe]

On a side note, we used to talk about these kinds of issues over at Battlefront's Combat Mission site. There, no one would have dreamed of turning the background sounds off. What the discussion usually boiled down to was someone complaining that they were hearing a North American robin when the artillery wasn't firing, and couldn't it be replaced with something a bit more European. The thread usually went downhill from there, and invariably someone would invoke the airspeed of a North African swallow.

[-72-]

In that case all I can say is that the Combat Mission franchise uses a LOT less units than say, a France '40 campaign game scenario to name just one.

But then again, that crowd always has seemed to be in denial that they weren't playing a hex based game too.

[Philippe]

The gist of the long message which I just accidently deleted (and that I don't feel like reconstructing) was that there are some sound differences between Alamein and Tobruk, and that I've included some of the files that Alamein has and Tobruk doesn't to the latest version of my Tobruk mod.

Tobruk and Alamein have different background sounds even though the files have the same numbers and names. I'm leaving the Tobruk background alone until I'm convinced that one set is superior to the other. Tobruk will now have Alamein's sandstorms.

In the meantime I'm starting to worry about bandwidth, so I'm not sure how long I can keep the sound differences posted.

---

In that case all I can say is that the Combat Mission franchise uses a LOT less units than say, a France '40 campaign game scenario to name just one.

But then again, that crowd always has seemed to be in denial that they weren't playing a hex based game too.

They're not playing a hex-based game. Combat Mission is actually a 2D game that uses squares. The 3D visuals are just fluff, only the fluff is so convincing a lot of people actually think it's what's really happening in the game.