A solution for those annoying "ambient" sounds

[seven]

Those annoying oneshots and stingers? Yep, get rid of them.

When people complain about them, others will say just turn off ambient sound. But that's a baby and the bathwater solution. You lose a lot of atmosphere, and some important cues. That supply plane? It's an ambient sound. I like knowing when a crate gets dropped. I also like the birds and crickets and other natural sounds.

I've been trying out a recent mod that can stop all the noise. Mods in the past have done this by repackaging the asset file, reassigning the annoying sounds to silent sounds. It worked, but it meant any time the asset file was updated a new "mod" had to be created. You were also stuck with what the author decided to remove. This new mod works at runtime (a dll) to update the assets, and you can pick and choose which sounds to silence, your own custom list. It seems it will be more robust when it comes to updates also, the current version was written for A21.2 but it's been working fine in 1.0 for me.

The big drawback I see is unless you know the internal names of the sounds it's not easy to select the annoying ones. The author has a default list of sounds to silence, but I found it a bit heavy-handed. I have the sounds from A20 extracted so I've gone through and made my own list. I vaguely recall someone putting the sounds online but I can't recall where. Anyway, the default list is a good start and I think the mod is worth trying for anyone annoyed by the non-ambient sounds. Hopefully enough people will try it and the author will keep it updated.

Ambient Sounds Customizer at https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/4889


This will probably get moved to modding but I think it's more of a general interest topic.

[Blue Hasia]

i never seen people call the ambient sounds anoying. been here since A16 and this is the first post i seen on this topic i can recal.

I want more spooky sounds in game

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by Blue Hasia:

i never seen people call the ambient sounds anoying. been here since A16 and this is the first post i seen on this topic i can recal.

I want more spooky sounds in game

There have been a few threads over the years that get very long in the tooth.

Here is one of the more recent discussions.
Remove scary ambient sounds

[seven]

Originally posted by Blue Hasia:

i never seen people call the ambient sounds anoying. been here since A16 and this is the first post i seen on this topic i can recal.

I want more spooky sounds in game

There have been complaints about the "spooky" sounds going back to the earliest releases. I'd say more than a few topics but more often it's mentioned in more general topics about things people dislike.

I want more spooky sounds too. Are those footsteps real, or just in my head? What's that sound? More of those please. What I don't want is zombie Steve fooling around with the synthesizer he got for Christmas.

[Stormbow]

To me, it's a matter of immersion. If I'm playing a first person game, I want to feel like I'm actually in first person. To be walking down a road and suddenly some bone-jarring racket comes out of nowhere kills the immersion entirely.

I also don't play with music turned on because 1) I don't hear it when I'm playing most of the time anyway, and 2) Immersion; I wouldn't be walking around a zombie-infested wasteland with earbuds and music covering up important sounds.

Those bone-jarring theremin instrumentals should get muted when I turn off the music, imo, but I've said this since A11 and no one cares what I have to say. heh I've chalked this one up to being as likely to change as us getting cans, jars, and clothes back. 🤷‍♂️

[GinsengSamurai]

Those spooky sounds don't bother me one bit. I find it curious that some people are super bothered by them to the point they have a seething hate for them. I mean I have never played any game since Snake, Oregon Trail, and Math Blaster that didn't have at least one irritable thing, but to absolutely hate it the way OP and those threads hate it? Quite insane really. ;)

If TFP can implement a toggle system in the audio settings that toggle which sets of ambient sounds can be disabled/enabled, that would be great. That way, people like the OP can enjoy the game more, without impeding other players who enjoy those spooky sounds.

Dev-side, just assign secondary IDs to the spooky sounds, which can be globally muted in the settings. This is how we would do it in C# and Python-based gaming engines.

[CatPerson]

Nice. Now I/we/anyone can use this link when the question comes up.
Kudos to the person who finally figured out/made/shared a mod that works on current version.

The only "ambient" sound I ever cared for/would want in this game is any rain/storm sounds, because I almost always alter the biome weather so the game is rainy/stormy 100% of the time and I simply find the sound of rain awesome. :P I could do without every single other thing tho, including the owls birds and whatnot so I'm one of those that has kept Ambient "OFF" for years and years.

[Tahnval]

I'm fine with ambient sounds.

The issue I have with some of the "ambient" sounds in 7DTD is that they're not ambient. They're intrusive and they're completely unrelated to the gameworld, so they're not ambient in any way. There isn't a zombie in the gameworld standing next to me and whispering "Oh yes" in my ear. So why is my character hearing that? There isn't an inexplicably powered semi-broken device playing a snippet of a jingle at the wrong speed, so why is my character hearing that? Etc.

Originally posted by seven:

[..]I want more spooky sounds too. Are those footsteps real, or just in my head? What's that sound? More of those please. What I don't want is zombie Steve fooling around with the synthesizer he got for Christmas.

I think it's worse than that because neither zombie Steve nor the synthesizer is there in the gameworld when the not-spooky sounds occur. If zombie Steve was there, fooling around with the synthesizer they got for Christmas, that would make sense, be internally consistent. It would be part of the gameworld. It would also be an interesting way to alert the player to the presence of a zombie. It would also be good storytelling, a poignant reminder that the zombies used to be people.

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by Tahnval:

There isn't a zombie in the gameworld standing next to me and whispering "Oh yes" in my ear. So why is my character hearing that? There isn't an inexplicably powered semi-broken device playing a snippet of a jingle at the wrong speed, so why is my character hearing that? Etc.

Maybe your character was hit on the head by the guy who left you abandoned in your undies in the middle of nowhere, causing brain damage and now you hear stuff.

...but yes, that's why I find those things annoying as well. For me sounds in games should be either: background music to set a tone/mood (whether you like the music is another tale), or sounds relevant to what you're doing in the game (hammering, walking, enemy is nearby making noise, a sink you're near has a drip).

Otherwise it's just jump-scare/nerves on a griddle tactics.

[NickSubtle]

Originally posted by GinsengSamurai:

Those spooky sounds don't bother me one bit. I find it curious that some people are super bothered by them to the point they have a seething hate for them. I mean I have never played any game since Snake, Oregon Trail, and Math Blaster that didn't have at least one irritable thing, but to absolutely hate it the way OP and those threads hate it? Quite insane really. ;)

If TFP can implement a toggle system in the audio settings that toggle which sets of ambient sounds can be disabled/enabled, that would be great. That way, people like the OP can enjoy the game more, without impeding other players who enjoy those spooky sounds.

Dev-side, just assign secondary IDs to the spooky sounds, which can be globally muted in the settings. This is how we would do it in C# and Python-based gaming engines.

It's cool they don't bother you. I think mostly when I've seen players talk about the subject it's more along the lines of "why is there not a separate fader for these weird musical interludes" which is totally my opinion too.

You have a fader for music and a fader for ambience, so why is there music in the ambience? Doesn't make any sense.

Also, it's been there forever! Not only do I think it's mad that there still isn't a separate fader, but I think in the latest beta, it's actually louder than the zombie that's standing right in front of you.

[onanonehand8]

Heck, I want moar ambient anxiety producing sounds. I think the new spider sound sets my skin to yikes mode.