AI tank engine sounds

[Gentlespie]

Hello! I have another request for engine sounds. I have done a few tests with swapping out the "generic" AI sounds for some tanks with their "player" sound and i found out it worked with no problem.
For example i went on T-80U from EngineNameAi:t="engine_tank_ai_turbine" to EngineNameAi:t="engine_t80" and did that with T-72 and Tiger sounds and i've noticed that they worked fine. I recorded videos of those tests (of course the volume levels aren't adjusted for distance as well as proper AI sounds and i'm also using sound mods so they are different from the proper vanilla sounds).
My request would be if it's possible to make AI sounds be the actual player sound, that way there's more variety in the battlefield and you can distinguish tanks better :)

• Tiger: https://youtu.be/Ejm1cJ0Is_0
• T-72: https://youtu.be/6iuww1Qxc28
• T-80: https://youtu.be/jCovN3oG9GE

[Uchuujin01]

Hello! Unfortunately. it is not possible to do it in this way. Because player's sound events are much "heavier" then "_ai" sound events. When you get all the vehicles on the map with player's engines, game become unstable, due to memory overload. We must avoid of that situations. So, we must do some noticable amount of work on unique "_ai" engines sound events.

[Uchuujin01]

Now we have 8 types of "_ai" engines sound events. Player's engine sounds have about 26 sound events. It is a very huge amount of memory, for 32-64 players on map.

[Gentlespie]

What if, you make AI sounds like engine_t34_ai or engine_su100_ai, and you copy paste the existing "8 types". For example you create the engine_t34_ai and you copy the "engine_tank_ai_middle" parameters to it? That way there will be ways for modders to make their own separate AI sounds (if you can't understand what i said because im bad at explaining i could try to explain it in another way). That way they wont be as heavy as the real player sounds and it will be easier to mod then :)

[Uchuujin01]

As I wrote already, it will not work, now we have not enought RAM for such engine sound events diversity. Game will work sometimes, and sometimes not. It will became unstable. So, we must prepare the game for such significant changes.

[Gentlespie]

Aaaah, i see, it then needs a whole game engine change (like from current Dagor 5.0 to Dagor 6.0) thanks for clarification!

[Uchuujin01]

It need not such big changes, but some significant work. In out plans to do this, but not asap.

[Gentlespie]

I've also been digging around the files (namely sound_studio.blk) and noticed that the tank engines have "lod" that limits them to 4 sounds at 200m, does that parameter mean 4 engine sounds max near you or is it something else? It's also there for plane engines where its 6 engines at 3000m.

[Uchuujin01]

Yes, you got it right )