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I'm working on a collection of photorealistic bitmaps and newly-recorded sounds. Now I need a quick favor, since I'm away from my computer with the game on it; I need someone to confirm the list of sound types as I mention in the last paragraph below.

I already have the list of material types as it appears on the HDM wiki, but I need a list of the sounds related to those materials. I remember them as: walking, shuffling, running, jumping up and jump landing.

Sounds
So far, I've recorded that list of sounds with: grass, cement and concrete, gravel and paved road, peat stone, hay grass, slushy mud, snowy grass, snowy wooden planks, snow, and various indoor footstep sounds like wooden flooring, vinyl flooring, and carpet flooring. I know there are various densities of metals and ice used in the game engine, but I don't have access to ice yet... and I could eventually whip up some metal material to walk on, like from i-beams and empty oil or septic tanks....

I also have ambient sounds of a creekbed (appropriate for maps like Tutorial.map) and natural forested ambience. Got some samples of passing cars and overhead airplanes also. I have some indoor ambient sounds like the hum of fluorescent lights, light switches, various doorway sounds, and miscellany like walking up and down a stairwell.

I'm trying to get a decent sound of a flag flapping in the wind. So far, I've only gotten sound from a small plastic flag that you stick in the ground to show stuff like buried electrical lines. I'll have to make a cloth flag around the same shape and size as the CTF flags and try again.

Bitmaps
I have various pictures of mud, grass, snow, snowy grass and hay, wood, and cement/concrete. I will also snap some images of peat stone. I have footstep images in snow, and I'll get some images of footprints in muddy grass.

My postprocessing work involves making the images tilable and making the sounds usable as foley sfx.


Any suggestions? Someone please check the list and let me know if these are the only foley sounds used by the engine: walking, shuffling, running, jumping up and jump landing. I probably only need dirt, sand, those three thicknesses of metal, and ice.

Here's my ToDo List:
- pictures of footsteps on all malleable terrains (dirt, sand, peat stone, grass, mud, leaves -- snow is done)
- sounds of footsteps on (dry) dirt, sand, metal thick, metal thin, metal hollow, ice, glass, stone, rubber, water, plastic
- sound of CTF-sized flag slowly flapping in the wind (I'll make a new flag that has an lsnd as an attachment -- could use the covenant terminal for that)

Are the spartan's and master chief's shoe soles made out of metal or rubber?

I was trying to figure this out from the picture here: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Initials_on_John%27s_Boot
and the information here does not say anything about the soles of the boots, except that the boots are covered in armor (no duh, Sherlock): http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/VZG7_Armored_Boots



Based upon the foley sound effects of running on metal and dirt and so on, they sound like heavy-duty plated boots (aka "boondocks" as they say in the wiki) with mostly rubber soles.

I'm making recordings using steel-toe leather boots, which sounds slightly less thunky than solid metal boots. But you be the judge.

They make clanging sounds on metal, so I presume they are some sort of plastic/alloy.

The only hollow metal sound I can safely record myself walking on is a rusted old oil tank. Thing is, it sounds just like what it is; it doesn't sound like a metal catwalk like the game sound effect resembles.

I added plastic to my list, since I discovered a nice plastic sheet I can walk and jump on. (It doesn't look like we're using it for anything important, but I will need to make sure of that before I tread on it with my steel-toed boots.)

Recording sound effects is fun when there is a definitive list and use for them.

I'm done with the sample gathering process, with the exception of ice and sand bitmaps and foley sounds. I'm going to wait until I head back to my home state before I get those: ice probably from an ice rink, and sand from the beach or a playground.

I've got quite a variety here. For example, not simply grass, but long green grass, clover-filled grass, hay, hay with twigs, wet grass, muddy/dirty grass, and puddle-filled grass. I've also got detailed sounds of rain on grass, several examples of creekbed running water, cloudy and blue skies, footsteps on leaves... you name it, I've got a sample of it!

Here are the general materials that I've sampled in bitmap and sound. I included footstep bitmaps and sounds and tire tracks when applicable:

1. Dirt (muddy and dry)
2. Sand (beach -- coming soon)
3. Stone (concrete, gravel, pavement, boulder, pebbles)
4. Snow (thick and thin over grass)
5. Wood (planks, treebark, logs, laminate flooring, doors)
6. Metal - hollow (oil tank)
7. Metal - thin (metal siding, shiny and dull aluminum)
8. Metal - thick (i-beams, tractor front-end loader)
9. Rubber (tires, floormats)
10. Glass (frosted, clear dark blue)
11. Plastic (trashcan lid, empty gallon jug of water, shoe mat)
12. Water (puddles, creeks)
13. Leaves (forest floor, leafy grass)
14. Ice (ice rink -- coming soon)
15. Grass (dry, wet, green, brown, hay)
... and then quite a few novel materials including carpeting, vinyl floor, and a tabletop. I also have some engine sounds and tire tracks for the warthogs and various other ambient and special effect sounds. But I don't think I'll be touching the alien and unnatural sound effects in the game, like forcefields.

Editing Notes:

- footstep samples are one step at a time, but there is a difference between walking steps (crouched) and running steps (normal)
- normally, there are 6 permutations for each footstep, but it sounds best with at least 17 permutations -- ideally, use 20 or more variations of each sound
- durations of each foley sound effect should be as uniform in length as possible, so that running doesn't sound awkward

Dude, you know that halo.wikia.com is dead, right? The whole website has been moved to halopedian.com. Some Halo fan offered to give halopedia its own domain. And they accepted. So, if you want more info on the Boots, go to halopedian.com (http://www.halopedian.com/VZG7_Armored_Boots).

It's not dead, just unused, there's still info there. Just because it's no longer supported doesn't make it dead.

I know. But since no one is on there, the new domain is gonna have more information.

Sound suggestions:

Most of the Ghost Recon 1 sounds, guns, foley, ambience, etc.
Aircraft flyovers from here.
A whole bunch of sfx I can link you via youtube if I wasn't too lazy.

The Ghost Recon and Rogue Spear Demo models I already tried converting without success a while back. But the sounds would be able to be used, you're right.
Edit: The link you gave was really helpful. I might supplement my own recordings with some from there. But I guess that would be stealing... bleh. Besides, I probably won't need anything outside of what I already have.

See, Sparky, I told you sounds are awesome!
But I got served anyway.

Yeah I get most of my aircraft sounds for my movies from there. If you can get some stuff like F-18 flyover #3 in halo and turn down the volume, that would be sweet.

In order for it to work really well, I would need to add a marker below the model where the player would be standing.

So say you have a pilot flying overhead a player who is several meters below the aircraft. The marker on the vehicle would be placed several meters below the aircraft, and the looping sound would be attached to that marker, so that the flyover sound is only heard by players near that flyover marker, not by the pilot or anyone the aircraft is not flying over. The maximum distance of the sound would be limited to about 10 meters.

Or have like 10 markers all at different levels beneath it, so you can hear it at different levels depending how high it is?