v270 Audio channels and sounds volume

[Warg]

There are 3 audio channels (sound, music, voice) but in the sound channel the natural sounds (wind, footstep, howling and so on ) are mixed with the activity sounds that are very loud (breaking a branch, searching something, cold babbling and so on). I cannot immerse myself in the atmosphere, hearing the weather so to say, because of the volume of my activities. I would like to be able to tune activity volume and natural sounds volume separately so that atmosphere be maintained but without exceeding polite noise levels daytime and especially nighttime.

Also, the footstep sound in snow isn't the most convincing I've heard. I would guess it is from snow close to melting point, wet snow and might be ok for that blueish snow/ice but at the temperatures in game, the snow would sound crisp, abrasive (perhaps you remember the sound of footsteps in The Thing game).

You could include 3 - 4 outdoor footstep sounds, each for a type of snow in game. It might do to have several footstep sounds for each type of snow, alternating them for realism, perhaps with a small delay when passing discontinuity zones (like when getting off a boulder, pausing a split second to choose your path and having a heavy step when you do).

I mean you are Canadians and probably have 20 words for snow!

P.S. You could make the sound of footstep temperature dependant, though I'm not sure: it would be an indicator of "it is getting colder, I need to get going".

[WinterWhite]

I agree with separating action sounds from natural souds