Ironically enough, I haven't progressed in making the video because I was having the same kind of problems with dw2bt that you were. I could (should) make a video specifically about how to replace audio, but things like models, textures, and various model-related maps are beyond my knowledge currently. In any case, might as well wait for 'Q' to release the new version of dw2bt with improved functionality.

Looking forward to seeing your video on how to make an asset bundle...... my mod is kind of stuck at the moment trying to work out how to make a bundle.

guys, it's astonishing how much better the game is. the little burp when someone is attacked, i am so happy with it. pulls the attention just enough. so kick ass this mod.

we ALL hated the original sounds! that's why we did it! :)

Will have to try it now. Thank you very much for the effort (I really did hate the original sounds).

if it weren't for you, we'd still be shaking our fist at the sky, yelling 'damm you sky!'. :) great job!

Alright, I updated it. You guys were really great with the sound effects and all the discussion. I'm still working on the video of how to make an asset bundle. I hope to finish that soon.

i'm ready to call this one good. i really do like my synth bad, i'm not saying that because i did it, i really prefer it. again, radically different from the other 2 sounds, it just goes thud, befitting an explo ship attacked in the middle of nowhere. it could have been just a tad longer, but i'm not gonna let the perfect be the enemy of the good, it's fine! you did an excellent job on the volume of the sounds too! i haven't heard the disaster sound yet but i don't care so much as 99.9% of alerts you will hear are good ones. as long as no one says my god what a horrible sound, i'm good. i will listen a bit more to be sure, but right now i'm ecstatic at how it came out. i'm sending you a friend request. thanks again.

What do you think of this one?: https://drive.google.com/file/d/168Dqg6nHXpm9jvdOFw6ZB15NyfaX3Tiv/view?usp=sharing
UI_Message1 - 'pop'
UI_Message2 - A - Blip 1 (low pitch) - 4
UI_Message3 - Eddy bad
UI_Alert - A - Swoosh (low pitch)

I tried to get the volumes about the same.

i'm just waiting for an earthquake now. only time i've ever wished an earthquake would happen. :)

I can still make new sounds, but I also prefer test 2 (maybe different danger sound)

(test2) the combat bad sound is... not what i would have chosen. :) it's not saying 'bad thing', and it's too percussive compared to the other sounds. we can do better than this.

and spy stuff goes dong as well. there is a decent amount of that sound happening in fact.

meet new civ goes dong as well. (writing these down as i hear them)

test2 alert sound is really holding up well under default policy setting. so far, i am 0% annoyed. :)

the same dong when you discover a pirate dude. it's fine. just needs to be softer. it's great so far.

discovering a debris field triggers a 'dong' bell sound. so that's 'something happened but big' it's quite nice as it is radically different from the 'something happened' sound but it still says 'something happened' sound. (still using version 2 here). it could be quieter by 10-15% but that sound is really ok.

would you be so kind to make a version with my low synth 'bad' sound please? i just want to see if my instinct was right. pleease. test2 normal, my synth as bad, the rest whatever. thank you.

ok so we have 98% of use cases covered by the 2 main sounds, like i thought. thanks for reminding me to enable character alerts for my new game/default policies test.

I also liked the test 2 the most. I'll tweak that more when I get back home.

There are 4 sounds (as far as I know):
UI_Message1 - 'something happened'
UI_Message2 - I've only heard this from espionage-related notifications.
UI_Message3 - combat notification
UI_Alert - colony events

for the 'bad sound', my baseline is "exploration ship attacked by gravillex out in the middle of nowhere". now, how bad is that? not very bad. but you still want to look there in case it says 'destroyer attacked...' and there's something going on you want to see. and it's not like 'war declared' which needs a 'you really better check this out, i mean, the game paused and everything' sound. anyway, yeah, the sound says 'bad, but not that bad'. there, should ba a piece of cake. :)

wait there are 3 sounds??? what, is it 'bad sound' and 'really bad sound? is that all of them?

quick initial feedback: test 2 normal event sound, is perfect. don't look any farther, we have a winner. it could be softer by about 10%. to test, zoom in on a busy starport, ships coming and going, machinery humming. wait for sound to trigger. it should be a touch louder than that background noise.

i can't tell about the bad... sounds? they are all mixed too loud and they sound jarring at that volume. do the same above test for the bad sounds too. i honestly think i could be happy with some of that if it was mixed better. as it is it's just going 'dong' or whatever and bugging me because it's too loud. i'll do some better testing in a bit.

@Baronfuming

Thanks for the different versions! I downloaded them now and will try them in the evening!

And a 3rd one:

A - Sub Bass Stab (low pitch) + A Blip
A - Bass Stab (low pitch)
E - Blip (low pitch)
A - Swoosh (low pitch) (I forgot the UI_Alert for the previous 2, which is used for colony events like a tsunami or sandstorm. I may need to go back and add a sound for those.)

Anyway, please tell me what you think.

Another one with short sounds:
Normal volume bubble
C# - Blip (low pitch) - 3
A - Blip 1 (low pitch) - 4

I uploaded the first test to the drive with the sounds you suggested, Eddy.
A blip 1 high pitch
C# blip low pitch
G# blip 1 high pitch

I'll put together a couple different ones to compare.

again, volume level is critical here. the same exact sound can go from 'oh god that hurts my ears' to ''man that is the perfect sound' by mixing it in with the other game sounds well.

the real playtest: get to early midgame, save, put original sounds back in, play for 20 minutes. load save, put new sounds in, play 20 minutes. impressions? again, i'm here ready to do that. stick a test up here, i'll ruin your life telling you about it. :)

once the devs add more message filters and the ability to say 'don't bug me about this any more', we *might* be able to get more creative with the sounds. but we're not there yet, so...

when it comes to repeated triggers of sounds, just remember what that original 'shudder' bad event sound sounded like triggered 13 times in a row. i don't think we will ever get to 'never annoying', given that it's just 2 sounds and those 2 have to represent a myriad of events, we just need it to get to 'much less annoying'.

I think shorter lengths would become less annoying overall considering the amount of repetition. The lengths of the sounds you made seem fine. Maybe ~0.1-0.3 seconds would be ideal.

@Baronfuming,

So what's better, just very short sounds?

I started working on it last night, but didn't have enough time to finish. Thanks so much for the sounds. I tried a few in-game, but something I didn't think about was the effect of multiple successive notifications. I will keep trying different combinations until it feels 'right'.

i'm awfully excited to see what he comes up with!

I like C Smooth Woosh / C Shwoosh / C# - Blip (low pitch) - 2 for "Attacked" notifications
and C# - Blip (low pitch) or A - Blip 1 (high pitch) for "Regular" notifications

i'm guessing most people want:

short
not annoying :)

short we can quantify, but the not annoying part... :)

i vote
A blip 1 high pitch
C# blip low pitch
G# blip 1 high pitch

for the event sounds. for bad, i honestly have no idea, i didn't hear anything that grabbed me off the bat but then again i'd have to hear in context eh?

I added a bunch of stabby, blippy sounds with some EQ and different FX. (Subfolder "NoDMoD")

There is a lot I can do, so I don't know what people prefer, high pitch, low pitch, sharp, smooth sounds? I hope that a few of them will suffice!

and doing a vid where you explain how to do this is (chef's kiss) so awesome. should be a piece of cake to remix those weapon sounds lol! :)

if you could just upload a version with new sounds, 'subtle notifications experimental' - i'm retired, i have a bunch of time to playtest the crap out of it and give feedback. i'm ready to get annoyed by my sounds! :)

I think you can make subfolders. If not, just upload directly to the folder. I'm at work now (), but I can bundle whatever there is when I get home. I'll make a video of the whole Stride asset bundle process for reference and to advance the state of DW2 modding.

@Baronfuming & @EddyVegas
I just came home, so I did't have time yet, I will compile a bunch of short notes and upload them as soon as I get around to it! Will let you know when I do (can I make sub folders in your google folder?)

ok man sounds are uploaded. i sent a batsignal to NoDMoD too. cheers.

ok that technical stuff is important. ok i'm on it. the main thing will be the volume, the loudness, as everything is 'premixed' within the game. loud enough to say 'look at me', but soft enough to say 'look at me if you're not too busy'. i'll get back to ya, thanks again.

The sound format for DW2 bundles are .wav files with the 'signed 16-bit PCM encoding'. Once we have the audio just right, then we 'just' have to drag & drop them into Stride (preserving the filepath of the sounds we want to replace) and rename the files accordingly. I don't know about music notes, so feel free to upload anything to that folder (anyone with the link should be able to upload).

copy/paste link into browser to hear the sounds, steam doesn't like it

first of all, thank you for continuing to work on this. If we can come up with something that works, i will paypal you for your time. it's worth it to me, it's making the whole game 10% better. i so appreciate what you're doing!

the new sounds are better, but still not 'it' in my opinion. i'm convinced we need actual musical notes. what if i get the synth out and upload a couple sounds to soundcloud? i guess NoDMoD could do the same? is that mono or stereo? is it hard to inject new sounds into what you've already done? if not hard, maybe get 2 or 3 versions we could playtest?

you must think i'm crazy. i finally heard the 'something happened' sound by cranking my speakers to max.i am getting the impression of a high pitched squeal, that's what's coming across to me? it's not what i would have chosen. :) a short 'boop' sound, high midrange, would do the trick.

the 'bad thing' pop sound is really growing on me. not because it evokes bad stuff, but because of how short it is. the sound you eventually pick could be a tiny bit longer than that, i think, but that is the ballpark.

something happened louder by 25% (it's inaudible right now)
something bad louder 10%

thank you for anything you can do on this!

@Baronfuming, as I had the intention of doing that kind of mod, but you already did it... if you need help with sound design, I can help, I have over 6 years of experience with sound design (electronic music).

another idea for the 'something bad happened' sound: you know the sound when the contestant gives the wrong answer on a game show? a sort of low buzzer sound? now obviously we can't have a loud grating sound like that and have people jumping out of their chairs every time a freighter gets attacked, but something along those lines? advantage: it would be very short as opposed to uh oh to allow the message spam be over with quickly. you just need to lower the 'intensity' from WRONG!!! to 'whoops, better look over here'. i hope this is useful to you, i wish i could do it myself but i don't have the chops.

man you are taking one for the team. thanks so much.

i bought DW when it first came out. after playing 20 minutes i stopped and looked for the .wav to change it. if i remember correctly it was some kind of klaxon? some ahoooga sound? OMG it was so bad. so i replaced the wav. now here we are, 2023, and they still don't have that whole soundscape thing down yet.