Can we get a way to turn off

Can we possibly get, a way in the Sound Settings or Gameplay Settings, to make it so we can turn off the Attack and Under Attack Bell/Alarm? It’s supremely annoying when you’re in a 4x4 battle, constantly at war, with this constantly going off. Just a general add-in would be great.

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Have you thought about how you are going to defend yourself if you don’t hear that notification? 11

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I have not, however when you’re constantly at war pushing the enemy back, with a never ending stream of troops and all you hear is the alarm going off constantly and nothing else it get supremely annoying and it makes me not want to play.

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Ok I can somewhat understand that, however usually that is not the case.

Perhaps you are often playing maps such as black forest that don’t see much early action and are mostly centered around one chokepoint.

Would it not be better to ask someone to make a sound mod to reduce the volume for that particular sound? Since I would consider it to be the most important one in the game.

This sound is like pain, it’s super annoying and you wish it could go away but when you think about it you realize it’s something 100% necessary

I’m right there with you, K405NK0NFU510N! In fact, I posted the following back in 2017 for AoE:DE… and have similarly mentioned a number of times in various places for AoE2:HD and AoE2:DE hoping to reach someone within the company with some pull who agrees to incite the change and implement the improvement.

  • “May we have separate audio sliders to adjust the volume of certain ‘loud’ and/or repetitious sounds? For example, the battle horn in AoE2 and 3 are very loud and repetitive, and a few of the units are, similarly, annoyingly loud/frequent (monk conversions and twinkles). Just use your best judgment to give us a few extra sliders you think a fair number of people might want. For battle horn, maybe even (also have) a ‘frequency’ slider so we can adjust how often it sounds (e.g., |infrequent|----|normal|----|frequent|)”

For AoE2:HD, I had to personally customize the volume of each of the above sounds using my own audio editing software, which I don’t feel should be necessary.

I’m actually very surprised by how so few people are bothered by the loud and incessant battle horn sounds. Or at least if they are annoyed, nobody ever speaks up. Which means the devs won’t change things I will have to customize the sounds again on my own, if DE lets me like HD did… but I will probably have no control over how often they play.

Early on in a match, I see the benefit of having more frequent battle horn sounds; probably every time you’re attacked. Makes sense. But as the match progresses and battles are constantly going on, the sound happens wayyyy too much. We know battles are raging constantly and everywhere, we don’t need a sound to remind us every 2 seconds.

Maybe a visual cue can be added and leveraged. An icon in the lower-right corner, for example that pulses red for a moment or something. Or a thin red line that displays along the top-border of the lower-right panel. I won’t go so far as saying having a visual pulse around the entire perimeter of the game’s viewport… that’d be way overkill. Something subtle, yet noticeable and not in-your-face. A visual cue, if even necessary, would serve as a balance so we don’t hear nearly as many battle horn sounds.

Plus this visual feedback would help those who don’t hear very well… so there could be an Accessibility component to it – unless this kind of visual indicator battle horns is already in the game for that.

In the end, all’s I’m saying is, surely, there must be a better way…??

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I agree on the volume sliders for important sounds such as battle horns.

I disagree on the frequency slider, I believe everyone shoud be on the same time interval for fairness. Otherwise one might be forced to select a higher frequency, not to receive less notifications than his enemy. Essentially this would force a competitive player to have the sound on more frequently, just in case, probably against his own pleasure. And I would like to mention (I play on HD) that also lategame I consider the battle sounds highly important, when you are fighting on 4 fronts there is so much happening.

I agree on a brief visual cue, I would suggest the border of the minimap making a subtile red pulse. Only behind a toggle.

Since 99% of my games are Single-player vs. AI, or with a friend vs. AI, I should have every right to have less frequent battle horn sounds… and it wouldn’t impact you at all.

The notion of there being some sort of battle horn competition with your online competitor regarding who has more frequent horn blasts seems odd to me. If that’s a concern, then every online multiplayer player should just have the most frequent battle horn sounds enabled. And as it would be an option in the menus, you’d have every right to make it that way… while I would have every right to how I want to have it when I play all my single-player matches where I don’t need a reminder once per second that battles are happening.

Reminds me of when you call a company and you’re sitting on hold for 20 minutes but you hear a message every 15 seconds saying your call is important to them and the call will be answered in the order it was received. Dear Company - Please repeat that again! I forgot what you told me 15 seconds ago. Is my call important to you? Darnit, I can’t remember. Will my call ever be answered? Oh! Thank goodness, it will be answered in the order it was received. Got it!! Nothing like hearing that 4 times per minute, 40 times per 10 minutes, and 80 times per 20 minutes.

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Wow I typed a whole comment, and then I came to this simple realisation;

A frequency toggle is not a problem, as long as it can only reduce the frequency.

So [infrequent] and [normal]

Haha no problem.

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Ha, no problem :slight_smile:

If the frequency of battle horn sounds currently in AoE2:DE is the upper threshold of the frequency slider, that’d definitely be okay with me. I personally certainly don’t need more.

I imagined some people might want even more frequency than default, though, which is why in my proposed slider I mentioned an even higher frequency of occurrence. But, again, I’m okay with “Normal” being the highest frequency. By default, the game could ship with that setting; but I’d have the option to lower it to a more comfortable amount.

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I’m happy that we can agree! GG

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The battle horn has been really erratic lately, after the RoR DLC arrived…

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Is it possible to just change the sound file? Or direct whatever script to use a different sound?

I wish you luck in this endeavor. You see, back in the olden days (HD and before), all you had to do was edit, swap out, or add .MP3s into the appropriate folders. Left mouse drag-and-drop, done.

  • Want more taunts? Just drop 100 .MP3s of your choice in the taunt folder.
  • Want to lower the volume of certain sounds? Just quickly/easily find the appropriate .MP3 files, open them up in some free audio editing program, lower the levels, and save. (Yes, I backed them up first in case I wanted to bring them back or had issues, like any normal person would do.)

But nowadays, you need to have time, energy, patience, and what’s tantamount to a Ph.D in Audio Engineering. Check this out:

With custom taunts in HD and earlier versions, friends and I would have a wonderful time playing online and having fun with the taunts we loaded. Now with DE, I dread playing online. There’s a ridiculous doorbell sound with every chat, it’s delayed every time you chat, I assume every third message still gets filtered, and we can’t have those custom taunts. Needless to say, the new chat annoyances combined with an inability to add our custom taunts, killed the joy of unranked private matches we did, so I never play.

Even if we did spend two years figuring out WWise and loading custom taunts, their use would be marred by the jarring doorbell sound and delay every time you chat. Sorry, but no thanks!

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You should be able to customize the attack alert based on which enemy faction or region is under attack

It hardly takes two years. Twenty minutes at most. If you’re capable of using your finger to click a designated button with your mouse then you’re capable of creating a taunt mod within half an hour. Did you check the video at the bottom of the guide you linked? You don’t need to find anything by yourself or scratch your head. Every single minute step, every button press and click is designated by narration, caption, arrow, red highlighting and the periphery is dimmed to help further highlight.

It takes you two years to follow a step-by-step walkthrough video which is 10 minutes and 34 seconds? The video doesn’t just include how to use wwise, it also includes exactly how to install it, how to open it, how to import your custom sound as a mod to your game, how to test that the mod works, and even how to publish your mod. Not only that, it shows how to publish both via website and in-game. Did I really make such a terrible job of it that you need an audio engineering degree and study it for two years?

Besides, what’s wrong with the existing original sounds mods? If you have a problem with the selection of those, all you have to do is go to the mod folder and delete the ones you don’t like.

I just double-checked myself and the existing original sounds mod by Harooo does indeed include the original chat received sound. Did you even try the existing original sounds mod?

Please know my words were being critical of the required use of WWise and the hoops to jump through to get audio files compatible with the game, as evidenced by your very lengthy write-up. It’s not a critique of your write-up or ability to make instructions, per se, so don’t take it personally. You’re just doing the best you can with the deck you were dealt: a WWise deck, and a Steam forum thread UI/UX in which to play in. The cards are against you. (UPDATE: I see you say you didn’t actually write it, so I want to say that here. Leaving the rest of my post intact.)

If you are a DE dev or a sound engineer and are the one responsible for implementing WWise, then I’m sorry to be critical of that. From a dev’s perspective, WWise is probably awesome. From a casual player of the game, though, and one who was used to easy drag-and-drop of MP3s (a very popular audio format), surely you can admit the old MP3 route was probably night-and-day easier for most people to do… and didn’t require a 2,750 word essay to convey the basics. With AoE2:HD and its predecessors, I needed no training or tutorials, and used existing audio editing software I had, when necessary.

I am capable of this

Nope, never got that far; didn’t even know it existed. Any time I looked at your post over the years, I’d get a few paragraphs in and just throw in the towel (i.e., give up). It was evident that it’d require too much time, energy, and patience than what I was willing to invest.

Truthfully, that video should be at the top of your post there. Instead, it is at the very bottom (literally). It breaks things down nicely and doesn’t lead to burnout as quickly as paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of text does. You see, in order to even see the vid or get to it, look at all the text you must read or wade through first:

No matter how concise or clear your written instructions are, it’s a lot of info, and a lot of info to figure out/sort out the exact steps needed for things. Even once you get to the “Taunt” section of your write-up, which I did a couple times in years past, you immediately say that WEM files are needed and “I cannot provide specific help with that, however user-created guides for doing this are available” – which, to me, seemed like yet one more rabbit hole of WWise nonsense to go down… so I bailed.

Regardless, to my credit, I actually installed and registered WWise in early 2021. However, I gave up on the whole notion of adding my old AoE2:HD taunts or any new ones, or editing loud/annoying sounds, because the process defeated me. I quickly lost interest in the thought. Too much effort.

I have enough things in life to worry about than to go through a WWise obstacle course and through WEM hoops, and to read a lengthy write-up/process, when it used to be a simple drag-and-drop method that also required no mod publishing or anything extra. Knowing the past history of getting taunts into AoE and editing sounds in the game, it made me apathetic when I saw how many steps were now needed with DE.

Again, that’s no knock against your write-up. It’s because WWise, WEMs, Audacity (and I now learn mod publishing) are needed.

Your write-up seems pretty clear with concise language (at least for the small parts I’ve read), and appears to be written and layed-out better than most tutorials, but is just more info in sum total than I want to read and more steps than I want to go through to add taunts.

I watched your video a couple days ago at your prompting, though, and that gives me hope. I will now likely try making WEMs at some point. Thank you

At the sheer sight of your lengthy write-up and diving a few paragraphs in, I admit this was not evident at all.

Yes, when one never sees the bottom of your post because there are ~2,750 words and a multitude of paragraphs, sections, and bulletpoints, in a narrow Steam forum UI before it.

I never said anything was wrong with this mod. I installed it years ago, but because it has been a very long time since I actually played AoE2:DE (years), I admit I forgot about it. That is a nice reminder and gives me hope for a brighter DE future, free from the annoying doorbell chat sound. Hopefully, chatting with friends in a private unranked match vs. AI on DE doesn’t have the lag/delay still like it used to, where each chat ran through the censor filter at a snail’s pace compared to the time chats took to submit on AoE2:HD and earlier.

The chat filter is another barrier to re-entry for me. I got tired of the delays and the censor filter deleting completely tame/innocent messages because it had no clue what was being typed, and it would take five times and two minutes to say one thing when I’m trying to play the game.

PS: If you think my post is long, it’s only like 900 words according to my writer software… and it’s all just casual chit-chat. Not a bunch of instructions/processes you need to absorb and memorize. Now imagine 3x more words than that and having to absorb, memorize/retain, and decipher all of them as we need to do for WWise/WEM instructions. That’s what your 2,750 word post is (unless we watch your video first, which being at the very bottom, many people may never get to).

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To be clear to begin with, I am not the author of the guide on Steam. That would be StepS, who was kind enough to include my video at the end of the guide.

I do agree his guide probably needs a table of content, as it’s not an essay but rather a page of 6-7 quite self-contained smaller guides. Bottom line is if all you’re interested from audio modding is custom taunts then the only part which applies is chapter 5 through 5.2 and that’s only 250 words including headlines.

Edit: but I have full understanding that you have a sour memory of DE if you haven’t played it since 2020. I remember how absolutely god awful much about the game was back then. It’s much, much better today. Unfortunately the chat filter is still there but it’s not as insane as it used to be. I think the chat delays have been fixed too since I can’t recall that happening in the past few years. but I remember that was a thing a few years ago. But thankfully the devs do their best and give us an update every or every other month still (even if it’s more or less two steps forwards, one step back 11)

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Ohhh, sorry, I thought you made that text guide, too. I realize Taunts was in one or two little sections, but after getting there after reading stuff above those sections, and the words saying he’s not able to help with WWise or its WEM file format and linking to a video there instead, I rolled my eyes and closed the page each time I looked over the years. Too much effort required, it seemed.

I’ve jokingly referred to the audio engineer degree a few times over the years… since early 2020. It became my catchphrase and nobody ever corrected me except you. (Though, I now see I started more with “pseudo- audio engineer” and similar phrases.)

So if your video is a recent addition, as you say, then there’s a strong chance it wasn’t there when I more genuinely looked at that page the first time a few years ago. Ever since then, I simply link to the page and repeat my catchphrase.

Some of my past usages of the phrase:

Thanks for clarifying. And I’m really happy to hear the game has improved a lot since then. I look forward to adding some taunts, lowering some sound file volumes, and trying again!

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So I finally tried this out. WWISE can’t import .MP3s?? Wow. Now I have to convert 150+ MP3s to WAVs somehow. Fun!

Again, adding taunts to AoE2 pre-DE was an absolute breeze. In the good old days, there was no WWISE download to do. No WWISE registrations, Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policies, a bunch of legalese to agree to. No conversions, imports, and mod creations, etc. Just drag and drop to you taunts folder and you’re done.

Regardless. Your video is clear, concise, and quite helpful. Thanks again for making it

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