Starvation sounds could be music to our ears

[Bruno Willis]

Isn't it wonderful that we can customize the instrument which our seraph uses to scream their pain? 

The problem is that it's always the same few sounds, regardless of what caused the pain, and the repeated hooting that you get for starvation doesn't sound like hunger pangs, it sounds like you are stubbing your toe a lot. Would you prefer it if starvation cause more of a steady, melancholy tune, which slowly got louder and more frantic the closer to death you got? Or would sad music make you more tolerant of starvation?

I would like it if the sounds lined up with the source of pain more, personally. Freezing to death could produce some interesting frozen instrument sounds too. 

[LadyWYT]

I think a different sort of sound, like a loud stomach growl, would be more interesting and useful. That way the player immediately knows both what the problem is and how to solve it, instead of hearing a generic "hurt" sound and needing to figure out if it was a monster, hunger, cold, fire, or something else. 

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

Or would sad music make you more tolerant of starvation?

But this is also why the sounds are as aggressive as they are. If it was just the occasional complaint from the character, it would be much easier for the player to end up ignoring/missing entirely, and starve to death as a result.

[Bruno Willis]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I think a different sort of sound, like a loud stomach growl, would be more interesting and useful. That way the player immediately knows both what the problem is and how to solve it, instead of hearing a generic "hurt" sound and needing to figure out if it was a monster, hunger, cold, fire, or something else.

Yeah, that gets me very stressed, quite often. It does get me running for my food bowl, but more because I can't stand the sound than because I need to eat.

I imagine a sound designer might be able to make a stomach growl like sound with each of the instruments they're currently using, although I'm not sure if the musical vocalization is the long-term vision?

[Yerik]

I’d love for the starving sound to be different. I can’t tell you how many times I’m playing with someone and they suddenly panic, convinced they’re being attacked by something unseen. I rush over to help, only to discover there’s nothing there—just their sheepish, ‘…I forgot to eat again.’ 

[LadyWYT]

10 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I imagine a sound designer might be able to make a stomach growl like sound with each of the instruments they're currently using, although I'm not sure if the musical vocalization is the long-term vision?

The musical vocals are just to represent the character's voice, without actually having to worry about voice acting or making up a language(which can be a real problem, given that Simlish gets mistaken for English). The musical notes also hold an edge over real grunts/groans, since the choice of instrument and pitch, in conjunction with appearance choices, can suggest the character's overall personality as well. For example, the sax can suggest a character that is quite loud and expressive, while the trumpet suggests a character that is quite old. The oboe could be your friendly neighborhood librarian lady, or the Karen-esque soccer mom.

As for a stomach growl sound effect, I don't think that really needs to be matched to the character voiceset. The sound is fairly universal, and it also saves some development time and disk space if it's just a general sound effect and not tuned to character voice.

[Bruno Willis]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The sound is fairly universal, and it also saves some development time and disk space if it's just a general sound effect and not tuned to character voice.

Would a deep drum roll or the creaking of some sort of mechanism work for you, tone and lore wise?

[LadyWYT]

19 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

Would a deep drum roll or the creaking of some sort of mechanism work for you, tone and lore wise?

I would just make it a literal stomach growl.  A deep drum roll or creaky mechanical sound could be too easily confused with something else, like rifts, temporal instability in general, or standard creaky machine parts.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

A deep drum roll or creaky mechanical sound could be too easily confused with something else, like rifts, temporal instability in general, or standard creaky machine parts.

exactly why we need it.

[Venusgate]

23 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I think a different sort of sound, like a loud stomach growl, would be more interesting and useful. That way the player immediately knows both what the problem is and how to solve it, instead of hearing a generic "hurt" sound and needing to figure out if it was a monster, hunger, cold, fire, or something else. 

You could just make the regular talking sounds reverbed to represent "internal troubles"

[Evilel]

It makes me wonder if the audio file could easily be changed around.. and if it's all being played from one audio file.. because getting hit by a bear and having the Wilhelm scream would be fun to have for a bit..

[Diff]

Can confirm it is all being played from one sound folder per voice instrument.

Edited November 25, 2025 by Diff

[Evilel]

i did find Death1 and death2 under \AppData\Roaming\Vintagestory\assets\game\sounds\player I think I'll try changing those later today and make a new game to "accidentally" die in

replaced those files and jumped to my death.. did not change death sound

Edited November 25, 2025 by Evilel
attempt update

[Diff]

From what I can tell from past research for past mod ideas, this is the code that manages health for entities, and while it has the information necessary to know where damage came from, it always just plays a "hurt" sound and doesn't pass that information along to anyone else. I think a mod that wanted to change that would want to replace that method. It didn't end up being immediately useful for what I wanted to do with it, so I hope it's useful for this instead.

[Evilel]

i tried replacing the .ogg file with what i wanted it to be.. though the sound files i found don't actually seem to be the proper sound files. if you play them they aren't the instrument taking damage sound.. or instrument dying sounds

[Diff]

They are referenced a few times but as far as I can tell are entirely unused. There may be some obscure way to provoke them into playing, but like you noticed they're very human groaning noises and not instrument sounds. AFAIK, all player sounds are sourced from survival/sounds/voice/<instrument>/. There's also survival/sounds/voice/saxophone.ogg that I believe is the source for the trader's voice.

[LadyWYT]

56 minutes ago, Diff said:

They are referenced a few times but as far as I can tell are entirely unused. There may be some obscure way to provoke them into playing, but like you noticed they're very human groaning noises and not instrument sounds.

That's probably the old "hurt" sounds, given that(as far as I know) the player character produced your stereotypical human grunt noises when damaged and whatnot. Once the voiceset swapped over to the instruments, the injury sounds also changed to match.

[Evilel]

Alrighty then... so i finally stumbled across where the voice's file is for player charactor.. AppData\Roaming\Vintagestory\assets\game\sounds\voice  the interesting thing is,some where else in the game it will change the speed of .ogg file if you die (slower) or if you get hurt (faster) i don't know about starving, but the Wilhelm scream is either demonic (upon death) or sounds like a fairy when you get hurt (used lava as test subject) i also stumbled across the bone flute sound file.. it is labeled elkcall.ogg at \AppData\Roaming\Vintagestory\assets\survival\sounds\instrument  (which i have now changed to Zelda's Lullaby) 

4 hours ago, Diff said:

 all player sounds are sourced from survival/sounds/voice/<instrument>/.

this location didn't seem to have any effect for my character at least not in my test in creative mode. it is where the Bone Flute file was.

[Diff]

14 minutes ago, Evilel said:

this location didn't seem to have any effect for my character at least not in my test in creative mode. it is where the Bone Flute file was.

Yeah that was ambiguous. When I say <instrument> I mean <insert instrument here>, it's a handful of folders inside the survival/sounds/voice/ folder with names like accordian, flute, clarinet, oboe, harpsichord, that each have sound files with numbers like 1.ogg, 2.ogg, up to 7.ogg. Those are the player's voice.

[Evilel]

actually those ones had no effect on my players voice.. in the creative game i made to test things out with i made the player have a alto flute voice. switched all of them out for the wilhelm scream and got no change only in the game\sounds\voice did i get change and there is only 1 ogg file per instrument