Rift sound loop - Add duration and/or variation

[Goosechucker]

I consider rifts to be a mild form of noise pollution more than anything else. The game's ambient sound is very immersive and attractive to me when there are no rifts around. Perhaps if you improved their sound spam somewhat then they would be less annoying.

Honestly, I find rifts to be annoying just in general, same as drifters. It's more of an 'oh great, here we go again' than a credible threat in the game world.

[iotid]

My personal solution was to replace rift.ogg (in Vintagestory\assets\survival\sounds\effect\ ) with a long, quiet music-box type track that wasn't infuriating if played over itself due to multiple rifts.  Also did this with tempstab-low and tempstab-verylow, which potentially can end up playing for long spans of time through storms or depending on how you play.  At least with my system specs, there was no noticeable lag with loading the larger sound files. There are web-based tools for .ogg encoding and volume adjustment out there, and they can be kind of lifesaving with this game.

Game version updates will put the original files back into place however, so if you do this, make sure to keep a backup of adjusted files elsewhere.

Another option, if you're not adverse to mod use, might be Accessibility Tweaks. It lets you adjust most visual and audio effects.

Edit: Though I agree, with how common rifts are?  They really need a longer and more variable sound tied to them natively.  Playing for too long in one go, especially with a headset on--I was hearing that sonar ping in my dreams.

Edited June 21, 2022 by iotid

[Kazeoni]

Daamn, that's amazing... I wasn't that much bothered by them, but might need a little tweak.

However you mentioning this, I'll definately play a bit with the .ogg-s. Mixinng in a bit of Prince of Persia Warrior Within OST with the low sability is just my vibe.