You know how in some of the games, you had to fly a mission drunk, and the controls were impaired? You also know how the canonical reason that you hear sounds in space in that the cockpit simulates the sound effects going around you to increase your situational awareness? I was thinking that, for some reason, you have to go out in a fighter with a damaged cockpit. As you are about to go into your spaceplane, a techie has something like the following to say to you: "The cockpit interface with your helmet is damaged, we had to pull some of the situational awareness electrical connections to your suit!" "English woman, what do you mean?" "When you fly this bird, you won't be able to hear sound in space, at least nothing that doesn't touch the hull of your ship!" "Hah, I'll deal!" .... And then, when you fly, as far as sound effects go, you only hear a very very muted clang that reverberates into the cockpit as the guns cycle, or some of the (much more muted) shaking of the ship when you afterburn, or things shaking when something hits the hull of your ship... That would be an absolutely CRAZY 'theme mission'! What do you all think? Is this possible with the Saga engine?
Yes and no. You would have to separate all the sound effects that are really in-cockpit (such as lock-on sounds, missile warnings and power distribution sounds) from the ones that are out of cockpit sounds, except maybe the engine wash, afterburner, and collision sounds that are supposed to be on the hull anyway. The easier way would be that all the sound comes from speakers in the helmet and so everything is broken, which can be simulated VERY easily: Deactivate your speakers Sometimes I have a sound bug in Saga (I think the use of time warp causes it, which may be one of the reasons it is deactivated in the campaign) that causes a similar behavior like you are describing. And it sucks. So yes, you can do it. You can't do it easily though and you can't do it for just one mission AFAIK because the sounds are coded in tables (weapons have their sounds defined globally in the weapons.tbl, ships have their engine sounds defined in the ships.tbl). You could create copies of all the ships and weapons without the sound and use them instead of the normal ones in your mission. But then you may hit the table size limits and such things. And that all for a mission most people won't like anyway. So while it is technically possible, I think it would hardly be worth the effort.
I always had my own 'fanon' as to why we hear sound in space in Wing Commander. Most of the places we fly around don't exist, or have not yet been explored by mankind, I like to think that the areas of deep space we see throughout the series have their own, very faint, gaseous environments . Like big parts of the universe being inside a giant nebula we're not aware of yet - but it provides the 'background' molecular density necessary for sound waves to travel. This is basically pseudo-science, but I think lots of fans make up their 'own' explanations for things. Don't think for a minute that the suggestion is noted anywhere in canon. ...and of course wouldn't explain why we hear sound in space even in Sol...
Why *is* sound in space considered a problem anyway? It's really just a stylistic device for the viewer/listener, just like we see things from different angles (or at all) that should be invisible to the protagonist. I don't think it's an issue as long as it's not explicitly mentioned in-universe, like "Oh those meteor showers are really loud again today!". Or scared whispering so you're not heard by the enemy, but i suppose i'm treading dangerous grounds there. If you really want to think it through to the end, there are far worse "science holes" to commit to.
@danr: Even the densest nebulae we know are a thousand times thinner than the least dense vacuum we can create on earth in vacuum chambers. In the known universe there is no nebula dense enough to carry sound. We can only see them at all because they are very big.
The biggest problem with this is probably that it lampshades a bunch of things the game designers would rather not the player be directly aware of. Obviously one is that there's sound in space in the first place... but also you're being forced to think about how the interactive music affects your gameplay.
Play Orbiter if you want to see what the experience would be like. It's as realistic as a space game could get (depending on the addons installed), and even there space is incredibly bright. The effect it had on me was i grew sick of Air Suite Nr.3 very quickly.
You would still have the indicators for shields and armor present. And don't forget that it would be just like a lot of us had with PC games before the soundcard era, shouting "bang-bang-bang", whoosh, and KABOOM! at your monitor/TV screen...
Orbiter features neither armed craft nor combat. Closest I've seen to "realistic space combat" was XF5700:Mantis and the alternate flight mode of Space Rogue(Origin. 1989). With Mantis being a pure space combat sim, and yes, it was "different", but i managed to get through the game and it's expansion.
