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Author Topic: What Original sound effects.  (Read 2079 times)

Offline nutseo6

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What Original sound effects.
« on: September 02, 2019, 07:01:27 am »
I've heard it discussed a bit in the past that the sound effects were changed for X-Com UFO Defense at some point, but I don't remember much of the details and it's very difficult to track down. I originally owned an earlier copy which had all of the original sound effects, and so it was very jarring to switch to the final version and hear such major differences. Even after all these years I still remember the original effects, and hearing the new ones just makes me long for the old. The "new" ones really sound a lot lower quality to me, it's not entirely nostalgia.

It's difficult to track down examples of these sound effects, since the original audio formats sounded different on every sound card. To date I've managed to find several example videos, only one or two of which were definitely what I heard in my original gameplay.

I made this thread to ask a few questions:
 * Why were the sound effects changed?
 * Does anyone have a source containing the originals?
 * I had a SoundBlaster card. Does anyone else remember the original sound effects on a different card? Have you felt the same way about them as I did?
 * Did any of you play the game originally (on DOS) with the new sound effects?
This thread is for any and all discussion relating to the change in sound effects which happened in the early days of X-Com: UFO Defense/UFO: Enemy Unknown.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2020, 03:16:12 pm by Meridian »

Offline The Martian

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Re: What Original sound effects.
« Reply #1 on: September 08, 2019, 05:39:36 pm »
Interesting.

I've heard the Amiga version had different music and sound effects, perhaps they are closer to the version you heard?

Also, I believe there is a mod to swap the sound effect for the "Deep One" in TFTD to its original version. So perhaps TFTD also went through some audio changes over the course of its development.

Here's a link to the TFTD Mod if your curious in the
Old Mod Portal Archive:
OriginalDeepOneWeaponSound_v1.0_tzNhkyUq.zip
OriginalDeepOneWeaponSound_v1.1_Y0OGCaYp.zip

The "new" ones really sound a lot lower quality to me, it's not entirely nostalgia.
If your finding the current sound lacking you may enjoy the giving the High Quality Sounds mod by Daedalus a try, there are two versions of it. One for regular X-Com: Enemy Unknown and the other for use with the Final Mod Pack:
HQSounds 1.0.zip
HQSounds FMP.zip (This file is a bit old so I'm not sure if it will work with the current version of the Final Mod Pack.)


For the sake of archiving I'll also directly attach the OriginalDeepOneWeaponSound mods to this post.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2019, 05:44:04 pm by The Martian »