 They say a picture can paint a thousand words, but when it comes to setting the mood nothing compares to sound effects! Whether it's the gentle trickle of water in a stream, the crash of waves on a beach, or the song of many birds, sound effects will bring your Stronghold 2 maps to life...
Submitted by HicRic, TTemplar and Aubergine
Accessing Sound Effects The tool for adding sound effects to your map is easily missed... 
To the left of the minimap, hiding quietly beneath the back button, you can see a small speaker icon: 
Clicking on this button reveals the illusive world of sound effects in Stronghold 2: 
The sound effects are pretty self-explanitory due to the pictures that represent them, but here's a quick summary (we'll discuss the "bubbles" later): | Button | Bubble | Sound Effect | 
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| The sound of the sea, with the occasional sound of a wave crashing against a rock. | 
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| Waves lapping at the shore. | 
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| Gentle trickling of water, as you might hear at a stream. | 
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| More powerful flow of water, as you might hear at a river. | 
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| The thunderous sound of a waterfall. | 
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| A gentle breeze rustling some corn. | 
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| A more powerful, whistling wind, as you might hear on a high rocky mountaintop. | 
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| The sound of many birds singing. | 
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| The tweeting and chirping of a few birds. | 
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| Eerie insect noises. | 
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| The sound of a swamp (or jungle) and it's associated animals. | 
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| A village with people at work and idle chatter in the air. |
Placing Sound Effects To place a sound effect, click the button of the effect you want to use and then click on the map to place the sound effect:
As you can see, when a sound effect is placed on the map it is represented by what we refer to as a "sound bubble". The various bubbles are shown below (and also in the table earlier): 
In addition, the minimap will also show sound effects as yellow squares: 
When you leave the sound palette, the sound bubbles will dissapear as will the yellow squares on the minimap. To get them back at any time, simply re-display the sound effects palette. Understanding Sound Effects Whenever the map view is altered, the game continues to play the sound effects from the previous map view for a little while while it works out what new sound effects to play based on the current view. once it has worked out the new sound effects it will cross-fade them with the old sound effects until only the new sound effects are heard. Thanks to some great technology in the game engine, the locations of sound effects determine which speakers they come out of. For example, sound effects to the left of the screen will be louder on the left speaker and sound effects on the right of the screen will be louder on the right speaker. If you've got a posh sound card and speaker system, the same is probably true with sound effects at the top and bottom of the screen being heard in front of you and behind you! In addition, the further the camera zooms out, the further away the bubbles get and the quieter the sounds get. As you can imagine, this is a vital tool for immersing a player in your map! Placement of Sound Effects You can place sound effects wherever you want. For example, just because a sound effect might represent the ocean, it doesn't mean that you can't place it on land or in a forest, etc. Use your imagination and experiment as much as possible to get the desired effects for your map. The sound effects are placed in three dimensions. Not only will they have a particular x,y co-ordinate on your map but they will also be placed on top of any land features you have so they have a z-axis as well! In the normal map view you can easily see the height of sounds (z-axis) but it's sometimes difficult to see their horizontal and vertical location (x- and y-axis). In the top-down architects view (press spacebar) the reverse is true - you can easily see their horizontal and vertical placement but it's more difficult to see their height (although higer sound bubbles will appear bigger). We'll be showing a good example of this when we discuss waterfalls later in this tutorial, but for now just remember to regularly swap views occasionally (by pressing spacebar) in order to gain a better feel for where the sounds are. To give you some ideas on common placements of sound effects, we've taken the following pictures and we'll start from the deepest parts of the ocean and then work our way inland... Ocean If you found yourself on a boat in the middle of the ocean, you would realise that it's far from quiet so even though it's a relatively empty area of your map you should still pay it some attention. 
We've scattered sound effects of sea and howling wind around our ocean in the picture above (bottom of picture). As we move inland (top of picture), we've replaced the howling wind with a light breeze. The observant amonst you will also notice the somewhat out of place "swamp" sound effect in the bottom right hand corner of the picture - that's there as a little bonus to anyone that goes exploring the ocean! Barron Island 
On this barron island in the sea, we obviously want the sounds of sea, waves and howling wind. We've also added the sound of some birds (that would likely be nesting on an island this close to the shore) and even the sounds of marshland to make the island sound a little unusual. Rocks on the Shore 
Here we've got some small boulders in a relatively calm part of the shoreline - as such we've only added the sound of waves gently crashing against them. Rocky Outcrop 
As we zoom out from our rocks on the shore, we can see more of the varied landscape in the area. To the left of the rocks, where the sea is very calm, we've just got some gentle sounds of the ocean. At the top of tthe outcrop, we've placed the sound of a light breeze as the air rushes past the rocks. Further to the right, we've got more waves gently rolling up the beach and their associated sound effect. Beaches 
Beaches are generally tranquil places (except in stormy weather) so to compliment the gentle waves lapping at the sand, we've placed some waves sound effects. Furhter out to sea, towards our barron island, we've got some ocean sound effects. Shipwreck in Shallow Water and Rocks Here we can see a ship that has run aground on rocks in shallow waters near the mouth of a river: 
Although there are waves here, we decided not to use any wave sounds and instead use the understated power of the ocean sounds. Because water is running through our shipwreck, we've also added the sound of a stream. Further back, towards the river, you can see we've used more ocean sounds along with some waves. rivers and stream sounds. Canyon 
Further along our shore, we've got a canyon that connects a beach to the fields behind the cliffs. This would obviously act like a wind tunnel so as well as the gentle breeze on the sandy beach we've added some howling winds through the canyon. River meets Sea After overcomming the huge task of making a river seamlessly blend in to the sea, you don't want to let yourself down on the sound effects... 
This requires quite a bit of trial and error when it comes to placing the sound effects to get them to blend together properly in order to merge the sounds of a river and the sea. As you can see, we've been very sparing with sound effects in this region in order to ensure that the key effects can be clearly heard against each other. We've placed an ocean sound effect in the sea, along with some wave sound effects along various parts of the shoreline, but all the time keeping their distance from the river and stream sound effects on the river. By mixing the river and stream sound effects we get a customised water sound that then gently merges in to the sea. River, Forest and Cliffs Now, let's take a look further inland... 
As you can see, there's a lot of sound effects here! We've placed river and stream sound effects all the way up our river. Rather than just using river effects, the addition of the occasional stream sound effect gives the river different sounds as you travel upstream. Our cliffs to the left of the picture have plenty of light breeze and howling wind to make them sound like bleak, inhospitable places. Further inland you can see a forest with insect sounds, birds and swamp effects. Forests and Jungles Let's take a closer look at the forest we saw above... 
As you can see, we've started using bird sound effects in this forest. Towards the center we've used the "lots of birds" effect and towards the edges we've used the "few birds" effect. There is good reason to do this - woodcutters will be hacking away at the edge of the forest and even though the trees will be felled, the sound effects will keep playing. It would sound very odd after several years of deforestation if there were the sounds of lots of birds there. The effect for "few birds" will sound correct even after lots of the trees have been felled as it would then sound like "lots of birds from a distance"! We've added various insect and swamp sounds to the forest in the central regions and also closer to the river. We've not added many bird sound effects close to the river as we want the river and stream sound effects to be clearly audiable. Hot Spring and Stream You've probably noticed that mist coming from the middle of the forest... 
It's a hot spring at the source of a stream that runs through the forest in to the river. We've already got plenty of sound effects around so we just place a swamp sound over the spring and then a few stream effects over the stream. Waterfall Further up our river, there is a waterfall... 
As you can see, we wanted to make this sound as impressive as it looks. We've used some ocean sound effects at the top and bottom to boost the river and stream effects and make the water sound more turbulent. We've also added several waterfall sound effects to the top pf the waterfall and also some at the bottom - this gives the effect of the same waterfall sound getting quieter towards the bottom of the waterfall when looking from above yet ensures that you get a loud water crashing in to the pool sound if you are focussed on the bottom of the waterfall. We've added some howling wind to the top of the waterfall to further differentiate the height difference between the top and bottom. You'll remember that earlier we mentioned the need to occasionally swap views to get a better feel for the placement of sound bubbles. Here's the same waterfall viewed from above: 
Although you can still get an idea of the height of bubbles by their sizes (bigger towards the top, smaller towards the bottom), you can get a significantly better feel for the horizontal and vertical placement of them in this view. Now let's take a look at some other random parts of the map... Fields, Gentle Hills, Plains 
There aren't many sounds that really lend themselves to areas such as this so we've merely added the occasional breeze and wind sound effects to keep it interesting and avoid silence. Player's Keep 
While placing AI keeps in the map editor is generally a bad idea (it makes the AI less agressive), it's quite safe to place a keep for the player. As such, you know exactly where to place the wonderful "bustling village" sound effects as the player will likely concentrate their buildings around this keep so you'd expect it to be quite densly populated and full of activity. Ruined Monestary 
We've added a few trees to this ruined monestary and also added a wind sound effect to make the place sound more "abandonned". We could go on forever, but that will do for now! Other Sound Effects It's important to note that most buildings placed either in the map editor or in-game will come with their own sound effects. For example, if you zoom in on a blacksmiths' workshop, you'll hear the sound of him hammering metal when he is making swords, etc. If you have a good idea as to where buildings will be placed in-game, there's no harm in placing the occasional "bustling village" sound effect in preparaion for them. This will improve the overall ambiance of built up areas. Animals also have sound effects. For example, wolves will howl. one of our favourite animals in terms of sound effects is the humble seagul: 
Adding seagulls to a shoreline guarantees a much more dynamic set of sounds - each seagul carries with it an invisible, mobile sound bubble so even if you are focussed on the same part of the map you should hear them moving around. If you have a few seagulls, along with some pre-placed sound effects, the effect will be amazing: 
Well, we hope this tutorial will prompt you to spend that little bit of extra time adding sounds to your maps. If you've spent time making them look great, why not spend some time making them sound great too? Happy Sound Mixing!
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