Here's an exceedingly random question!

[Mithradates VI]

Are there any plans to put in correct bird vocalizations into the battle/strat maps? All the birds are American species....I would not expect to hear a Cactus Wren in a Persian desert!

Just one of those thoughts that could add even more to immersion. If you decide to do this, I could probably give y'all a hand.

[Foot]

I have no idea. That might just be going to far!

Although that does raise an interesting question. Have bird songs changed drastically in the last 2000 years? If you can do the research and get good quality sounds for the suitable birds, we might try and put it in.

Foot

[Bootsiuv]

That would be kind of cool actually....I've never heard persian birds. :)

[Thaatu]

Hmm... Shouldn't be too hard, but I believe the team's bird expert died or something.

[Mithradates VI]

I have no idea. That might just be going to far!

Although that does raise an interesting question. Have bird songs changed drastically in the last 2000 years? If you can do the research and get good quality sounds for the suitable birds, we might try and put it in.

Foot

There might be some slight changes in dialects of various species, but overall, not much. The key thing, though, is that all the species of birds which CA put in for background noise are from the Western US...which kind of annoys me (I'm a closet birder as well as a nerdy gaming historian ).

Species shouldn't be too bad to figure out or research; recordings might be hard to find, but I may have some connections--I have a naturalist friend who actually is from Central Asia. I could possibly ask her to get some bird recordings this winter, if she goes back to visit family for the strat map...

Alternately, I could ask the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for them (they have an ENORMOUS collection of bird songs and calls). I have a connection there as well.

I'm game for this, if you think it would add to the mod (which I think it would, but of course I'm biased )

[Maeran]

"This morning I saw an eagle circle the camp three times before flying toward the sun. Such a portent truly shows who if favoured by the gods!"

"Yes, general. However this eagle looked bald."

"Er... Augurs? A clue here?"

Has anyone who knows how the sound files work (i.e. not me) looked to see if the birdsong files are easily replacable?

Frankly, I never noticed. Being a Briton I am familiar with neither the birdsong of the Mediterranean nor the West Coast.

[bovi]

Personally, I never noticed there are any bird sounds in the game .

[Horst Nordfink]

"This morning I saw an eagle circle the camp three times before flying toward the sun. Such a portent truly shows who if favoured by the gods!"

"Yes, general. However this eagle looked bald."

"Er... Augurs? A clue here?"

Has anyone who knows how the sound files work (i.e. not me) looked to see if the birdsong files are easily replacable?

Frankly, I never noticed. Being a Briton I am familiar with neither the birdsong of the Mediterranean nor the West Coast.

I could help with tits.

[Tellos Athenaios]

"Have birdsongs changed drastically over the course of 2000 years?"

My initial guess would be yes; after all it is sort of proved that birdsongs are related to accent: species a in location b sings differently from species a in location c. Hence, this makes it very likely birdsongs actually shifts over the course of time; and 2000 years is a helluva timespan. (Entire new languages developped, and entire other languages died out when we look at the humans.)

Luckily we can do a bit of very fickle research:
-we can examine how the ancients mimicked birdsong.
-we can examine how modern people do.

Slight problem: just how many reliable sources are there? Well there's only one in ancient Greek I would know of. Unfortunately it's not a "Companion to Birdsong" a la "What bird did that?"; it doesn't specify the species of bird imitated - and as far as I am aware it's simply ancient Greek pronounced to remind the listener somewhat of birdsong. (After all, it's a play called "Birds".)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And yes it's a comedy written by Aristophanes.

[mcantu]

Personally, I never noticed there are any bird sounds in the game .

I did for the first time ever last night w/the beta...

dont know how I never did before

[Foot]

(I'm a closet birder as well as a nerdy gaming historian ).

That is probably the weirdest combination of hobbies I've heard all day.

Yeah, I'm game. I'll see what the text files say if you can get your hand on some bird samples we'll see what we can do.

That would be another extreme that EB has gone to.

Foot

[bovi]

That would be pretty cool for the release notes though. No birds were harmed during production of this game .

[Bootsiuv]

You've never scrolled over the nile and heard all of those delightful noises....like various birds and crickets. That's the only place I've ever really heard them, but I assume mesopotamia is the same way....perhaps some other parts of the map which I haven't noticed yet.

Next time your around those parts....slow down, and take a listen. Our forest friends surround us.

*Goes outside to hug a tree, or was that smoke some trees....I'm too stoned to remember right now* :P

[Anastasios Helios]

I don't know how many people I speak for when I ask this but...who really gives a damn if a bald eagle or a kookoobura is singing on the maps? And I thought I cared about details too much....

[Foot]

I don't know how many people I speak for when I ask this but...who really gives a damn if a bald eagle or a kookoobura is singing on the maps? And I thought I cared about details too much....

I don't know how many people I speak for when I ask this but ... who really gives a damn if its unhistorical for a) barbarians to throw heads b) women to screech on the battlefield c) dogs to appear as units d) flaming pigs to appear as units e) the egyptian faction to appear as 3000 BC Egyptians d) any of the above? And I thought I cared about details too much....

In other words, its all a matter of degree, and one's passions are one's own.

Foot

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well, Foot for one. And frankly, it fits perfectly within a mod such as EB; despite the fact that the bird songs will never have their own proper accents and stuff.

Anyhow: you A.G. (please forgive me for abreviating your name) apparently never noticed this; hence you couldn't care. Thread creator on the other hand has this type of thing for a hobby, so he does. Given the fact that many copies of many lookup guides such as "What bird did that?" are sold; I imagine there must be a niche for mods that try to get at least their bird species right...

[Anastasios Helios]

Honesty, I was never even aware that there were singing birds on the map. I remember the vultures from MTW...but that's really it.

[Sir Edward]

I never realize before that they're bird sound before in game, had to turn the music volume way down just to hear it over the wind noise. But by experimenting around it does sound like a wren call is on when ever your over land in the startegy map. and I think wrens are only found in the Americas.
So I would ask if you're going to go ahead and replace the file are there really any good canidates of birds common to all of europe, N Africa, Near East, Middle East, and central asia? Since this sound will be heard every where on the strategy map.

[Bootsiuv]

I didn't realize they were everywhere on the map....I thought they were only over delta regions and along especially fertile rivers, but maybe that's more of swamp or marsh sounds i.e. birds and crickets, or locusts, or whatever that thing is.

[Sarkiss]

Honesty, I was never even aware that there were singing birds on the map. I remember the vultures from MTW...but that's really it.

there are bird songs and i applause to the effort!

[Sir Edward]

Well I can definitly hear them in the following places I randomly clicked; Saka starting region, Himulaya Kush, Indus Delta, Persia, Crimea, Greece, South Arabia, Germania, Nile Delta. So while I don't know it's everywhere I assumed from my selection and no negative results that you can hear them ever where. Note is some places the wind (I noticed this in bactria) will nearly cover the sound of the calls so it might be easier to hear the sound in swampy terrain.

[Maeran]

But by experimenting around it does sound like a wren call is on when ever your over land in the startegy map. and I think wrens are only found in the Americas.

Because I know there are wrens in Europe, I looked this one up. Wrens are a north American family of birds, of which there is only 1 old world species- in America it's called the winter wren, but not surprisingly just the wren in Britain.

I should probably go to bed.

[NeoSpartan]

Well Mithradates..., if you could give the EB team the audio files or the location of such audio files, I think that would be great.

I am no bird expert, but I think it would be a very good addition.

Take note, most likely this will not be done with urgency.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I think this is a great idea personally.

[Watchman]

As a random observation, around here at least traffic noise has screwed up the singing patterns of quite a few birds. (They seem to be getting the mating and territory stuff done anyway, mind you.) Although that's obviously a pretty darn recent phenomenom, it just goes to show they *do* change their singing.

Some, anyway. I'm having a hard time imagining the rather... uncompromising and spartan aural signals used by the various members of the Corvidae family and gulls were very suspectible to interference.

[pezhetairoi]

Sounds great, but the day I see 'EB Preview: Birdsong Voicemod' on this forum, I'm going to collapse in a fit of helpless giggles. XD

[NightStar]

what about birds, like Pinguinus impennis, that are now extinct???? We could always try to mimic them or something!!! I don't know how reliable sources are about species that got hunted into extinction the last 2280 years

[schlappi]

I don't know how reliable sources are about species that got hunted into extinction the last 2280 years

And we would have to keep track of the wild/aerial life the romani and the other empires imported to europe once their spheres of influences extended to asia and africa. So we would need post-marian birdsong reforms of some sort...

[Bootsiuv]

Sounds great, but the day I see 'EB Preview: Birdsong Voicemod' on this forum, I'm going to collapse in a fit of helpless giggles. XD

LOL!

That would be pretty funny.

[Jarardo]

Hooray! Sounds good to me.