The wonderful thing about doing something online is that somebody will always tell you
if you got something wrong. Even if you were right! But having received SO MANY comments
in my recent ‘sounds’ video, telling me I was wrong about this or had forgotten that,
it doesn’t even matter one way or the other any more. People need clarification. So let’s begin!
Planted bombs beep. The beeping sound they make depends on whether
they’re planted at bombsite A, or on bombsite B. Here is a comparison.
I didn’t bother covering this at all in the previous video because… it’s not exactly a
sound that a player makes, is it. And to be honest, I thought everybody knew this already-
but it seems like many people hadn’t even noticed! I covered this change to the beeping sounds almost
4 and a half years ago in this video, in August 2018. I suspect what caused this change was when,
in a pro match just before the change occurred, Team Liquid lost a round when they accidentally
went to the wrong bombsite on Nuke. When even the pros are being thwarted by CS:GO’s audio,
you know that something needs changing, and so slightly different bomb beeping sounds were
introduced as yet another attempt by Valve to try and clear up confusion on a very confusing map.
One comment that I received thought that a bomb being dropped and rolling
along the floor couldn’t be heard by CT’s. Here’s what I think to THAT.
And THIS.
CT’s can hear the bomb being dropped and rolled. So please,
stop dropping the bomb every round for someone else to carry.
It can also be heard being picked up,
but only if the terrorist picking it up is running at the time.
So it’s the same rules as picking up weapons, then.
As for masking the sounds of defuses, yes, you can hide it by detonating a grenade at the same time.
Or by firing a weapon.
Or, by smoking a Molotov.
Thanks for that, Walter. But the defusing noise is still being made- it’s simply being
masked by a louder sound. That doesn’t just apply to the defuse sound- many sounds in
this game can be concealed by louder ones, but testing all the different combinations
of this is one of those things that’s probably just as boring for me to test as it is for you
to watch- this one suggests I could test the distance that every sound can be heard from,
which could actually be a future video of mine cos it sounds really boring yet might
be surprisingly fun to watch as you’re in the shower or chowing down on your 7th tin of beans
for the day. But all in good time. Let’s figure out which sounds can be heard first!
Does picking up grenades make a noise? Yes, but again, only if you’re running at the time.
To be more technical with this, it’s not about running or walking. It’s more a matter of:
if you can hear footsteps, then you’ll also hear when things are being picked
up. Have the walk or crouch key pressed as you’re picking things up to ensure silence.
According to comments, you can hear the pins being pulled out from flash
grenades. But I can assure you, this isn’t the case. Here’s an example!
And here it is amplified, just to make sure:
…but what if you’re on the SAME team as somebody who is pulling a pin?
Nope, still nothing.
But what about spectating?
Nope, still nothing. Not until you’re in the first-person view,
and then you can finally hear the sounds. But by then you’re practically inside that person,
so you’d expect to hear them pulling on it wouldn’t you.
The only grenade that enemies can hear being ‘primed’ is the Molotov,
which does that firey KLIK COCOCHCAOCHOCHHCO sound, as covered in my first video.
There is, however, a bug with grenades! If you throw one
but quickly switch to another item before it’s REALLY thrown,
then it will play a shuffly sound which can be heard by enemies. Hear itfor yourself.
Do different grenades make different sounds when bouncing off walls? And this might
surprise you. Because ALL grenades sound different from one another,
apart from the decoy which sounds the same as the flash bang. Might as well start with those.
The smoke
grenade is like, a triple bluff. Because it uses a different sound file from flashes,
but that sound file is exactly the same. But also, not! Listen carefully.
And now the flashes.
And if I alternate between the two, the difference becomes more obvious.
Yes, the smoke is louder. I think here,
we’ve discovered another bug. Because it seems like the smoke grenade is playing 2
different bounce sounds. Sometimes these are slightly out of sync, like this:
But other times, they’re in-sync, and I suppose the two different sound files
combine to sound louder than were there just one bounce sound being played.
…Valve pls fix?
Moving onto the other grenade types, the Molotov is made of glass, and so
its bounce sound is unique. It doesn’t have its own bounce sound; it’s simply reusing an
older glass sound effect from Source’s archives. But the incendiary grenade sounds unique as well:
‘cos it’s the only grenade to use the HE nade’s bounce sound, in conjunction
with a fire-y COCOCHCAOCHOCHHCO sound. And I noticed the double-bounce bug here as well.
Valve pls fix. And last, HE grenades sound like
the incendiary grenades but without the COCOCHCAOCHOCHHCO.
So it did surprise me a bit to discover how
many different variations of bounce sounds there are in Counter-Strike.
A few people pointed out jiggle peeking as being a silent way to move, but just like
the sand-walking from Dune, it’s too silly to justify. All it is is that your character
doesn’t reach the velocity required to start making footsteps. In theory, you could master
the art of tapping the movement buttons to get the most velocity possible before this sound
effect kicks in. But in reality, unless you have an analogue keyboard, this isn’t too practical,
and the walk button is a much better and more reliable bet if you want to move silently.
Can other players hear the klik of an empty gun when you try shooting with no ammo? Yes. Compared
with firing bullets, it’s not quite so loud, and is in fact loudest when closest to their feet.
And it’s surprisingly difficult to do,
what with Counter-Strike’s automatic reloading whenever you have an empty weapon equipped.
I feel like the reloading animation is more likely to give away that your gun is empty.
The revolver’s click, as it’s charging up to fire can be heard by enemies. So be careful with that.
I was asked to see if the XM1014 made any sounds when switching and stuff,
but I couldn’t find anything unusual.
What if weapons are dropped onto higher surfaces? Now this is harder to do than
it sounds! I guess this was asked following on from how I said there’s no landing sound if you
land on something higher than where you started from. But in my limited testing on this topic,
they still made a dropped sound, even when landing higher up than from where
they started. I COULD have gone to the effort of making a custom map to
test this super-specific and irrelevant thing that nobody really cares about.
Here it is.
YOU HEAR THAT?
No you don’t! Because when it only narrowly scrapes over the top of a higher object,
all you can hear is the scraping sound, and not the impact one. That there, is a
height of 128 units. Or the standard height for a Counter-Strike texture / interior wall / 2 crates
/ 18 bananas.
CAN the AUG and SG be heard being scoped?
Yes, just like I said in the last video, scoped weapons can be heard scoping in. People love to
use the word ‘forgot’ when telling me I didn’t feature something, when really it would just
take too long to show every combination of every sound. It could be that I’ve missed
a few exceptions. But… unless you have proof, please don’t ask me to investigate all of them!
Interestingly, while he’s scoping in and out, you can see the character’s
model also physically ‘vibrating’ a bit as he’s doing this, but only if he’s moving.
So it does mean you could give away that you’re scoping and unscoping,
even from beyond the audible range. But then, what use does that have? If you see an enemy
it doesn’t matter if they’re scoping in or out; you shoot them, don’t you.
And finally, you can hear enemies using spray paint.
Pay to lose!
Sometimes, I wonder how I did it. I look at that sound video I made in 2015,
with 1.4 million views and a positive reception and I think, ‘Wow! 2015
3kliksphilip really thought of everything’. He didn’t. I… didn’t. I just did a solid job
at a task that few people knew about and attempted back then.
But modern-day CS:GO is a different beast. The standard of play is much higher. And
people expect MORE. It isn’t enough to have a video covering lots of the sounds that you can
hear. People want ALL of the sounds, all of the quirks, and all of the exploits. I do just feel
like 2022- 2023(!) CSGO on youtube is a very different beast from how it was 8 years ago.
And I’ll do my best to keep up.