Question to Mappers

[YesWeCamp]

I just tried this and I honestly wonder if anyone does this...

I do.

To hear most of the sounds I have to turn my volume so loud gunshots hurt my ears (sure it's realistic) and my footsteps sound like a monster stomping around and crouching and jumping sound just as weird.

Lol, so there is your answer: sounds are just for ambience. In the background. I do hear the sounds normally though when im walking on most of the maps but you will only hear them when you pay attention, and when theres no shooting and stuff around. And yes i knew douze had sounds but gunsounds > windsound.

The official maps sounds don't appear too be consistent -- ac_power's sounds appear the loudest with werk's sounds being average and other maps too quiet to turn the volume up for and still play.

So what it means is that some maps want to emphasize their ambience with sounds, like power, but im sure you have also heard the helicopter in d3. Most sounds, like wind are just at the background, it doesnt always storm. So i guess this should give you still quite an idea how loud to put the sounds. If you want to make a factory it makes a hell of a lot of noise and when you make a desert all you hear is a crow here and there or a helicopter. At least thats how i do it. You can do quite some funstuff still if you like with the sounds. For instance the dog behind the door on ac_forgotten (yes, shameless promotion). Most mappers wont do to much effort on the sounds though and thats okay since they should be just in the background because this game is about bullets and not about helicopters :)