EFX discussion

[peter_spy]

I agree with your rationale, and these were my initial thoughts as well. But I suggest making a test map and playtesting it before locking it down. Music and UI sounds are no-brainer, but I wouldn't be surprised if e.g. excluding all player grunts from EFX actually sounded better than having some sounds with, and some without EFX.

 

Sometimes consistency beats logic, even if it's counter-intuitive

[stgatilov]

I agree with your rationale, and these were my initial thoughts as well. But I suggest making a test map and playtesting it before locking it down. Music and UI sounds are no-brainer, but I wouldn't be surprised if e.g. excluding all player grunts from EFX actually sounded better than having some sounds with, and some without EFX.

 

Sometimes consistency beats logic, even if it's counter-intuitive

I don't agree with you. Testing on a single map is not a good solution.

 

EFX is not like gamma correction.

For gamma correction, you do it once either in your texture, or in your engine. In any case, you only have to ensure that it is done exactly once, but it does not matter where.

EFX is like lighting. You can bake lighting effects into texture (e.g. lightmaps or ambient occlusion), but then you loose the ability to change light sources around it. As a result, a texture with baked lightmaps can only be used in a single place on a single map. If we bake reverb into a sound, it looses the ability to reflect the environment around it. It would sound well in one place, but weird on another place. The fact that a sound with baked reverb sounds well without EFX when you are in one particular area (with some EFX effect) does not mean that it would sound appropriate without EFX in all other areas (with different EFX effects).

Of course, this also depends on how different are the EFX effects you can create. If all of them are mostly equivalent to "apply reverb of strength X", then maybe it does not really matter.

 

So the only "correct" solution is to decide which sounds should logically be affected by surrounding environment, and which should not.

If any sound already has reverb and must be affected (or has no reverb and must not be affected), the only "correct" solution is to fix the sound sample.

The problem is that this "correct" solution may be too hard to achieve, so we need some ad hoc solution for 2.06.

[peter_spy]

I don't think this analogy works here, not only because efx is more like adjustment layer and you can always tone it down or opt out of it completely. Also players won't analyse every sound TDM plays, what will count will be a general impression, which is greater than a sum of its logical parts. Still, it's your call, that was just a suggestion

[Springheel]

Added support for "no_efx" keyword in SVN rev 7337, binaries updated in SVN rev 15109.

 

 

So this keyword has to be added manually to every shader that we don't want affected by EFX? That's a non-trivial amount of work, even if there was complete agreement about which sounds should be excluded. How future-proof would this be if we just left it to mappers to exclude sounds they didn't want affected until 2.07?

[peter_spy]

I'd rather continue my work on generic EFX presets, but I can do this, if no one else volunteers.

 

Btw. negative values for reverb volume actually decrease it when it's present in the sound sample already, so mappers can use that too, if they wish.

[peter_spy]

Actually that was pretty easy, just a simple Find and Replace operation. I only had to make sure everything was in the right place. That's music and UI sounds: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wy73n5t6qqmfc3l/no_efx_sound_defs.zip?dl=1

 

Btw. is no_efx supported in the current version of public beta?

Edited December 6, 2017 by Judith

[stgatilov]

Btw. is no_efx supported in the current version of public beta?

No, not yet.

I think it would be as soon as there is some certainty that the way we try to solve the issue now really works.

[peter_spy]

Right, the game just gave me the 'unknown token' warning.

I'll be adding first set of generic presets soon, so you can test that along with no_efx spawnarg. From what I've experienced so far, there's quite big difference between how reverb sounds on closed studio headphones and audio speakers. It's very subtle on the latter. I think mappers will have to use "room" parameter to adjust the volume to their liking. Anyway, here's the "cave" preset that will make the reverb stand out, so you can hear whether it affects the music and UI sounds or not:

// Cave
"environment size" 1.3
"environment diffusion" 0.75
"room hf" -200
"decay time" 3.5
"decay hf ratio" 1.5
"reflections" 400
"reflections delay" 0.015
"reverb" 1000
"reverb delay" 0.022

[stgatilov]

So this keyword has to be added manually to every shader that we don't want affected by EFX?

Yes.

 

That's a non-trivial amount of work, even if there was complete agreement about which sounds should be excluded.

 

Maybe.

I think there is not too many sound shaders, putting no_efx flag to some of them won't take much time, but testing them can take days.

 

How future-proof would this be if we just left it to mappers to exclude sounds they didn't want affected until 2.07?

 

Mappers would have two options:

1. Leave all sounds with EFX, as if this discussion never happened.
2. Completely override every sound shader that they don't like to be affected by EFX. I.e. put same-named shader file info their pk4, which I suppose would create FMs with unchangeable sound shaders.

I have a feeling that second options is even worse that the first one in the long run.

 

 

Anyway, I need to know: should the "no_efx" flag be added to 2.06 or leave it for 2.07?

[peter_spy]

IMO, if EFX is to be officially supported in 2.06, the no_efx spawnarg should be included as well.

 

 

Maybe.

I think there is not too many sound shaders, putting no_efx flag to some of them won't take much time, but testing them can take days.

 

You have a link to UI and Ambient Zoned soundhaders with no_efx in my post above. I was not hard to add it, I just replaced "looping" flag with "looping \n no_efx" in Notepad++, so I got a line break. I have an idea for a test map for UI and player grunts, but didn't get to it yet.

Edited December 13, 2017 by Judith

[stgatilov]

You have a link to UI and Ambient Zoned soundhaders with no_efx in my post above. I was not hard to add it, I just replaced "looping" flag with "looping \n no_efx" in Notepad++, so I got a line break. I have an idea for a test map for UI and player grunts, but didn't get to it yet.

I also have a feeling that excluding some clearly non-EFX sounds won't take much time.

I mean, at least, all menu/UI sounds, all ambients.

[peter_spy]

Yeah, and the good thing with Ambient and Ambient Zoned is that these are the same sounds, just the zoned version has the silence lead-in sound to work with location system. So the zoned version will have no_efx flag, ambient will be left as it is, and mappers will have more choice.

[HMart]

I was seeing and hearing videos on this channel (that i recommend btw) and saw this binaural pyramid visit video and thought of this thread, is a nice way to see how voices sound in small and more or less open spaces, could be inspiration for EFX effects. You need stereo 2.0 ONLY headphones for this and try to ignore the tourist guide theatrical talking, that, if you don't like it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTkVnb3TXO8

[Springheel]

Is there a good testmap available for various efx settings? I'm trying to figure out which ambient sounds should have the no_efx keyword.

[peter_spy]

You could use the old EAX demo map for this. There's a section with cavern-like preset, that should be good to test the no_efx keyword.

 

https://we.tl/t-uOSi7yrrHj