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Noisycricket

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Posts posted by Noisycricket

  3. General sound quality issues

    in Music & SFX

    Posted

    Ok, so i've been doing a little research and I think i've found just about everything and more you could possibly want to know about what the .efx attributes settings are. I've found two documents that are very thorough and explain what there in term of real world sound wave activity and also exactly what there value range refers to and what a single unit represents.

     

    These two sources are:

     

    An EAX2 API guide (good explanations of terms/values): http://connect.creat...ing/EAX%202.zip

     

    and

     

    OpenAl Sdk documentation(most current): http://connect.creat...%20Windows.aspx

     

    Also

     

    Introduction to EFX (cross platform EAX i guess): http://connect.creat...20to%20EFX.aspx

     

    Creative Labs developer area: http://connect.creat...er/default.aspx

     

    One things for sure, EAX's interworkings are very sophisticated, yet understandable and its really interesting reading over the explanations on how each attribute mimics the real world.

     

    Doom 3 trivia: Its interesting to note that in the EAX2 API guide.pdf, there are 26 "environment" preset types listed. There are about 20 or so individual environment types allotted for the first level of Doom 3. All having the environment type listed as 26 (yet all having a different settings). Various presets are "EAX_ENVIRONMENT_HALLWAY" "EAX_ENVIRNOMENT_ALLEY" EAX_ENVIRONMENT_GENERIC" "EAX_ENVIRONMENT_CAVE", etc, etc. Number 26 is "EAX_ENVIRONMENT_PSYCHOTIC"...strange.

    • Like 1

  4. General sound quality issues

    in Music & SFX

    Posted

    Doom 3 native works great, I just tried it out. Large rooms are especially nice sounding. And its EAX 4.0, yes.

     

    I guess you must have a ".efx" file within a .pk4 or mission folder for EAX to work. I only checked the training mission's .pk4 and it doesn't have any and im guessing the others don't either since i thought i played with EAX on while playing the other maps as well.

     

    Mappers should be able to print out the mars_city1.efx file (which is a text file) located in pack007.pk4. Then load Doom 3 at the start and go room to room listening to the sounds and noting the values being used for the area. Heres the part for the Mars City Hanger, the start of the first map (for those that have eax)

     

    // reverb mars city hangar
reverb "mars city hangar" {
"environment" 26
"environment size" 5.0670
"environment diffusion" 0.8360
"room" -411
"room hf" -685
"room lf" 0
"decay time" 3.3710
"decay hf ratio" 0.6990
"decay lf ratio" 1.0000
"reflections" -55
"reflections delay" 0.0750
"reflections pan" 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
"reverb" 27
"reverb delay" 0.1000
"reverb pan" 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
"echo time" 0.0850
"echo depth" 0.0000
"modulation time" 0.2500
"modulation depth" 0.0000
"air absorption hf" -5.0000
"hf reference" 5000.0000
"lf reference" 250.0000
"room rolloff factor" 0.0000
"flags" 63
}

     

    Ishtvan's writeup on the wiki:

    http://modetwo.net/d...Rooms_%28EAX%29

     

    Looks like it can be done, maybe you should go ahead and get the card. :)

     

    If i new how to make maps, i'd test this all out on the training map ( or actually Politics, since that would probably serve the greater good at this point in time).

  12. General sound quality issues

    in Music & SFX

    Posted

    I have noticed some problems with overall sound quality. Keep in mind, i searched the forum and saw how complicated the sound propagation stuff is, so im not expecting any sort of quick fix or anything, but i wanted to get these down somewhere so that they can eventually be fixed at least.

    ___

    Quality reduction: My most immediate concern is that when playing a ogg file from Audacity or Media Player, the sound is crisp and detailed, yet when played in the game, some of the detail and crispness. In this case i first noticed this with new player footstep sounds im messing with. The sound volume is reduced, but i assume that is because it might be a non-positional sound since its right below the view port, which means it is subject to the globalFraction setting, reducing its volume to .8. I was trying to capture the minute details of the actual sound, like small grinding noises made from dust particles, but when imported to the game, the footstep sounds muffled. Is this happening with all of the sounds i wonder?

    ___

    3D positioning: Somehow, i'm getting much better sound positioning information in this youtube video than i do from the game.

    http://www.youtube.c...h?v=hJLEtMaYKOg

     

    This Doom3 mod shows that it is possible to have super-accurate positioning (the reverb is also interesting to hear): http://doom3.filefro...DOOM3_MOD;30066

     

    Its like the values for the angles in which the sounds are coming from are rounded off or are not updated frequently enough. But also, it seems to jump from 45 degree off from center to 90 degrees while panning around slowly.

    __

    Lack of Reverb: In that video, as well as doom 3 itself, there also seems to be a lot of reverb which seems to be entirely missing from TDM thus far. Stock Doom3 seems to be more than capable of producing reverb effects. This thread: Setting reverb data in the new sound engine(WIKI) seems to explain that reverbs effects are entirely up to the mapper and if there are no .efx files within the .pk4 then there will be no reverb. Are reverb effects only availble to EAX users?

     

    (I should note that im using headphones with EAX enabled and CMSS-3D in "game-mode" with an Auzentech X-fi card)

  14. New SFX thread

    in Music & SFX

    Posted

    There's a bigger issue than just uploading the sounds and making a soundshader for them (no one will hear them if that's all that is done).

    That's a bit involved, with some potential for disagreements, I imagine.

    Agree, thats why i'd just prefer to upload them, let people know they're there and move on to more sounds. I never really planned to overwrite anything.

  15. New SFX thread

    in Music & SFX

    Posted

    Actually, i was wondering about more objects having their own set of sounds effects rather than more sound effects for objects already having sound effects. For now, ill just try and produce 4 sounds for each object I work with which seems over and above what AAA titles have. Its easy enough to create them and easy enough to delete lines in the sound shader files if need be.

     

    I've got some sounds in ogg format im ready to upload, anyone have a preference as to where they should be put. An NC folder in the darkmod directory or a folder in the sound_src directory or...? Average file size is about 15kb...

  18. Would like to offer my services for MUSIC, AMBIENCE, and SFX

    in I want to Help

    Posted

    okay so i fired up Gold, Metal Age and Deadly Shadows to listen to collision sounds.

    to my ears it sounds like each item has 4 sounds and they make one sound per contact.

     

    so if you bump a bottle a sound happens,

    it falls over a sound happens,

    it hits the wall a sound happens,

    it falls to the floor a sound happens.

     

    wood, stone, metal and glass,

    4 base sounds per item with a few variations of each.

     

    but each incident has a single sound.

     

    is this correct?

     

    Heya, yeah, incident has a single sound. The mod currently uses up to 4 sounds per item, but doesn't yet distinguish between what the object has impacted with[that i know of]. For that reason, i've been making sounds on hard wood, which kinda produces a sound exceptable for both stone [~60% of the floor surfaces?] and wood[~40% of floor surfaces?].

  19. New SFX thread

    in Music & SFX

    Posted

    I was wondering, we have 5 arrow_flight_X that occur when releasing an arrow, making the "whoosh" sound. Do those occur when arrows fly over your head too? I have 4 different bow release sounds i made and was wondering if there going to conflict with another purpose. I'll upload them if anyone would like to try them out.

     

    Also, in the archery section of the training map, when standing at the arrow quiver and firing an arrow into the nearest tree that lies along the fence to the right, I noticed the impact is completely silent, yet the tree is very close. There was no "max/min distance" string in the sound shader, so i don't know what it's default is, but I found that setting the "max distance" in the sound shader to 33 allowed for a very quiet, but very satisfying "thud" when an arrow hit the farthest target (when standing at the fence). Anyway, if this isn't something that has already been debated, are there any problems with moving this up to 33ish?

     

    Also, i made a couple decent fall-to-death sounds consisting of quick bassy thud along with cracking bones. Is there a sound just for this action? I'll also upload this and some others.

     

    edit: I was going to make some sounds for various items that don't have their own sounds yet. I've already made a few, like 4 for the large kitchen knife and 4 for the large wooden spoon. Is there any concern about performance thus far that relate to how many sounds to be used for each thing or am I safe to make 4 for each of the most common items i've thus far seen in maps?

  22. SneakyJack's TDM review

    in Fan Missions

    Posted

    I like the screenshots you make. I keep wanting to start a small business making animated desktops pictures, but only partly animated to save computer resources. Like having only a candle and its surroundings flicker slightly... Nice review.. I agree.

     

    (if you only knew what is being dreamed of....:laugh: )

  24. Would like to offer my services for MUSIC, AMBIENCE, and SFX

    in I want to Help

    Posted

    Not a problem in any way, shape or form[im not even sure what you were concerned about;)].

     

    One thing is for sure, we seem to need more city ambiance sounds, I see some of them used over and over. Right now we also have a lot of music tracks taking the place of environment sounds, but im not sure if thats by choice or by necessity. Hopefully some mappers will come in here and put up their requests.

     

    If you rename the the sound .pk4 files to .zip, you can extract them and see what the mod has currently. If you want to experiment with them in-game, you can re-create sound folder or any part of it and the game will use whatever you have in it instead of what is in the .pk4 files.

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