D3 volume clamp working?

[Ishtvan]

I set off several mines at once and it was REALLY loud. Are we sure D3's volume clamp actually works, or can people blow out their speakers with lots of mines and fire arrows?

[Mortem Desino]

Yep, it definitely works, but it clips way too high for a game that utilizes so many subtle and quiet sound effects.

[Ishtvan]

Yep, it definitely works, but it clips way too high for a game that utilizes so many subtle and quiet sound effects.

 

Hmm, I think it might be a variable we can change, if we wanted to. This would decrease the dynamic range of sound in general, though. Maybe the answer is to turn up volume on the softer sounds that are so critical that people currently turn their volume way up just to hear them, like AI footsteps?

[Mortem Desino]

Not really. I mean quiet relative to vanilla Doom 3's compounding "FIRE BANG BANG POW SPLODE", we can just lower the clamp. The volume level is perfect compared to Thief.

[Ishtvan]

Hmm, I still don't think it's very good design to count on players turning their volume way up to better hear quiet sounds, and then reducing the software dynamic range of sounds so that they don't get to loud. That just defers the blasting of players' ears until they exit Doom3 and run another program with sound.

 

I would rather we assumed a more normal hardware volume and made the "quiet" sounds a tad louder, then we could use th full software dynamic range.

[Fidcal]

Makes sense to me. I don't hear the AI footsteps at all really. If I turn up my volume any more then the louder sounds are too loud. Except for spiders; their clicky footsteps are relatively loud compared to other footsteps. Also inappropriate on soft surfaces. They would need individually turning down.

 

Maybe all we need is to turn up the AI footsteps volumes. Presumably they were tweaked down during last year and it was overdone? The ones on tile are loud enough but anything else is too soft for me.