Thief revisited and compared

[ungoliant]

What I know is in TDM sound propagation works through visportals -- from a design point this is giving me a little headache, because it is one tool that we use for two quite different things: creating vis leafs and sound propagation.

 

the system seems to make sense to me. From an intuitive perspective when a sound comes from another room/visleaf, it would likely come primarily from the door/window/corridor, which is exactly where visportals should be placed.

 

i.e. my roommate's bedroom is adjacent to one of my bedroom walls. When my roommate has sex, the sound primarily propagates from my bedroom door which is on the far side of my room away from the true direction of the noise, with some lower pitched sounds that come at a quieter level through the wall. this results in a sound like my roommate having sex in the hallway outside my bedroom, which i do not altogether appreciate

[raymeld]

Was intrigued after reading the opening post and fired up Thief 2 and Darkloader again after a long period of not playing Thief 2 FMs. My computer easily meets the specs shown , but I was disappointed that the mission froze several times for no apparent reason. I then had to turn off the computer to get out. Although the mission looks very interesting , this has spoilt it for me , guess I should stick to Dark Mod !

[demagogue]

the system seems to make sense to me. From an intuitive perspective when a sound comes from another room/visleaf, it would likely come primarily from the door/window/corridor, which is exactly where visportals should be placed.

 

The system in Dromed (Dark Engine) worked like this as well; sound came from the room connections. The difference is that in id4 the sound really comes straight from the visportal, including through walls, or if there isn't a visPortal it will come straight from the source, also through walls. So you need to really think about visPortal and wall placement for it to work well.

 

In Thief, the system was you literally created 3d-box "rooms" and overlapped them, then sound traveled through the overlaps. It's like you're creating the entire leaf's boundaries as a box you can see, so it's easier to see & control sound-flow maybe. There were issues with its system, though, too: it was annoying it had to be a box and not other shapes, and you could get weird sound-leaks that way, sound doesn't fall-off so if you have a huge "room" AI will hear you from way far off, etc.

 

So there are pros and cons either way. The important thing for mappers is to really understand the system you're working with and how to maximize its pros and minimize its cons in your design.

[Springheel]

On a technical side note: Thief's sound system still seems to be superior. It could be subjective since everyone has a different sound setup connected to their computers. But when I'm playing (with my not at all cheap headphones) it is way easier for me to trace a sound in Thief than in TDM.

 

Without knowing the specifics of how sound travels in Thief, I was doing some tests last night with TDM and TDS, and I found that it was easier to pinpoint the location of an AI by sound in TDS. This was done in spots where I was in the same "area" as the AI. I would just close my eyes, spin my character around, and then try to discern what direction the AI was by listening to his footsteps. In TDS, it was quite easy. In TDM, it was not quite so easy (though still possible). I'm not sure why that is, exactly.

 

I couldn't tell for sure, but I also had the vague sense in TDM that the vocals were coming through my center speaker (I have a 5.1 setup) regardless of where the AI actually was, but they didn't talk often enough for me to confirm it.

[New Horizon]

Without knowing the specifics of how sound travels in Thief, I was doing some tests last night with TDM and TDS, and I found that it was easier to pinpoint the location of an AI by sound in TDS. This was done in spots where I was in the same "area" as the AI. I would just close my eyes, spin my character around, and then try to discern what direction the AI was by listening to his footsteps. In TDS, it was quite easy. In TDM, it was not quite so easy (though still possible). I'm not sure why that is, exactly.

 

I couldn't tell for sure, but I also had the vague sense in TDM that the vocals were coming through my center speaker (I have a 5.1 setup) regardless of where the AI actually was, but they didn't talk often enough for me to confirm it.

 

There may be some limitations with how our system currently handles things, due to no fault of the work anyone has done, but rather what we have to work with.

 

I think the TDS method pre-computes a lot of things, not sure how ours works.

 

I don't know if it would be possible to do, but perhaps making a more Thief-like approach to handling the sound would be possible if sound portals could be branched off of vis-portals and handled separately....or a supplementary system, where vis-portals still do their job as a functioning sound portal but if additional sound portals are needed...one could place a vis-portal but disable the vis function, leaving only the sound properties active. Maybe this is already possible? I don't know.

 

Just seems like quite often our TDM system isn't giving a realistic representation of sound vs. distance.

[raymeld]

Was intrigued after reading the opening post and fired up Thief 2 and Darkloader again after a long period of not playing Thief 2 FMs. My computer easily meets the specs shown , but I was disappointed that the mission froze several times for no apparent reason. I then had to turn off the computer to get out. Although the mission looks very interesting , this has spoilt it for me , guess I should stick to Dark Mod !

 

 

I've made a few tweeks to settings , turning a few things off ( weather , fogging ) and this seems to help but that may be more luck than judgement. The mountain path bit is doing my head in though , so drab. I think Thief 2 is starting to look old to me ! On a mission note the path bit is frustrating , I 've come to a V shaped cleft which you obviously can't get down without falling to your death. Only way seems up a large rock near a tree but can't seem to mantle up it. Forgot about that particular frustration in Thief 2. But heigh ho , this isn't the Thief 2 FM hint site ! After making the trip backwards to play the mission I do definitely think I prefer Dark Mod now.

p.s That's it. Tried to mantle up the rock and it froze again. Going to erase the mission before it drives me mad.Probably something to do with dual processor or something like it , can't be bothered to research it now after all that time away.

Edited April 14, 2010 by raymeld

[demagogue]

Re: Sound. When I was playing with the location system, I was also playing with stuff like EAX and sound fall-off values, and even putting extreme values I didn't notice the sound changing. Also some of the distance & directional issues I've heard too. So something is up with sound (maybe something buggy on my end?). Hopefully when id4 goes open source we can get a good look (hopefully some good documentation on it) and maybe do some things like NH is talking about.

 

But anyway, there is a console command that shows the source of a sound and its volume... I really like to use it when testing how the visPortals direct sound, because it will show you exactly the path the sound takes from the source, through them, to you (and its volume by the time it gets to you).

[Fidcal]

@raymeld: That bit got me too. It's a game engine thing. As you stand in that tree area looking forward to that V shaped gulley, there is an unpromising slope on the right of it but it seems unclimbable. In fact there is a tiny angle near the near corner where you can just get on.

 

And that is one of the problems. There is no logical reason in the game story. Personally I would have flattened that corner somewhat so you could get on more obviously.

 

That is nothing. In Part 2 (and this is not a spoiler) I could not find a rope arrow so I tried climbing on a door. I dropped a drill below me on top of the door then a couple of potions and stood on them. I thought I was quite clever to have got that far.I could easily see over the top of a beam but it was impossible to mantle onto it. I tried multiple angles etc but although Garrett kept gasping I could not get up onto a big beam with plenty of room (which I later got onto from a rope.)

 

BTW. FPS dropping as I continue. One room was 25 to 27fps at the start. I checked a later gamesave and that same room was down to 10fps. Now it is down to 5fps. Same small room. Door shut. Someone else reported a memory leak and its using more and more RAM as he proceeds. So Dark Mod is not the only one with these techy problems.

 

Brilliant FM though - but really tough puzzles and frustrations for many. Ballet shoes eh? Guess what they do! A gardener watering the flowers. Good animation. A cleaner sweeping up. Lots more surprises.

[Neb]

I still wonder whether it's just idTech4 that doesn't have a well fleshed out audio system. I'm not certain, but everything sounds raw. I guess for Doom 3 they could focus on making decent audio samples, but a Thief-like game with varied environments could do with a more flexible system.

 

It would be nice if you could get effects like echo while walking through a stone tunnel. Perhaps even subtle reverb for zones with large chambers. Also, when sound is shut behind a portal it could filter out some high-end frequencies (voices wouldn't sound too close that way).

 

I'm not sure if I'm on the right track, and I don't know much about how audio usually works in game engines, but right now everything sounds far too consistent.

 

 

[Serpentine]

Most of the problems with sound come from the use of large horizontal VP that intersect with the top of walls. While its a valid use of VPs for performance reasons it does break the sound prop quite badly from what I've noticed.

Without restricting vertical player movement it's quite hard to fix this during mapping.

[demagogue]

It would be nice if you could get effects like echo while walking through a stone tunnel. Perhaps even subtle reverb for zones with large chambers. Also, when sound is shut behind a portal it could filter out some high-end frequencies (voices wouldn't sound too close that way).

 

All of these things are present now. Sounds definitely get muffled when you close a door.

As for the echo and reverb effects, that's EAX, what I was talking about above. id4 has it; you can hear it in Doom3 (e.g., when you go outside); I put it into my FM (not sure if any other FM has used it). But either it's fishy in TDM or I didn't really do it properly because you can't really sense it in my FM. But it's absolutely there and effective for whoever can figure it out. (I hope someone does, because I agree, it really adds to the atmosphere.)

[raymeld]

@raymeld: That bit got me too. It's a game engine thing. As you stand in that tree area looking forward to that V shaped gulley, there is an unpromising slope on the right of it but it seems unclimbable. In fact there is a tiny angle near the near corner where you can just get on.

 

And that is one of the problems. There is no logical reason in the game story. Personally I would have flattened that corner somewhat so you could get on more obviously.

 

That is nothing. In Part 2 (and this is not a spoiler) I could not find a rope arrow so I tried climbing on a door. I dropped a drill below me on top of the door then a couple of potions and stood on them. I thought I was quite clever to have got that far.I could easily see over the top of a beam but it was impossible to mantle onto it. I tried multiple angles etc but although Garrett kept gasping I could not get up onto a big beam with plenty of room (which I later got onto from a rope.)

 

BTW. FPS dropping as I continue. One room was 25 to 27fps at the start. I checked a later gamesave and that same room was down to 10fps. Now it is down to 5fps. Same small room. Door shut. Someone else reported a memory leak and its using more and more RAM as he proceeds. So Dark Mod is not the only one with these techy problems.

 

Brilliant FM though - but really tough puzzles and frustrations for many. Ballet shoes eh? Guess what they do! A gardener watering the flowers. Good animation. A cleaner sweeping up. Lots more surprises.

 

Fidcal , Interesting observations . Unfortunately , as I mentioned in my p.s in my earlier post I got so frustrated with freeze ups that I erased it and Darkloader too. Perhaps revisiting Thief 2 was a bridge too far. And I haven't got time to look for tips on avoiding the freezes. I vaguely remember having to do it when I used to play Thief 2 FMs on another computer in the distant past. Anyway , I'm loving Dark Mod and its missions so much they're enough for me , my interest was just sparked by your first post. And , Dark Mod missions run so well on my present computer with no problems whatsoever !

[LEGION]

raymeld: Did you use the ddfix-Patch for Thief 2? There is a big patch out there with lots of tweaks and updates for both old Thief games. Take a look:

 

http://www.southquar...fferPatcher.exe

 

 

TTLG info page:

http://ttlg.ttlg.mob...ad.php?t=131106

[raymeld]

raymeld: Did you use the ddfix-Patch for Thief 2? There is a big patch out there with lots of tweaks and updates for both old Thief games. Take a look:

 

http://www.southquar...fferPatcher.exe

 

 

TTLG info page:

http://ttlg.ttlg.mob...ad.php?t=131106

 

Hey , Thank you for this , might give it a whirl sometime to see whether it does the trick as I've still got the downloaded files even though I've ditched the programs themselves.

[Springheel]

But anyway, there is a console command that shows the source of a sound and its volume... I really like to use it when testing how the visPortals direct sound, because it will show you exactly the path the sound takes from the source, through them, to you (and its volume by the time it gets to you).

 

That sounds useful. I'd like to test that out a bit.

[Tels]

The system in Dromed (Dark Engine) worked like this as well; sound came from the room connections. The difference is that in id4 the sound really comes straight from the visportal, including through walls, or if there isn't a visPortal it will come straight from the source, also through walls. So you need to really think about visPortal and wall placement for it to work well.

 

In Thief, the system was you literally created 3d-box "rooms" and overlapped them, then sound traveled through the overlaps. It's like you're creating the entire leaf's boundaries as a box you can see, so it's easier to see & control sound-flow maybe. There were issues with its system, though, too: it was annoying it had to be a box and not other shapes, and you could get weird sound-leaks that way, sound doesn't fall-off so if you have a huge "room" AI will hear you from way far off, etc.

 

So there are pros and cons either way. The important thing for mappers is to really understand the system you're working with and how to maximize its pros and minimize its cons in your design.

 

Yeah, the Thief "sound room" system was really advanced for that time and gave fantastic results. However, as you noted, it was a nuisance for the mapper and could really used a few more shapes than boxes.

 

The big advantage of the TDM system is that it is automatic, the sound always travels through portals. The problems we have, though, are all either because there are not enough portals (technically, you'd need a portal on each corner of a hallway, or the sound doesn't travel along the hallway, around the corner and along again, but straight through the wall, f.i.) and/or the dampening on portals is not enough. I am not sure how one can tweak the amount of sound-fall-off, but I think it is possible, but only for all frequency alike. Smaller openings like windows should leave different sounds intact compared to large openings or openings with a glass-pane/door in the way. Currently all you have is either open or closed with some dampening (for doors).

 

So, in a nutshel, the TDM system is easier for mappers but it could be improved. Probably not before D3 goes Open source, tho.

[Tels]

the system seems to make sense to me. From an intuitive perspective when a sound comes from another room/visleaf, it would likely come primarily from the door/window/corridor, which is exactly where visportals should be placed.

 

i.e. my roommate's bedroom is adjacent to one of my bedroom walls. When my roommate has sex, the sound primarily propagates from my bedroom door which is on the far side of my room away from the true direction of the noise, with some lower pitched sounds that come at a quieter level through the wall. this results in a sound like my roommate having sex in the hallway outside my bedroom, which i do not altogether appreciate

 

That he has sex (and you not?) or that he has sex in the hallway (and you are not there?)

[LEGION]

Probably not before D3 goes Open source, tho.

 

Does this gonna happen or are you just hoping it will happen?

[New Horizon]

Does this gonna happen or are you just hoping it will happen?

 

John Carmack from id Software says he is pretty sure it's still going to happen, but it won't be until after they release their new game "Rage".

[demagogue]

I am not sure how one can tweak the amount of sound-fall-off, but I think it is possible, but only for all frequency alike.

 

For the record, I already looked into this and there is a spawnarg that you can put on our old friend the location-markers (the boxes you put over a visPortal) that will vary the sound-fall-off for a visPortal. (It's listed on one of their wiki pages I believe; I don't recall it off-hand.) I needed this when the AI inside a building was too loud outside because of a small window. Unfortunately, again bugginess made it not work for me, but they are supposed to work and it would be helpful to know if they work for other people. It's pretty useful.

 

(Also for the record, one of the EAX settings you can put on a room or visLeaf is the sound-fall-off/m^2 of the open air inside it. Actually there are a *lot* of cool settings in the EAX settings ... reverb, fall-off, air density, etc, etc. I recommend people take a look at it.)

[Fidcal]

Might try that myself - I'm getting freeze ups on my Vista install.

raymeld: Did you use the ddfix-Patch for Thief 2? There is a big patch out there with lots of tweaks and updates for both old Thief games. Take a look:

 

http://www.southquar...fferPatcher.exe

 

 

TTLG info page:

http://ttlg.ttlg.mob...ad.php?t=131106

[LEGION]

Someone else reported a memory leak and its using more and more RAM as he proceeds. So Dark Mod is not the only one with these techy problems.

 

Does this mean, that, when I play a Dark Mod Mission, the RAM continually grows until the game crashes? Maybe this is the cause for my latest problem:

http://modetwo.net/d...aining-mission/

 

I hope, it´s something else! Because when playing Thief I always take my time. I don´t want it to be over so soon, cause I like it so much! My average time for Thief 1&2 Original Missions were 4to5 hours! (on Expert, but I know this missions very well)

So, if the mission is big, I could easily spend up to 6 hours or even more! Will this be a problem? I´m playing with the highest possible graphics and sound setup, too. But the res is only 1024x768.

[Fidcal]

I don't know. Dark Mod seems to have issues - some that seem to grow with game time. So we may see this more as FMs are getting bigger. In this thread I'm just pointing out that Thief does too. I'll add something to that thread so this does not go too far off topic.

[Melan]

That's the old six sigma rule from management textbooks -- in a complex system, even a minuscule margin of error is expected to produce serious problems if the length of time and/or number of error-prone interactions is sufficiently large. I have experienced this "falling apart" in Heart, although, actually, it ended up enhancing the game experience.

[Tels]

I don't know. Dark Mod seems to have issues - some that seem to grow with game time.

 

If that is the case please file a tracker entry so we can fix it.