Music Issue and volume

[ravenx444]

Well I was playing No Honor among thieves, and I was noticing that the music is REALLY loud at some points, like I have to sit and stop moving and focus to hear a footstep.

 

I hear that turning down the Ambient volume slider would adjust that, but would that also adjust ambient noises as well, or are they handled under side effects. I'm basically looking for a way to decrease just the volume of the music without losing any other audio detail.

 

Also, is there anyway to just flat turn off the music? Maybe console command?

[OrbWeaver]

This is a more general problem with the balancing of volume levels amongst our ambient sounds. This needs to be fixed at the source (by modifying the sounds or setting new volume levels in the .sndshd files) rather than by adding more volume sliders in the game itself.

[SneaksieDave]

There have been several mentions of this here and TTLG. @Everyone who has issue with this, please post here the specifics. If you can, name the missions and pieces of music. If there is a bug it will be addressed, but in most or all cases, it might be as simple as soundshaders needing adjustment, as mentioned by OrbWeaver.

[OrbWeaver]

@Everyone who has issue with this, please post here the specifics. If you can, name the missions and pieces of music.

 

Yes, do this. The way to find out the required information is:

 

1. Run the game in windowed mode.
   
2. While playing the mission in the area of the affected sound, enter editSounds in the Doom 3 console. The sound editor dialog will appear.
   
3. Speakers and other entities will be highlighted in the game window. Locate the speaker that is causing the offending sound, point directly at it (this may take a few attempts since there is no crosshair in TDM) and click the ATTACK button. Focus will switch to the sound editor dialog.
   
4. Note down the name of the sound shader in the editor dialog. You could also try reducing the volume (changes take effect immediately) to a more suitable level and post it as a suggestion along with the shader name and location in the map.
   

[aidakeeley]

What OrbWeaver just said, should (along with other things of dat nature and stuff and things) be "stickied" somesortaway as far and as wide for players to assist in the hunting down of these "[t]here have been several mentions of this here and TTLG" type problems.

[ravenx444]

Thx, will do on my next run thru.

[OrbWeaver]

I did some tests and found that the editSounds approach is only useful where the ambient sound is emitted from a fixed speaker in the map. It seems that with the scripted location-based ambient music, no such speaker can be found which makes identifying the music impossible without loading the map in the editor (as far as I can see).

 

I also discovered that certain "loud" ambients have actually been set to higher volumes in the map than their default sound shader volume, such as the city loop in the start position of Return to the City, which means that they could not be adjusted in the base mod assets. I think mapper education ("Do not increase the volume of ambients without good reason") is the only long-term solution to this.

[demagogue]

It seems that with the scripted location-based ambient music, no such speaker can be found which makes identifying the music impossible without loading the map in the editor (as far as I can see).

 

There's a console message the location script makes when you enter a new location which says something like "Ambient X is now playing for location Y.", which I believe you can read right off the console even in game-mode. It's not the most useful since X is just the spawnarg on the speaker that calls the shader-name, not the shader name itself, so you'd still have to look at the speaker in the editor to get it. (In a future version, it might be good for it to list the shader name too! ... if it's possible.) But listing X here may be better than nothing for now, since it makes tracking it down much easier. Then you could, e.g., just open the .map in notepad and "Find" it directly.

 

So that's what I recommend players do for this situation. Again: Open the console and look for the last comment saying something like "Ambient X is now playing in location Y" and list X here.

 

(The speaker itself can be anywhere in the map. Chances are it's in a blueroom outside the map boundaries, though, because that's what the tutorial says to do; which would make it a speck in the distance.)

[ungoliant]

perhaps beta testers should put a stronger emphasis on checking volume levels of different speakers, with sliders all the way up (or at least at roughly the same level) as a standard.

[OrbWeaver]

There's a console message the location script makes when you enter a new location which says something like "Ambient X is now playing for location Y.", which I believe you can read right off the console even in game-mode. It's not the most useful since X is just the spawnarg on the speaker that calls the shader-name, not the shader name itself, so you'd still have to look at the speaker in the editor to get it. (In a future version, it might be good for it to list the shader name too! ... if it's possible.) But listing X here may be better than nothing for now, since it makes tracking it down much easier. Then you could, e.g., just open the .map in notepad and "Find" it directly.

 

Thanks, that's good to know.

 

(The speaker itself can be anywhere in the map. Chances are it's in a blueroom outside the map boundaries, though, because that's what the tutorial says to do; which would make it a speck in the distance.)

 

If the speaker can be anywhere, I would recommend putting it somewhere near where the ambient is going to be heard, so that editsounds can be used, rather than in a blueroom.

[OrbWeaver]

perhaps beta testers should put a stronger emphasis on checking volume levels of different speakers, with sliders all the way up (or at least at roughly the same level) as a standard.

 

Agreed. Checking the volume of ambients using the default ambient volume slider settings should be one of the responsibilities of a beta tester, even if they prefer to play with lowered ambient volumes normally.

[Bikerdude]

Orbs, could the method you described be used on info_location speakers as well..?

[OrbWeaver]

That's what I was discussing with demagogue. It will work on any speaker as long as you can actually find the speaker to edit. If the info_location speakers are placed in a blueroom somewhere this could be rather difficult to do without loading up the map in the editor.

[demagogue]

Orbs, could the method you described be used on info_location speakers as well..?

 

To paraphrase my last post, if you can't see the info_location speaker, then open the console in-game (around when the ambient starts is probably best) and look for a statement that says something like "Ambient X is now playing in area Y", and then post X in this thread.

 

If the speaker can be anywhere, I would recommend putting it somewhere near where the ambient is going to be heard, so that edit sounds can be used, rather than in a blueroom.

 

Just to follow up on this, the reason a mapper wants to put it in the blueroom is because every ambient in the entire level is played on the same speaker, so you'd want it in a central place. (And it's on one speaker so the ambients can be connected in a reasonable way, i.e., like switching stations on one radio rather than tracking dozens of radios to turn any number of them on or off in crazy, mixed up ways). I understand & sympathize with the concern here; it's just on the scale of unfortunate side-effects, I think a system using multiple speakers would suck harder for a number of reasons than using one in a central location making it hard to find in-game.

[Sotha]

Bump to this old thread.

 

I've been now setting up ambients in my newest map.

 

Some of the ambient sounds are very loud when compared to others.

 

I'm using the sound zone approach.

 

Some of the cool ambients cannot be used, because they sound much louder than other ambients. This slaps in the face when the player moves from the ambient zone to another. I just realized that I deliberately avoided using some ambient songs in my previous maps because of this issue.

 

For instance in my WIP map I'm using:

city_sleeping_loop

mansion_piano02a

mansion_tense01a

derelict04

city_sleeps01

 

The last four sound to my ears okay, but the first one is terribly high volume when compared to the last sounds. I simply cannot use the first one because of the volume difference.

 

Also the ambient volume slider does not seem to work at all. If I turn it to zero, the ambients still play! Changing the slider causes the sound to lower for half-a-second or so, then it returns to original loudness. Saving and loading the game shuts down ambients entirely. Moving the ambient slider restores the sounds.

 

These ambient sound issues are really critical, since they can really spoil the mission experience if the sounds are too high and the player cannot lower them. I remember playing mission Too late! some time ago and the music in the harbor was unbearably loud, and I could not change the volume at all by moving the ambient slider.

 

If the ambient volume slider would work, the problem would be essentially fixed. The perceived volume differences between certain ambients would not be so big problem as it is when the player cannot control ambient volumes at all.

 

EDIT1: I'm a bit tired at present and unsure if my text is clear. Added some boldings to help to convey the main idea.

 

EDIT2: with the ambient volume slider I'm meaning a slider that affects the info_location -sounds, nothing else.

 

EDIT3: HEY! I just got the ambient sound slider to work! If I set the SFX volume slider to zero, moving the ambient sound slider lowers the ambient volume just the way it should. But then I cannot hear anything else than the ambient music.

If I've a non-zero SFX volume, ambient musics play at maximum volume regardless of the ambient volume slider position. This most certainly is a bug?

 

EDIT4:

Just read http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2270

Maybe change that to "ambient volume slider not working." Reproducibility: always.

[Tels]

Could you please make a simple testmap with two zones and these sounds?

[Sotha]

Could you please make a simple testmap with two zones and these sounds?

 

Sure, here is map with three of the sounds. The starting area is the loudest, areas on the left and right are quieter, but now I think it maybe be due to the musics itself. The two are quiet tension humming and the starting area is like a real song per se.

 

MAP:

http://www.mediafire...x2v99qvuf18wym4

 

But anyway, remember that the ambient volume slider is the most important thing to fix here. I played around with it and it really seems to behave somewhat erratically. When the SFX volume is zero, then the ambient volume slider works like it should.

[Baddcog]

yeah im confused because i reported this issue along time ago and thought it was fixed.

 

but recently i was having weird invisible sliders, and sound adjustment issues. maybe the sound contrl was working but sliders weren't showing...

[demagogue]

The first person that should be able to fix it would be me (tho I couldn't even experiment until last week when I got Doom3 running again), but I don't know how volume or sound really works, just the logic of the zone system; so I'd want to defer to greebo or somebody. It's also possible it's handled by things in closed code (I think I recall an .h file, like sound.h or something, with things that looked relevant, but not the corresponding .cpp file to look at what's going on.)

 

Another thing about the ambient volumes is that what may sound very loud on your game may not be very loud on others. I remember some people saying the ambient on their game was over-poweringly loud and other people saying *the SAME ambient* was so quiet it almost couldn't be heard at all. Now explain *that*...

 

[A little lightblub goes off.] Ah, wait a second. Your tidbit that turning the fx volume off let the ambient slider works makes me wonder if the zone-ambients could actually be BOTH sfx and ambient sounds, or anyway somehow additive with both sliders. That might explain why they can be crazy loud for some people and not others (the fx volume contribution), and why cutting the fx volume to 0 makes the ambient slider work normally, but with both turned on they counteract each other somehow(?). Maybe, this might be because the sound is on a BODY channel on an ambient speaker; maybe changing it to an AMBIENT channel might help. I'm going to do a test and see.

 

Edit: Well that didn't go over well. Crash on startup:

Unknown value "SND_CHANNEL_AMBIENT"

Maybe there's another name for the ambient channel? I just want to see if "body" channel is causing problems.

 

Edit2: But now how does AI.cpp have this line?

StartSound( "snd_ambient", SND_CHANNEL_AMBIENT, 0, false, NULL );

Seriously ????

Does the channel exist or not? (If that's even the issue...)

 

Edit3: Oh, hadn't noticed Tels changes. Yeah that's all on the right track. I'll try something along those lines.

 

Edit4: @Tels, tried to send you a PM, but apparently your inbox is full because it wouldn't send. So I sent it to your TTLG account.

[Tels]

Edit4: @Tels, tried to send you a PM, but apparently your inbox is full because it wouldn't send. So I sent it to your TTLG account.

 

Bah, that 100 message limit is a bitch! Anyway, I cleared my inbox. And don't bother with TTLG, I login there maybe once a year (and that was after a maybe 4 year break

 

Edit:

 

from game_local.h:

       // internal use only.  not exposed to script or framecommands.
       SND_CHANNEL_AMBIENT,
       SND_CHANNEL_DAMAGE
} gameSoundChannel_t;

 

Huh?

 

But you are right, it might really be that the BODY channel is affacted by both the SFX slider and the ambient slider. That would be bad.

 

Edit: In addition, this might also explain why the nosisemaker sometimes comes right through walls:

 

script/tdm_ammo_noisemaker_small.script
27:             startSound( "snd_activated", SND_CHANNEL_BODY2, false );
42:             stopSound( SND_CHANNEL_BODY2, false );

[LEGION]

Aha, so you´re on it. I just wanted to say that I´m monitoring this and will thank the lords if this issue is finally fixed.

[Sotha]

Aha, so you´re on it. I just wanted to say that I´m monitoring this and will thank the lords if this issue is finally fixed.

 

Heh.. Me too. This is probably the most annoying bug in TDM I'm aware of. Tackling this one is going to be big for me at least.

[Bikerdude]

The first person that should be able to fix it would be me

Dema

 

As you have fixed it - http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2270, does that mean now that the volumes levels from info_locations speakers will now worrk correctly..? (as in not be too loud)

[demagogue]

Boy you guys don't miss a beat.

I have no doubt how often y'all are cruising the bug tracker or having updates notify you.

 

Yes, the volume levels will be proper now. Before they were actually doubled the normal volume. This fix brought them back to normal.

[Bikerdude]

Boy you guys don't miss a beat, having updates notify you?.

Awesomeness, so when is 1.03 coming then