[Mod] Sound Polish

[Darkness_Falls]

Does the mod also add different footstep sounds? Always have thought they could use replacement, including guard footstep sounds

[BoilerDunce]

Found a cluster of more step related parameters in Darkmod.cfg:

seta pm_min_stepsound_interval "200"
seta pm_stepvol_crouch_creep "-7"
seta pm_stepvol_crouch_run "4"
seta pm_stepvol_crouch_walk "-2"
seta pm_stepvol_creep "-5"
seta pm_stepvol_run "8"
seta pm_stepvol_walk "0"

Just in case they might be of interest.

[Taffingtaffer]

New update. Following the player-specific shader declarations, now footsteps have their own separate versions for player and guards, for the most part. For consistency, guards now use the player's footsteps with a lower pitch to differentiate them. (Except from the wood footsteps; lowering the player's files either sounded similar or too muffled)

I would need some way to hear these footsteps to finish with core files:

Quote

--Guards--

ai_stone_footstep (deprecated? it's mentioned in the thread by Springheel)
human_concrete (files were used by guards for tile... what the hell, man)
human_hardwood
human_squeakboard
human_metalbridge
human_metalgrate
movement_water (not sure if guards use this)
human_mud
bare_footstep
human_brokeglass
human_glass

--Females-- Only need to check sound volumes

human_female_stone
human_female_rock
human_female_ceramic
human_female_wood
human_female_metal
human_female_foliage
human_female_mud
human_female_snow
human_female_dirt
human_female_gravel
human_female_brokeglass
human_female_glass
human_female_ice

 

Edited August 22, 2025 by Taffingtaffer

[Taffingtaffer]

6 hours ago, Darkness_Falls said:

Does the mod also add different footstep sounds? Always have thought they could use replacement, including guard footstep sounds

Not yet, I'm focusing on testing all vanilla TDM sounds. I've taken the liberty of changing stone and grass guard footsteps for lower-pitched versions of the player's, if that sounds good to you.
There are at least 4 different custom sound sets, including Volta's footsteps. Any sounds in particular that you would personally change?

5 hours ago, BoilerDunce said:

Found a cluster of more step related parameters in Darkmod.cfg:

seta pm_min_stepsound_interval "200"
seta pm_stepvol_crouch_creep "-7"
seta pm_stepvol_crouch_run "4"
seta pm_stepvol_crouch_walk "-2"
seta pm_stepvol_creep "-5"
seta pm_stepvol_run "8"
seta pm_stepvol_walk "0"

Just in case they might be of interest.

I knew about those. Not sure what the first one does, but the other are modifiers applied to sound shader values. I'd rather leave those alone for consistent testing.

Edited August 22, 2025 by Taffingtaffer

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

On 8/20/2025 at 6:29 AM, snatcher said:

Cool. You stick to vanilla and don't use the mod.

Mod it! And share your mod with us 

This sounds like a terrible idea but who knows, perhaps you are right. Let's let that sink in.

Everyone being able to set footstep sounds to their desired volume is a "terrible idea"?
The point is, having it adjustable in game would satisfy everyone, and mitigate the need for everyone to patch in their desired settings. I'm already doing my part to overhaul visuals, I can't do everything...

[Taffingtaffer]

Last update before the stable release. I took a express DarkRadiant lesson to add AIs walking back and forth to the footstep test map. Guards and females now play logical sounds for all used materials, at a good volume level and with a good maxDistance for the player's ears.

1.0 will bring patches for all FMs that use the Volta sound mod. This will be annoying... Each FM uses different amounts of files, has different sound shader organization and some even include their own tdm_player_thief.def.

It will also include any adjustments for core shaders if any of you find anything strange. This is a call for player testing.

Optional sound packs will come after 1.0

Edited August 23, 2025 by Taffingtaffer

[wesp5]

Again I suggest that once this is stable and has been tested, the integration into the core game should be contemplated as this is a much too fundamental improvement to just be available as a mod! Also you should contact the creators of the Volta missions to a) check if they didn't just fix similar things to what you did and would be willing to remove their work and b) if they even permit changing their missions as I know from my own experience that some mod author's don't ;).

Edited August 24, 2025 by wesp5

[Taffingtaffer]

3 hours ago, wesp5 said:

Again I suggest that once this is stable and has been tested, the integration into the core game should be contemplated as this is a much too fundamental improvement to just be available as a mod! Also you should contact the creators of the Volta missions to a) check if they didn't just fix similar things to what you did and would be willing to remove their work and b) if they even permit changing their missions as I know from my own experience that some mod author's don't ;).

I've extracted and isolated all relevant files from those missions. They generally increase the volume of all shaders, although there are weird cases like Volta II where they state tdm_footstep_water_walk volume is "Volta-adjusted", but it's just the core volume -25. Maybe that wasn't the default in 2017... My mod increases that value to -12.5.

Can that be considered a mission change by itself? Doesn't TDM Modpack retroactively change fan missions with its features? I'm not sure where the line should be drawn.
I could leave shader values for the custom footsteps as-is specifically for the missions, just adapt my files to theirs, but it wouldn't make much sense for a global version.

Honestly, I don't know how to approach this. Even TDM team would have to go mission by mission to purge tdm_sfx_movement.sndshd from existence if they merged my changes, or most of them.
The only mission that focused on the custom sounds and put their shaders in an isolated .sndshd file is Sir Talbot's Collateral.

[snatcher]

v0.9 after some serious testing.

No comments on player footsteps audio. I hardly notice anything? I mean, it is absolutely great to know somebody took the time to run an in-depth assessment and we ended up with a consolidated sound-set based on a single view instead of having a mix from many different authors and backgrounds so please, take this positively. Job done, I would say.

My only gripes in the sound department had to do with metal landings and water sound volumes and @Daft Mugi already addressed these in a previous TDM version and despite me still don't liking player water sounds I acknowledge all core sounds are acceptable at this time.

No comments on player footsteps propagation. I guess I will need more time to see if I detect anything. Did propagation increase? Did propagation decrease? No idea. Again, take it positively.

Now, when it comes to AI sounds, this took me by surprise. I launched the missions I normally use for testing (simply to make sure I am familiar with how some areas sound) and wow! It definitively is different now. I can hear them from far, far away! Is this a good thing or bad thing? I have no idea but I kind of like it? It is very difficult for me to tell because this feels like a drastic change with implications to me. I need time to adjust, reflect and comment further.

This is the feedback I can provide today, sorry if it is disappointing in any way.

[snatcher]

1 hour ago, Taffingtaffer said:

[...] Doesn't TDM Modpack retroactively change fan missions with its features?

Absolutely, but aimed at core functionality only. I do my best to make sure I keep mapper's decisions / additions: if a new sound is introduced by a mission author, that sound should play. I apply this logic in all departments, not only sounds.

1 hour ago, Taffingtaffer said:

[...] I'm not sure where the line should be drawn.

Up to you. Do you plan to support your mods long time? Are these mods easy to manage by players? By modding a mission you are not changing anything in that mission, players using your mod are.

[snatcher]

On 8/22/2025 at 11:09 PM, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

Everyone being able to set footstep sounds to their desired volume is a "terrible idea"?
The point is, having it adjustable in game would satisfy everyone, and mitigate the need for everyone to patch in their desired settings. I'm already doing my part to overhaul visuals, I can't do everything...

Sorry, I have a love-hate relation with settings in games. I expect developers to provide the experience out of the box. When I am put against a screen with dozens of "unusual" settings I start having doubts about that game. I welcome accessibility and experimental settings - as long as they are properly tagged as such - but by providing a weird setting in a regular fashion you are telling players go ahead, tweak it to your liking, it is a feature (because we probably were too afraid to go with our vision and/or couldn't get it right).

Edited August 24, 2025 by snatcher

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

17 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Sorry, I have a love-hate relation with settings in games. I expect developers to provide the experience out of the box. When I am put against a screen with dozens of "unusual" settings I start having doubts about that game. I welcome accessibility and experimental settings - as long as they are properly tagged as such - but by providing a weird setting in a regular fashion you are telling players go ahead, tweak it to your liking, it is a feature (because we probably were too afraid to go with our vision and/or couldn't get it right).

Of course they can't get it right, there is no "right".
The single most common complaint about Thief 1 & 2 is the footstep sounds

[Taffingtaffer]

1 hour ago, snatcher said:

No comments on player footsteps audio. I hardly notice anything? I mean, it is absolutely great to know somebody took the time to run an in-depth assessment and we ended up with a consolidated sound-set based on a single view instead of having a mix from many different authors and backgrounds so please, take this positively. Job done, I would say.

I'm glad, that means I didn't overdo it for now. I'd say core player walking stone volume vs. mine is pretty noticeable, if you feel like comparing that. Now at least you can say "ok, I did make some noise" when a guard mutters to himself.

1 hour ago, snatcher said:

No comments on player footsteps propagation. I guess I will need more time to see if I detect anything. Did propagation increase? Did propagation decrease? No idea. Again, take it positively.

This shouldn't have changed. In fact, I've been doubting that part where you said the player shaders maxDistance affects propagation. See the wiki on both properties: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Setting_Up_Speakers#minDistance/_s_mindistance
The value reported by tdm_spr_debug stays the same whether it's 30 or 1; it does affect the guard footstep traveling distance for your benefit, which results in this:

1 hour ago, snatcher said:

Now, when it comes to AI sounds, this took me by surprise. I launched the missions I normally use for testing (simply to make sure I am familiar with how some areas sound) and wow! It definitively is different now. I can hear them from far, far away! Is this a good thing or bad thing? I have no idea but I kind of like it? It is very difficult for me to tell because this feels like a drastic change with implications to me. I need time to adjust, reflect and comment further.

It's kind of a game changer. I just finished "Special Delivery" and it comes very handy with a guard that patrols in circles in a room where he'll absolutely see you if you cross the doorway while he's walking towards it.

Edited August 24, 2025 by Taffingtaffer

[Wellingtoncrab]

Thanks for working on this. I’ve been meaning to take a look at it, but the current project I am working on uses kingsal’s modified footsteps and that is so over schedule it rather requires my full attention.

Not sure if it’s possible as they maybe share core definition files, but out of curiosity would you be willing to split the ai sound mods and player sound mods into separate pk4s?

I know it’s intended as a mod to the full game, but that’d add some nice modularity for mappers who maybe want to include one element or the other integrated directly into a mission.

[snatcher]

3 hours ago, Taffingtaffer said:

[...] In fact, I've been doubting that part where you said the player shaders maxDistance affects propagation. See the wiki on both properties: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Setting_Up_Speakers#minDistance/_s_mindistance
The value reported by tdm_spr_debug stays the same whether it's 30 or 1; it does affect the guard footstep traveling distance for your benefit, which results in this:

tdm_spr_debug does not seem like the best cvar for testing this. It seems it outputs fixed values of 1) volume in origin and 2) max range.

Try tdm_showsprop, this one displays the perceived volume based on distance, I think. And then there's tdm_showsprop_radius but this one is difficult to visualize.

[snatcher]

3 hours ago, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

Of course they can't get it right, there is no "right".

"Right" for the intended design, vision, gameplay... Right for the developers.

3 hours ago, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

The single most common complaint about Thief 1 & 2 is the footstep sounds

What is this complaint about? Reviews normally praise the sound design.

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

17 minutes ago, snatcher said:

"Right" for the intended design, vision, gameplay... Right for the developers.

What is this complaint about? Reviews normally praise the sound design.

I don't care in the slightest what devs intend on the topic of subjective details.
TDM devs wanted most of the lighting in the game to look oversaturated with piss yellow and nuclear blue lighting, but im changing that because i'm the one playing my copy of the game, and my subjective opinion is all that matters to me in that context.
Just because you integrate sliders doesn't mean there won't be a default setting.
I doubt you live under a rock, if you've read reviews you're obviously aware they praise the sound design with the caveat of the main characters inappropriate tap shoes...

Edited August 24, 2025 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[snatcher]

On 8/21/2025 at 8:16 PM, snatcher said:

It seems our observations are correct.

(Please note that modded pk4 are considered core pk4 and mission pk4 may be parsed differently).

1. The game reads pk4 in descending order (9-0 / Z-A) and discards duplicate files with the same name.
2. The game ends up with a list of files that get sorted in ascending order (0-9 / A-Z).
3. Definitions get parsed based on this ascending list.

This means that having:

• a.pk4 > sound > a.sndshd
• b.pk4 > sound > b.sndshd

1. b.pk4 gets read first
2. both b.sndshd and a.sndshd end up in the list
3. a.sndshd is parsed first and b.sndshd after

Far from optimal 

I tested this further but now with a mission.

• fms/mission.pk4 > sound > a.sndshd
• fms/mission.pk4 > sound > b.sndshd

a wins.

I would appreciate an assessment by @stgatilov.

Based on the below source code logic (FileSystem.cpp), shouldn't b be parsed first and win?

Quote

A game directory can have multiple zip
files of the form "pak0.pk4", "pak1.pk4", etc. Zip files are searched in decending order
from the highest number to the lowest, and will always take precedence over the filesystem.
This allows a pk4 distributed as a patch to override all existing data.

Edited August 24, 2025 by snatcher

[snatcher]

12 minutes ago, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

I doubt you live under a rock, if you've read reviews you're obviously aware they praise the sound design with the caveat of the main characters inappropriate tap shoes...

Ouch, there's a worm there. We better seal this can NOW 

[kingsal]

Nice! Ill have to give this a try.  For what its worth, I made an attempt at my own footstep "mod" with some of my own recorded sounds. Im happy to donate those if they are of use. 

The sound prop and sound distance stuff is really difficult to balance. Mine were done for Volta 1 and 2 which are fairly large maps.  They held up okay in some of my smaller missions, but I'm curious to see what was done here. 

 I agree  any changes to the core that are this essential need a lot testing and probably multiple rounds of iteration.

Edited August 24, 2025 by kingsal

[kingsal]

Oops, sent too fast.

As mentioned in the OP, I also got a lot of feedback that the player and AI footsteps were too quiet. I fixed this by increasing the max distance and dB slightly.  I think the distance was 25 and I increased it something like 30 for AI footsteps. 

@WellingtoncrabThere might be a bug tracker for this / already known issue, but the jump land sounds are increased artificially when holding sprint. I think this is a coding issue? 

Edited August 24, 2025 by kingsal

[Taffingtaffer]

2 hours ago, snatcher said:

tdm_spr_debug does not seem like the best cvar for testing this. It seems it outputs fixed values of 1) volume in origin and 2) max range.

Try tdm_showsprop, this one displays the perceived volume based on distance, I think. And then there's tdm_showsprop_radius but this one is difficult to visualize.

Still don't see an increase or decrease in loudness for the AI if I change maxDistance. I'd say it makes some sense; something so important as sound propagation shouldn't be messed with in sound shaders. I may be dense, though!

5 hours ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

Not sure if it’s possible as they maybe share core definition files, but out of curiosity would you be willing to split the ai sound mods and player sound mods into separate pk4s?

I could do that, but right now the three core .sndshd files are in such a state that you need the whole mod to make sure no declaration wins over mine.
Besides that, sound files are all over the place. I would propose this for both sfx .pk4s:

tdm_sound_sfx01.pk4

• Move all player climbing files from sound/sfx/movement/footsteps in tdm_sound_sfx02.pk4 to a sound/sfx/movement/climbing folder here.
• Move all humanoid rustle files from sound/sfx/movement/footsteps in tdm_sound_sfx02.pk4 to sound/sfx/movement/rustles here.

tdm_sound_sfx02.pk4

• Move all used player footsteps in sound/sfx/movement/footsteps or sound/sfx/movement/footsteps/human to sound/sfx/movement/footsteps/player. (You would need file duplication for some files, since core player declarations currently shares many files with NPCs...)
• Move all used NPC footsteps in sound/sfx/movement/footsteps to sound/sfx/movement/footsteps/human.
• Check and delete unused variation files of materials (there are a lot).

And of course, specify all player-exclusive shaders in tdm_player_thief.def

36 minutes ago, kingsal said:

As mentioned in the OP, I also got a lot of feedback that the player and AI footsteps were too quiet. I fixed this by increasing the max distance and dB slightly.  I think the distance was 25 and I increased it something like 30 for AI footsteps. 

@WellingtoncrabThere might be a bug tracker for this / already known issue, but the jump land sounds are increased artificially when holding sprint. I think this is a coding issue? 

I basically just went for 35 in most shares, so you weren't far off.
I was under the impression that the jump land bug just plays the sound at the full volume you set it at in shader declarations.

And if you could provide the latest iteration of your sound mod that would be great. 

Edited August 24, 2025 by Taffingtaffer

[snatcher]

15 minutes ago, Taffingtaffer said:

Still don't see an increase or decrease in loudness for the AI if I change maxDistance. I'd say it makes some sense; something so important as sound propagation shouldn't be messed with in sound shaders. I may be dense, though!

Sorry, I didn't understand you the first time. So you think there are hard-coded parameters or limits or variables we haven't taken into account yet. I will have a look tomorrow and see if I find anything.

[stgatilov]

6 hours ago, snatcher said:

I tested this further but now with a mission.

• fms/mission.pk4 > sound > a.sndshd
• fms/mission.pk4 > sound > b.sndshd

Based on the below source code logic (FileSystem.cpp), shouldn't b be parsed first and win?

Unfortunately, there are two systems which work here, and they don't know anything about each other.

First, there is a filesystem. It has a set of search directories (a directory can be pk4 archive too), which are sorted by some rules. You can see the sorted order near the beginning of the game console. If some file can be found in several search directories, then the file from the first directory wins. All the other instances are completely ignored, the game cannot see them at all and cannot know of their existence.

Second, there is decl system. Sound shaders is one type of decls. One file often contains many decls. The order of loading decls from the files have nothing to do with the order of search directories in the filesystem. Recently I ensured that the files from missions take precedence over the core files, but the core-core and mission-mission ordering is still the same as in Doom 3, i.e. not something to rely on.

As far as I see, the decl system enumerates all decl files, sorts them lexicographically, and parses one by one. Whenever it sees a decl with the name that is already occupied, it skips the new decl. So the decl from the lexicographically minimal filename wins (if both filenames are in core or both are in mission).

[snatcher]

Many thanks, @stgatilov

I am learning a lot in this topic