[Mod] Sound Polish

[Taffingtaffer]

Forgot to upload the moss player footsteps... Redownload v1.2 if you have already done so.

[chumbucket91]

So I decided to give this mod some testing because I agree overall with the idea behind the mod and that the problems its trying to address are indeed problems worth solving.

To test it, I installed each of the .pk4 files separately into my TDM install and ran through 15-20 minutes of "Full Moon Fever" on its easy difficulty. I did not test any of the changes in the .cfg files, just the new sounds and sound shader definitions.

I liked the gameplay improvements of the sound shaders - it was much easier for me to creep up on AIs when I needed to and I felt generally like I had a much more intuitive feeling of how loud I was being when running around. Getting caught felt much more fair on average, and I actually debated turning the AI's hearing capabilities up to "challenging" a couple times (which I would never do in vanilla TDM).

As far as the new sounds themselves go, I think my favorite pack overall is the volta pack? But I wasn't completely happy with any of the three options. I think I'd probably pick and choose between them to arrive at a set that I thought sounded uniformly good. I liked the new weapon impact sounds that I heard, although I wasn't paying as much attention to those as the footsteps.

I think this mod is overcorrecting on the volume of AI footsteps, though. At points in the interior of the mansion, it sounded like AIs were patrolling right next to me when they were in fact on a completely separate floor of the building. With two+ AIs patrolling in different relative locations away from me, the game turned into an overwhelming cacophany of footstep noises pretty quickly and I lost the ability to keep track of where AIs were just by listening for them.

This was a cool mod and an improvement overall, and I'd support something like it being integrated into core TDM. But I don't feel like this exact setup is quite ready as-is.

[Taffingtaffer]

1 hour ago, chumbucket91 said:

I liked the gameplay improvements of the sound shaders - it was much easier for me to creep up on AIs when I needed to and I felt generally like I had a much more intuitive feeling of how loud I was being when running around. Getting caught felt much more fair on average, and I actually debated turning the AI's hearing capabilities up to "challenging" a couple times (which I would never do in vanilla TDM).

Glad that those changes feel right!

1 hour ago, chumbucket91 said:

As far as the new sounds themselves go, I think my favorite pack overall is the volta pack? But I wasn't completely happy with any of the three options. I think I'd probably pick and choose between them to arrive at a set that I thought sounded uniformly good.

My bias goes to Gin's Thiefier Sounds. You could even mix and match files (or skip them to load TDM Core sounds) if you extract the .pk4s. Thiefier Sounds unique footsteps are stone, tile and wood; Volta pack has new carpet, stone and wood sounds. I'm actually considering using Volta's carpet sounds, myself.

1 hour ago, chumbucket91 said:

I think this mod is overcorrecting on the volume of AI footsteps, though. At points in the interior of the mansion, it sounded like AIs were patrolling right next to me when they were in fact on a completely separate floor of the building. With two+ AIs patrolling in different relative locations away from me, the game turned into an overwhelming cacophany of footstep noises pretty quickly and I lost the ability to keep track of where AIs were just by listening for them.

Yeah, I first started to test louder AI footsteps in the Daft Mugi's map, then played Talbot 2 for a while and things seemed good on the same floor. But in The Accountant 2 you can hear the guard patrolling from below if you lockpick the door and leave it open... Displacement welcomes you right at the beginning with the footsteps of a patrol that seems to be right in your room.

idTech4 doesn't seem to have very good audio isolation and 3d position, unfortunately. I'm not sure if TDM team have already improved it or if there's something to be done in that regard. Again, if you would like to help find a better middle ground (a pull request would be even better) you could extract the .pk4 and reduce the maxDistance values of the shaders in sound/tdm_sfx_movement_footsteps.sndshd
They are practically all at 30 by default, if I recall correctly.

Edited April 10 by Taffingtaffer

[chumbucket91]

22 minutes ago, Taffingtaffer said:

in The Accountant 2 you can hear the guard patrolling from below if you lockpick the door and leave it open... Displacement welcomes you right at the beginning with the footsteps of a patrol that seems to be right in your room.

idTech4 doesn't seem to have very good 3-dimensional audio, unfortunately. I'm not sure if TDM team have already improved it or if there's something to be done in that regard.

In lieu of finding a middle ground for a max audible distance, I wonder if volume falloff calculation should be more than a function of distance for these sounds? Like maybe Z distance should matter more than XY distance, or maybe there should be a ray cast between the player and the source of a footstep for solids and that should change the volume if it intersects. Those are dumb spitball-y ideas, and I'm sure theres probably some prior art here from either the TDM team or Thief/other video games that I am unaware of.

Edited April 10 by chumbucket91

[datiswous]

15 hours ago, Taffingtaffer said:

idTech4 doesn't seem to have very good audio isolation and 3d position

Are you sure it's an engine problem? Maybe tdm gives mappers the options to play with it and some mappers don't do enough with it.

I think including efx might help a bit for 3d positioning.

 

Edit: I clearly didn't read the whole topic. I asume now that you know better. So I guess you could ignore my post.

Edited April 11 by datiswous