Sound Propogation And Attenuation

[Raven]

Hey I am getting really stoked about the dark mod, it looks like you guys are doing great things. I only wish I could help, but umm - I still have a long way to go with my l33t haxor skills (probably the first step would be to buy doom . Couple of questions

 

1) How is the sound propagation (and attenuation?) system coming along... by this I mean features such as

a) sound travelling down (and attenuating down) corridors and through doors instead of straight through walls

sound travelling through walls appropriately i.e. through plaster/wooden stud walls but not through thick stone walls.

c) sound being blocked by doors... eaves(sp?) dropping through doors by leaning into them.

d) footstep noise levels being dictated by surface that is walked upon (how many different types of surfaces are you planning, can an editor assign different noise levels to a specific “floor suitable” texture?

e) AI responding to different levels of intruder noise being created i)footsteps ii)fumbling, knocking stuff over, distracting the guards by throughing stuff in the wrong direction

f) How AI handles non-intruder noise levels, e.g will the noise generated by a large noisy turbine mask garret's (umm... I mean a player character's... footstep.

g) EAX i)implementation ii)map creators ability to implement (similar to dromED's and eax setting rooms)

---basically in summery how is/will the sound system comparing to the dark engine's?

 

2)sorry for this again but how exactly are you expecting people to use this mod... you are working close sourced just now, but presumably upon release it will be possible to add onto your great endeavours, but to what extent (e.g. errm such as messing with the sound system)

 

I haven’t looked into editing doom 3 properly, but i guess that the source code isn't available and I haven’t seen the SDK - but to what extend are core elements of the engine such as sound "moddable".

[Dram]

As for the sound engine, that's part of the core D3 and we cannot modify it, so what you hear is determined by the sound engine, pretty good though.

 

As for sound prop to AI and such, that was made by Ishtvan so he knows all the details, but to sum up: yes AI will hear things dependant on surface, noise level (won't hear you even running if he's near a really loud generator) etc.

 

DarkMod will be closed source FOREVER and we will never let evils such as the "general public" spoil it! J/k

 

Nah, when we release it it will be open source, so you can go and change the AI, lightgem, blah blah blah if you really want to. There will be tutorials that explain how to do things/where to change things/how to corrupt your HDD

 

But yeah, if you don't like curving fire arrows (like my brother does'nt) you can just open the script file with a text editor and set it's gravity to 0. That's just an example

 

The D3 source code will be available in about 2-4 years as Carmack announced, but the SDK is already there and useable. Hell, if someone had enough money, they could buy havoc and integrate it into D3 (the physics are in the SDK)

 

Hope that helps

[demagogue]

I don't think I've read this before, and anyway can't hurt to ask:

 

So presumably TDM will be out before the D3 source is released. But when the D3 source code is released, are there any plans to add to the TDM package? Or will you just leave well enough as it is. And are there even things you could do with the source code that you can't do with the SDK, anyway?

Edited June 10, 2006 by demagogue

[Ishtvan]

1) How is the sound propagation (and attenuation?) system coming along... by this I mean features such as

a) sound travelling down (and attenuating down) corridors and through doors instead of straight through walls

Done.

 

sound travelling through walls appropriately i.e. through plaster/wooden stud walls but not through thick stone walls.

 

You can do this, but it's a little awkard.

 

Unlike in DromEd, you don't have to create "room brushes," the D3 engine already determines which rooms are connected via the visportal and caulking system, and divides them up into "portal areas." If your rooms are isolated by D3 caulking, they will also be isolated with regard to sound propagation. If two areas are not isolated, and you want sound to flow thru them by bending around corners instead of going straight thru walls, you need to define the sound apertures by putting in visportals. This is fairly convenient, since well-optimized D3 maps need visportals at apertures anyway. Our soundprop system lets you define a different acoustical loss for each portal if you want (in addition to the normal attenuation that happens due to geometric spreading and material absorption over a given distance).

 

Anyway, an unintended side effect of this system is that it's a bit difficult to set up the case you mention of sound going thru a solid wall. You could make it go through with no attenuation by just putting in a "fake" wall with some holes in the caulking, then the two rooms would be viewed as the same portal area. That would be pretty easy. If you want attenuation when going thru the wall though, as I've said that is stored on the visportal information, so you will need to make sure the renderer sees the two rooms as two separate portal areas, and place a visportal between them, defining attenuation on the visportal. Then put your fake wall up where the visportal is. The visportal will never be active to the renderer, but soundprop should see it and allow sound to go between the two rooms with the attenuation you define on the portal.

 

So yes it is possible, but requires placing a "dummy" visportal if you want attenuation when going thru your thin wall.

 

c) sound being blocked by doors... eaves(sp?) dropping through doors by leaning into them.

d) footstep noise levels being dictated by surface that is walked upon (how many different types of surfaces are you planning, can an editor assign different noise levels to a specific “floor suitable” texture?

e) AI responding to different levels of intruder noise being created i)footsteps ii)fumbling, knocking stuff over, distracting the guards by throughing stuff in the wrong direction

These features are all done and functioning.

 

f) How AI handles non-intruder noise levels, e.g will the noise generated by a large noisy turbine mask garret's (umm... I mean a player character's... footstep.

We do intend to implement this feature (I call it "environmental sounds"), but it is a lower priority than some core gameplay code that still has to be done. If you or anyone you know are good at programming, we could always use more coders so we can get everything we want done within a reasonable amount of time. A lot of the design work is done, but we have to test it and see how much it impacts performance before deciding if it will definitely be ingame. So no promises.

 

g) EAX i)implementation ii)map creators ability to implement (similar to dromED's and eax setting rooms)

---basically in summery how is/will the sound system comparing to the dark engine's?

The latest patch of Doom3 included full support for EAX, and the ability to set sound environment settings for individual portal areas and also for "locations" using D3's location system. The data is stored in another text file and has to be entered by hand for now (Quake4 has a reverb editor but apparently they didn't bother adding that for D3 along with the patch ). Hopefully in our DarkRadiant editor we'll set up our own reverb editor that generates that file and updates it based on where you are clicking in the map rather than manually editing the file.

 

you are working close sourced just now, but presumably upon release it will be possible to add onto your great endeavours, but to what extent (e.g. errm such as messing with the sound system)

Yeah we're going to release everything we've done. If you want the soundprop system though you must pay me a licensing fee. I also accept first born children in lieu of cash payment.

[Dram]

If you want the soundprop system though you must pay me a licensing fee. I also accept first born children in lieu of cash payment.

 

Coders are evil are'nt they

[Raven]

That is fantastic news, many thanks for the reply... I am only just beginning to learn programming in any serious manner, so unfortunately it maybe in the 2 to 3 years (when the source code is released ) that I could actually become useful. (Of course I still plan on using DARKradient to bring to life more tales of the only honest man in the city... and I plan to use as much thief mythology as possible ...of course I will have to learn dark/radiant - it can't be worse than Dromed or T3D).

 

Anyway, a green balloon for Ishtvan; the sound system is practically what makes the game thief.

 

Oh final question, by default will guards be able to hear the PC when the PC is moving while crouched? (and of course more sound while running and normal (i.e the same as the guards) while walking and less while creeping?).

 

Also in this respect are you handling it as though there is a certain base noise level generated (again say walking guarding) and applying stackable modifiers for the various stance and acceleration and texture the PC is experiencing. Now I have just started rambling, but I am thinking about analogue acceleration control like was supposedly possible in thief 3 Xbox - I wonder if it was "analogue" adjustments to the sound system that were also being made (well, as analogue as computer software can be )

 

Point – at least it can be done, and presumably that would encourage non sloppy level creation… and yeah for eax too!

[sparhawk]

So presumably TDM will be out before the D3 source is released. But when the D3 source code is released, are there any plans to add to the TDM package? Or will you just leave well enough as it is. And are there even things you could do with the source code that you can't do with the SDK, anyway?

 

Of course there are things you could do. For example, currently you can not determine certain things, because the data is hidden in the renderengine. You can also have access to texture code, because that is also locked away.