Task Assignment For Mrd

[sparhawk]

I was talking on IRC to mrD and I have a task for him. So if pak has no objections he should do this so we get some experience there.

 

You can take the frobtest map for creating ambience sounds in-game. The map has four rooms so it is a perfet testbed for this. What we need is for each room a different ambience sound playing. The ambience should change with going through the doors.

 

Additionally it would be a good idea to try if we can do some background music for all the maps. I don't know if we really will need this, but we should see if and how this works if we need it.

 

And of course. It would be good if the ambience doesn't simply cut off when entering a different room, rather it should fade into each other. Don't know if this is possible on a general basis. Could very well be that the sound would have to be tweaked for this and we can't do this on a general basis.

 

What can be done though, would be do to lower the volume for one and increase the volume for others.

 

The outcome should be: A detailed description how this is achieved. And if applicable, a requirement description for code support.

[mrDischarged]

Yessir!

 

Will post my findings as the tests progress.

 

 

mrD

[pakmannen]

Also, Spar, a lot of those questions are answered in the sound editor tutorial over at Doom3world.org. Anyone who is interested in sound etc should really check it out!

[sparhawk]

Also, Spar, a lot of those questions are answered in the sound editor tutorial over at Doom3world.org. Anyone who is interested in sound etc should really check it out!

That's good. If that is enough, then we have less work.

[mrDischarged]

Here's what I discovered during today's tests:

 

- sounds are placed into the map via entities called "speakers". Speakers can play either direct wave files or wave files as defined in soundshader files. Soundshader files are text files with sound definitions. Besides pointing to the location of actual files, they can contain sound attributes for every sound file, such as max/min distance, looping, screenshake and so forth. I have not succeeded in loading wave files directly, but I did manage to load them by using soundshaders.

 

- the "min/max distance" speaker attributes work fine, they define the offset and threshold of the sound in a defined radius. If the min distance equals to the max distance, then the sound will be cut off after the player has reached its threshold radius. If the min distance is lower than the max distance, then the sound will fade out smoothly as the player moves away from it. A related attribute is "omnidirectional", which will ignore panning - I succeeded into loading a map-wide music file by using this, and it can be heard in stereo throughout the map.

 

- speakers have an attribute called "occlusion" which should occlude the propagation of the sound from this very speaker if the attribute is set. This howerver does not work! At least not on the maps from the CVS. Could it be that brushes in D3 maps have some additional SUPERSECRET attribute that makes sound propagate differently? In the sound editor video tutorial (from doom3world.org) the lecturer demonstrates occlusion when the buzzing sound of a lightbulb changes "shape" (becomes muffled) as he enters another room via a portal... I did not manage to reproduce this behaviour.

 

 

That's it for now... I hope anyone can understand this mishmash, I'm not good at documenting things!

 

 

mrD

[sparhawk]

Here's what I discovered during today's tests:

Thanks. Very good. You shuold repost this in the documentation section.

[mrDischarged]

After reading some documents it turned out that occlusion translates to "geometry affects volume of the sound", not the actual propagation.

 

Hmpf!

 

mrD

Edited December 26, 2004 by mrDischarged

[TYROT]

dear mrDischarged

 

That s great my grinder....you will be grinding the engine soon i guess. That s terrific...We have a great sound crew as well...

 

BEST

 

(I WAS NOT JOKING ABOUT THE BAND!!!!)

[SneaksieDave]

Could it be that brushes in D3 maps have some additional SUPERSECRET attribute that makes sound propagate differently? In the sound editor video tutorial (from doom3world.org) the lecturer demonstrates occlusion when the buzzing sound of a lightbulb changes "shape" (becomes muffled) as he enters another room via a portal... I did not manage to reproduce this behaviour.

That's what I'm wondering too. I've seen the propagation in effect, and yet Domarius recently put up a map that shows something's not working right with it.