Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) in TDM

[LEGION]

How to create a water-zone? I can´t just put a visportal above the water-surface for the obvious reason... I forgot that the visportal has to be closed for the 'obvious reason', but water can´t do that so I got it, should´ve tried first, but I tried as I wrote this...

 

Also, player-footsteps are affected. I´m currently converting Glenham Tower and with the outside-area from the beginning the grass-footsteps are sounding affected, also for the mid-room and small-room sets you can hear the effect when jumping. For just walking around it´s not that clear, but the effects are more subtle and more effective for sounds 'not so close' for my understanding.

[Noisycricket]

Also, player-footsteps are affected. I´m currently converting Glenham Tower and with the outside-area from the beginning the grass-footsteps are sounding affected, also for the mid-room and small-room sets you can hear the effect when jumping. For just walking around it´s not that clear, but the effects are more subtle and more effective for sounds 'not so close' for my understanding.

 

If you are talking about eax effects, the walk footsteps in my "tappier" set are .ogg's, which don't allow for the reverb for some reason AFAIK. They need to be converted to .wav. I didn't bother with converting them because all the other surfaces are still .ogg anyway and Serpentine says he is going to look into to the best way to handle this. He doesn't seem to have much time though, so maybe someone should just go ahead and convert them all to .wav's for those that want them.

[LEGION]

I don´t use wav´s atm, but I definitely hear EAX-effected footsteps! It´s very obvious on the grass-steps in the Outside-area! As every sound else is affected, sword-swing and such...

[Noisycricket]

The grass footsteps your using are .ogg files AND you definitely hear reverb from them?

[LEGION]

Yes, jumping makes it very obvious!

 

Ah, wait, I looked into the soundshader and the pk4, the walk-grass-files are wav´s:

 

 

tdm_footstep_grass_walk
{
description "Made by GoldChocobo"
// no_dups
minDistance 1
maxDistance 30
volume -12

sound/sfx/movement/footsteps/player/grass_walk_r01.wav
sound/sfx/movement/footsteps/player/grass_walk_r02.wav
sound/sfx/movement/footsteps/player/grass_walk_r03.wav
sound/sfx/movement/footsteps/player/grass_walk_r04.wav
}

 

but the grass-jump is ogg, hmm...

 

edit: when I change all the ogg´s into wav´s and delete the oggs, the engine should load the wav´s without me changing the shader-references, don´t you think? I´ll try that...

edit2: Of course not. (I thought the engine would look for other sound-files too) Ok, then I´ll change every file inside the movement-folder into wav so I can change every .ogg in the shader with TextCrawler...

Edited January 7, 2011 by LEGION

[LEGION]

Hey, look what I found, there are no wood-steps for AI?:

 

 

//uses D3 sounds
ai_wood_footsteps {

minDistance	1
maxDistance	30
volume		-10
// no_dups

sound/ed/player/steps/step05.wav
sound/ed/player/steps/step07.wav
sound/ed/player/steps/step09.wav
sound/ed/player/steps/step11.wav

 

These are the same as for stone. Why not use the player´s wood-sounds? Would be better than stone, just increase the volume via shader.

[LEGION]

triple-post:

 

Alright, I made some tests:

 

there is no difference between ogg´s and wav´s! I added EAX into Fidcal´s Sound-trainer and f.e. wood and gravel are the same affected as ogg´s or wav´s! (I made sure that they are oggs)

 

But the voices are not affected. As one builder spotted, äh, heard me I think I heard a voice-set that was affected, can´t be sure though.

 

note: I lost nearly an hour finding out that the wav´s need to be mono...

[LEGION]

The engine prefers ogg´s over wav´s right? Even if the shader speaks of wav´s only the engine would load the still existing ogg´s, so I might never heard the wav´s I created. After I deleted the oggs (I deleted also the old movement.shader in sfx01.pk4 before) I got ID SOUND ERROR. My files were mono and 16-bit, as the others already existing wav´s.

Are the movement-footsteps somewhere else defined? I let the 'step_human'-ones alone, they are not mentioned in the shader, I only deleted the ones mentioned in movement-shader.

 

Anyway, the oggs are definitely EAX-compatible as any sounds else. Even the AI-voices are affected, I can tell now. It´s just not very obvious, but that must be a problem with the EAX-set itself I think. I tested with the outside-preset, that should´ve the strongest effects.

[Noisycricket]

Im not sure if the engine prefers ogg's over .wav's, only because your apparently not supposed to use the "shakes" parameter with .ogg's.

[LEGION]

What do you mean with "shakes" parameter?

[Mortem Desino]

If you add "shakes" to a soundshader, the screen will shake as violently as the sound gets loud. Usually you only use this with earthquakes.

[Noisycricket]

It's intensity varies so you can use it for many things, like getting hit with a large projectile. I tried to add it to the run footstep sounds to mimic that split second jolt in vision you get when sprinting, it was so low that you could only detect it 1 out of 3 steps, which was exactly what i wanted. Some bug or error came about so i would jerk the screen around no matter what it was set at, so i took it out.

[LEGION]

Aha, is that how Fidcal made the cough-shakes in The Alchemist´s lavatory?

[Noisycricket]

Im not sure.

[LEGION]

Oh yeah, he made it different, but I don´t have time now to look at that...

 

As for the wood-ai-sounds, ah, I better make a bugtracker-entry...

[Diego]

Did not know about these features.

Need a sound card now.

[ungoliant]

currently its a hell of a job trying to implement, as there aren't really any templates for effects other than what SD did already.

[SneaksieDave]

Tried this out today and it still works with 2.0, so that's good news. I had to track down the EFX file first, but after that, no probs. I did notice that the links at the start of this thread are dead, though. I can re-upload the package if we have somewhere stable/reliable/official to put it? Just ~100kb zipped.

 

Edit: Hm, first I think the map needs to be 2.0'ified...

[Bikerdude]

I can re-upload the package if we have somewhere stable/reliable/official to put it? Just ~100kb zipped.

Just drop myself or Springs a link and one of us will upload it etc.

[SneaksieDave]

Okay, see if this link works. If I didn't forget anything, that should repro the EAX(4) demo on suitably-equipped PCs.

 

https://www.dropbox....i8i/eaxdemo.zip

 

For anyone else downloading, just unzip it to your darkmod folder and bring down the console (ctrl-alt-~), then the command is "map eaxdemo" (no quotes).

[Bikerdude]

I'll need to add a few files to make it into a working Fm and then I'll add it to the mission download page.

[SneaksieDave]

Great! Thanks.

[Bikerdude]

Just a small update: EAX appears to be working again -

• I am trying to figure out if something has been updated in 2.03 (dont know atm, have made an enquiry)
• Or the latest driver for my SoundBlaster-Z card (v_13_1_00_28) and/or the latest version of Alchemy (v_1.45.02) and OpenAL (v_2.1.0) is responsible for getting it working.

In the meantime I am testing it on my upcoming wip.

[Lux]

@Biker

 

Thanks for posting that as I was unaware that new Z drivers were out and wanted a "hopeful" fix for speaker swapping that happens occasionally. I've read its due to IRQ conflicts and to try different slots on the mobo but I check my IRQs and they appear as good as their going to get. GFX and audio on separate IRQs. Hopefully this will address that issue. Its not frequent but does happen occasionally, like alt-tab out of a game and when you tab back in left audio is on the right and right is on the left. Seems like a driver thing to me but who knows.

Edited December 26, 2014 by Lux

[PsymH]

Thanks for the info. Do you use alchemy, with other words: Is there a dsound.dll in your darkmod folder? Because I still have no luck, btw. still using 2.02 ^^