SoundManager TNG

[historic_bruno]

So as intended, things like chopping and mining are inaudible when zoomed out.

Unintended bug, distanceless sounds like responses also fade out with distance, I will fix that.

So you do expect battle sounds to fade out with distance and they currently don't, right?

Yeah battle sounds are some of the most irritating. Of course we need to combine other methods to solve that, like adding more variation in the sounds and less frequent repetition, but it's also nice to be able to zoom out and hear nothing but music It seems to be working well for gathering, though we might need to (slightly) boost that sound level to compensate, it gets drowned out by the music.

The threaded sound manager seems to work well in my testing, I'll try again with my old laptop and see if it fixes the sound stopping issue.

[feneur]

I think battle sounds should be louder than gathering sounds/be heard over larger distances, but I would imagine that can be done via volume levels rather than specific behavior

[Mythos_Ruler]

I think Philip and I figured out what's happening to the music. We have a theory at least. Basically, the sound manager may be treating music like any other (directional) sound effect and playing it in mono format. Philip tested this by playing with the channels in his audio setup and noticed that indeed the music in-game is in mono. The tracks themselves are stereo.

[Arthur_D]

That explains a lot. Directional sounds must be mono when using OpenAL, while stereo tracks should obviously just play normally with no direction taken into account.

[stwf]

Hello,

Sorry about that bug, its checked in now. I think that may have just been introduced. Personally I have a hard time telling the difference. ANyway I'm back looking at this now. Just finishing up a big project at work...

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Great to hear you're back.

[stwf]

Hello All,

I'm currently in down time at home due to the hurricane but I was working on the sound issues when the power went out!

I did find/fix one issue with the acknowledgements not being heard when zoomed out. But got caught in a bind with the battle noises.

Some battle noises can be heard because they are being set at a much louder gain. Typical battle sounds are set to play between 0.6 and 0.4 gain. But some others like the death noises and a couple of arrow sounds are set to play between 1.0 and 0.8.

Since the distance rolloff acts on the gain you would need twice as far a distance to have these sounds fade out.

For now I will change the distance curve to make all sounds inaudible at full zoom out. But this will probably make other sounds fade out too fast. We may need a new parameter inside the audio xml files to indicate what distance they should be heard from so we can control this more directly.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I didn't realize you were in an area affected by hurricane Sandy. Glad to hear you're OK.

[Pureon]

I'm in favor of adding a new parameter to the xml files if that'll help with the distance logic.

Good to see more progress!

[k776]

We may need a new parameter inside the audio xml files to indicate what distance they should be heard from so we can control this more directly.

I'm in favor of adding a new parameter to the xml files if that'll help with the distance logic.

As am I. The last thing we want is something to work like magic, because it's confusing. We might want a soft sound when zoomed out for example, and if it's based on gain, we can't do that. So please add the extra XML value and run a script which updates all the existing sound files.

[stwf]

Still no electricity at home, but we've been promised to get it by Wednesday night. I've never been so happy to be at work!

I also think its important to keep the gain parameter solely as a means to balance out the relative volumes of the sounds. I'll plan on getting a start on this right after the alpha 12 release. So I can think about how to do it.

Maybe a float paramater defaulting to 1.0, which would strictly apply to the camera height. 1.0 would indicate silent at full height (whatever that might be), 0.5 means it fades out around half height, and you would put a 3 or 4 for things like acknowledgments and deaths that you always want to hear, but should observe some fall off.

As always opinions welcomed...

[Mythos_Ruler]

Hello,

Sorry about that bug, its checked in now. I think that may have just been introduced. Personally I have a hard time telling the difference. ANyway I'm back looking at this now. Just finishing up a big project at work...

I still don't think the music=mono thing is fixed. Or perhaps CSoundBase.cpp isn't being compiled correctly with the auto-builder?

[Pureon]

Hope you got your electricity back without it causing too much trouble.

Maybe a float paramater defaulting to 1.0, which would strictly apply to the camera height. 1.0 would indicate silent at full height (whatever that might be), 0.5 means it fades out around half height, and you would put a 3 or 4 for things like acknowledgments and deaths that you always want to hear, but should observe some fall off.

Thinking a bit about this, I'm not really sure what sounds we'd use a camera height parameter for. Most sounds do need to be heard even when zoomed out at the 1 position.

[Pureon]

this topic about sound system (SoundManager TNG) affect units taunts variety? that you mean that one reason for single voice for all faction.

If we want different voices/languages for each faction that involves recording all the male and female sounds and setting up all the individual unit actor files to point to different sound groups. That's a lot of work, but can technically be done with what we have. Keep voice language related discussions in the other voice topic.

[Pedro Falcão]

Well, Iberians are going to speak spanish, aren't they? The community has many spanish speakers. Also for the romans, we have at least 10 romantic-speakers regularly showing up here and some of them could simulate latin accent, couldn't they?

[Enrique]

Well, Iberians are going to speak spanish, aren't they? The community has many spanish speakers. Also for the romans, we have at least 10 romantic-speakers regularly showing up here and some of them could simulate latin accent, couldn't they?

True. The problem is that not everyone has the appropriate equipment to record the voices

[Pureon]

sorry only i asking. that sound kind of rude

Really???

[stwf]

Electricity came back last Wednesdy, but still no phone or Internet at home. Hopefully that will be cleared up tomorrow or so.

Hope you got your electricity back without it causing too much trouble.

Thinking a bit about this, I'm not really sure what sounds we'd use a camera height parameter for. Most sounds do need to be heard even when zoomed out at the 1 position.

At full height you wouldn't want much to be heard, but this would let you specify some sounds to fade out sooner than that. So technically it isn't a height thing, but an importance thing. Things like chopping and minig would fade out half way up, while battle sounds wouldn't fade until closer to the top.

my question is if diferent sounds like voices, Horse and Animals sounds need a manager with a Inteface only for Scan tha element havent a Sound, even a Menu buttons needs have one.

Is possibly make a Manager from Export to game like Atlas Editor and Actor editor that have a Frindly UI ?

I think adding sound support to Atlas is a good idea. After the gameplay issues get cleared up I would like to look into fixing the Atlas issues..

I still don't think the music=mono thing is fixed. Or perhaps CSoundBase.cpp isn't being compiled correctly with the auto-builder?

I'll have time this weekend to make certain this works and should be able to get it checked in before Sunday.

[quantumstate]

At full height you wouldn't want much to be heard, but this would let you specify some sounds to fade out sooner than that. So technically it isn't a height thing, but an importance thing. Things like chopping and minig would fade out half way up, while battle sounds wouldn't fade until closer to the top.

I don't think this would be a good thing. I tend to play close to fully zoomed out. Battle sounds should definitely not fade out, wood chopping sounds aren't very important to hear since they are basically ambient but I don't see why players who like to zoom out shouldn't be hearing them.

[feneur]

I don't think this would be a good thing. I tend to play close to fully zoomed out. Battle sounds should definitely not fade out, wood chopping sounds aren't very important to hear since they are basically ambient but I don't see why players who like to zoom out shouldn't be hearing them.

But if you zoom out you would hear wood chopping sounds etc from all over the place. Are you saying you wouldn't want to have any limit to at least the volume of these sounds at maximum zoom?

[quantumstate]

But if you zoom out you would hear wood chopping sounds etc from all over the place. Are you saying you wouldn't want to have any limit to at least the volume of these sounds at maximum zoom?

I don't really care about wood chopping sounds, I don't want them to be very loud at any zoom. I guess it would make sense for them to be a bit quieter when zoomed out though. My main point is that fully zoomed out will probably be the normal way to play the game for many players.

[Shield Bearer]

I think the sounds in focus should be played a little louder than the rest (I.e. things happening at the center of the screen). That way only if you have lumberjacks at the center of the screen would the wood sounds be played.

[Mythos_Ruler]

On the contrary, I'm starting to find it annoying that I don't hear things happening slightly off-screen. For instance, when a building is complete or a bunch of units are trained.

[stwf]

OK,

I just checked in some changes. I rolled back some of the volume rolloff stuff, so you can always hear everything (on screen at least). Off screen will roll off quicker, but not as sharply.

Fixed bugs are that sounds marked as distanceless will again always play loud, regardless of height. I also threw in some hints that I found to aid in stereo sound being played. On my Mac with Mountain Lion I can confirm its playing in stereo, but that doesn't mean thats happening on all platforms. I hope the new code is the right incantation to get stereo sound playing on the platforms where it isn't playing yet. If not let me know.

Unless there we can get everyone to agree on the rolloff thing it may be better to let it rest. A good solution might be separate volume controls in the settings. So people who want to hear can what they want.

For my coding I'm going to look at the real gameplay bugs, like hearing sounds you shouldn't be hearing and we can some back to this later. How does that sound?

[zoot]

Fixed bugs are that sounds marked as distanceless will again always play loud, regardless of height.

Not to be impossible to please or anything, but is it possible to make the volume just slightly reduced at max zoom out and slightly increased at max zoom in?

Like quantumstate, I sometimes need to play at max zoom out and want to be able to hear the audio cues there, but on the other hand, a slight fall-off helps create a more immersive experience.

Edited November 20, 2012 by zoot