 14:26:56 8 July 2012 |
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Lyoko774
Senior Resident
On forum: 04/09/2007
Messages: 170
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Restoration of EAX effects?
This is something that's been kind of bugging me for a bit..If STALKER has support for EAX 2.0, why the hell aren't any of them used? Has anyone managed to make any headway on restoring them?
I already got my game to detect my card as a hardware device, and it says EAX 2.0 extensions are 'present' in the console, but of course I can't hear a difference in-game..I assume this means the entities or whatever for setting sound environments don't exist in most (if not all) of the maps..? |
| 17:53:04 8 July 2012 |
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Lyoko774
Senior Resident
On forum: 04/09/2007
Messages: 170
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---QUOTATION---
Is EAX related to surround in any way? I've bought this new Asus Xonar soundcard to use with my surround setup but I cant make surround work at all except if I switch to DirectSound (dsound) but there's something about that, which I dont like.. OpenAL sounds better but lacks the surround  ... Sorry if this somehow is offtopic,
---END QUOTATION---
Thats related to the OpenAL implementation the game includes..for whatever reason, the enumerator ignores any hardware devices and simply opts for Generic Software, which only gives us stereo sound. I recompiled the OpenAL DLLs from source a while ago to fix this...if you have an ASUS Xonar DG like I do it should work, it gives me hardware OpenAL.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8664592/bin.zip |
| 21:17:12 8 July 2012 |
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Daemonion
All About Audio
(Resident)
On forum: 09/27/2011
Message edited by:
Daemonion
07/08/2012 21:19:11
Messages: 567
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I spent several months getting EAX to work properly in SoC.
EAX is only used when sound environments are set in the Level Editor by hand, one by one. In vanilla SoC, there are, I think, three sound environment boxes. So enabling EAX won't do a damn thing, really.
Essentially, you open up the Level Editor, manually place a blue box, assign a sound environment table to it (a custom one, or something like outdoors, inside house, etc), compile the game, then move the new files over into your Gamedata.
Like this: http://i.imgur.com/s0a3s.jpg
You can create custom sound environment tables using the Shader Editor. Again, it is very limited.
The EAX 2.0 implementation by GSC was almost never used, and I don't think they don't have the complete product implemented, either. I assume they just got a "free" version of it and didn't pay for licensing for the full version.
Here is where I left off (using a custom sound table) for LURK 1.2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1-od_DDRHY&t=8m34s |
| 05:12:15 9 July 2012 |
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Lyoko774
Senior Resident
On forum: 04/09/2007
Messages: 170
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---QUOTATION---
I spent several months getting EAX to work properly in SoC.
EAX is only used when sound environments are set in the Level Editor by hand, one by one. In vanilla SoC, there are, I think, three sound environment boxes. So enabling EAX won't do a damn thing, really.
Essentially, you open up the Level Editor, manually place a blue box, assign a sound environment table to it (a custom one, or something like outdoors, inside house, etc), compile the game, then move the new files over into your Gamedata.
Like this: http://i.imgur.com/s0a3s.jpg
You can create custom sound environment tables using the Shader Editor. Again, it is very limited.
The EAX 2.0 implementation by GSC was almost never used, and I don't think they don't have the complete product implemented, either. I assume they just got a "free" version of it and didn't pay for licensing for the full version.
Here is where I left off (using a custom sound table) for LURK 1.2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1-od_DDRHY&t=8m34s
---END QUOTATION---
That certainly sounds tons better than what we have now...How does the 'environment inner' and 'environment outer' work? Does it simply mean inside the box you have that effect, and outside of it you have the other until you walk into a different box? Can we have nested sound environments? |
| 08:22:00 10 July 2012 |
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Daemonion
All About Audio
(Resident)
On forum: 09/27/2011
Message edited by:
Daemonion
07/10/2012 8:22:47
Messages: 567
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---QUOTATION---
That certainly sounds tons better than what we have now...How does the 'environment inner' and 'environment outer' work? Does it simply mean inside the box you have that effect, and outside of it you have the other until you walk into a different box? Can we have nested sound environments?
---END QUOTATION---
The inner and outer environments both have to be set, but, as far as I can tell, the outer doesn't do a damn thing.
I haven't tested nested environments, yet.
One of the big issues with the sound environment boxes is that they are treated as walls which reflect sound; meaning the closer you are to the edge of box, the more reflected sound you will hear. Naturally, this can create really strange behavior in small spaces and in open spaces, where everything takes on a boost in volume due to repeated reverberation off of the edges.
In the video that I showed you, for example, the megaphone from the military camp in Cordon will become very loud inside of the tunnel due to this effect. I'm not sure if it can be altered.
The other thing which is missing in GSC's EAX implementation which is badly needed is just a simple EQ filter. I'd love to be able to turn up the lower frequencies for inclosed spaces. |
| 12:16:10 10 July 2012 |
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Lyoko774
Senior Resident
On forum: 04/09/2007
Messages: 170
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---QUOTATION---
That certainly sounds tons better than what we have now...How does the 'environment inner' and 'environment outer' work? Does it simply mean inside the box you have that effect, and outside of it you have the other until you walk into a different box? Can we have nested sound environments?
The inner and outer environments both have to be set, but, as far as I can tell, the outer doesn't do a damn thing.
I haven't tested nested environments, yet.
One of the big issues with the sound environment boxes is that they are treated as walls which reflect sound; meaning the closer you are to the edge of box, the more reflected sound you will hear. Naturally, this can create really strange behavior in small spaces and in open spaces, where everything takes on a boost in volume due to repeated reverberation off of the edges.
In the video that I showed you, for example, the megaphone from the military camp in Cordon will become very loud inside of the tunnel due to this effect. I'm not sure if it can be altered.
The other thing which is missing in GSC's EAX implementation which is badly needed is just a simple EQ filter. I'd love to be able to turn up the lower frequencies for inclosed spaces.
---END QUOTATION---
Doesn't STALKER have sound occluders? Couldn't you put those around the tunnel to prevent that issue? |
| 00:31:30 11 July 2012 |
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Daemonion
All About Audio
(Resident)
On forum: 09/27/2011
Messages: 567
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---QUOTATION---
Doesn't STALKER have sound occluders? Couldn't you put those around the tunnel to prevent that issue?
---END QUOTATION---
It does, actually, but I haven't gotten them to work properly.
Even with the one in Sid's bunker in Cordon, you can still hear outside noises. |
| 05:25:33 11 July 2012 |
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Lyoko774
Senior Resident
On forum: 04/09/2007
Messages: 170
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---QUOTATION---
Doesn't STALKER have sound occluders? Couldn't you put those around the tunnel to prevent that issue?
It does, actually, but I haven't gotten them to work properly.
Even with the one in Sid's bunker in Cordon, you can still hear outside noises.
---END QUOTATION---
Hmm. You might wanna take a look at some of the older builds, 2205 and 1935 especially. They seem to have sound environments in at least Cordon, it might be worth it to decompile them and take a peek to see how GSC set it up.. |
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