Stopping the sound bug

[Kiech Bepho]

After trying headphones last night, I now realize how much the players hear that should never happen. Is there any way to stop the maddness? Do really thick walls stop it from happening, or is it something else?

Thanks,

Kiech

[The_Dan]

The volume with which you hear a sound is roughly based upon the distance that has to be travelled from the sound to your position, via pathnodes, kindof. The system is far from perfect but is a good step above the normal hear-everything approach of the Unreal engine.

I only half understand the system, so my reply is only half right (thats gonna be my excuse when one someone else explains this problem completely differently)

[BiG_D]

I remember reading somewhere that the Thievery sound system works by using the pathnodes to do some kind of calculation. And yes, headphones are the only way to go. Unless you have a good surround sound system. Then I hate you .

[The_Dan]

I once played System Shock 2 with headphones.

My heart has never fully recovered

[Kiech Bepho]

Yea, it is susposed to use the pathnodes to move around, but they still go right though the ceiling/walls at times. I am wondering if there is anything that could block sound from traveling thorough it. Does water have this property? If I made a room with water walls, would you be able to hear what is going on inside the room? Hmm...I would still want the noise to travel along the pathnodes, however...

Kiech

[BiG_D]

Heres how I would do it (but it would probably kill the engine): when you compile the map, treat the pathnodes like lights and get all the raytrace data (brightness and radius would have to be experimented with). Then, ingame, when you make a sound, it takes the nearest pathnode, and uses its raytrace data to figure out how far the sound would travel. This would probably make it take years to compile the map, and most likely cause slowdowns in gameplay (not if all the raytracing is done during the build). But I think it might work. Maybe.

I think the unreal engine already has code in place to raytrace sounds, too (or at least echos).

[oRGy]

not sure what you mean with the raytracing sounds there, Big_D. The thievery sound system uses the pathnodes automatically, so as long as your map is well pathnoded it should be fine.

a problem that arises with ambientsounds, though, is that they use the normal Unreal sound (distance based) system. If you use DynamicAmbientSounds, they use the Thievery sound system.

Another solution with ambientsounds is just to have them with a small radius and to be judiciously located...

[Buho]

Theatre has this problem -- bad. In the yard you can hear everything underground, and vice vera. Since there are pathnodes in the yard and in the crypts, and because the crypts are not that far underground (I'm guessing just a few feet between the ceiling and the grass), the sound propogation is using shortest-path and is picking routes through the ground instead of traversing normal pathnode paths? Is there a max distance between nodes variable attribute somewhere (so you have to add more nodes)? Or is the solution just to build thicker walls?

[Kiech Bepho]

I am thinking 10 ft thick walls would do it. Of course, don't expect the level too look good or be playable...

[BiG_D]

not sure what you mean with the raytracing sounds there, Big_D.

What I mean is: when you you hit the build button for the level, it compiles raytrace data for the pathnodes (how far light would shine, as well as where it wouldn't shine), as well as lights etc. Then when you are playing, it can use this data to see how the sound should travel from that point. (ie. the sound can be heard in the same area that light would hit.) Once again, this probably is quite taxing on the engine, and hard to code. But it would work (I think).

[Kiech Bepho]

How do walls stop light from passing through? I know it doesn't work that well with 'portable' lights, but that only makes a wall glow, and doesn't continue traveling. If sound and light are similar to each other, then can we apply the same application here?

[BiG_D]

Bingo! My thinking exactly. And since the sound doesn't need to be painfully accurate, it should be possible just to calculate from the nearest pathnode.

[Slappy]

If I'm remembering my physics correctly, sound travels differently than light. Sound is caused by the molecules of the medium (air, water, walls, whatever) vibrating. Sound WILL travel through walls, however it's pitch/frequency/etc will be changed due to the properties of the material.

Therefore I think Big_D's "raytrace sound method" will not yield realistic results. Of course we don't have realistic results now, and I have no idea if the Big_D method would be better or not.

This doesn't address the original topic of the thread, which was more or less "how do you control how sound propagates in the current Thievery engine?" My answer is: I haven't the slightest clue. I'm not a mapper, I just dropped by this forum to see if there's anything interesting..

[Buho]

This doesn't address the original topic of the thread, which was more or less "how do you control how sound propagates in the current Thievery engine?" My answer is: I haven't the slightest clue. I'm not a mapper, I just dropped by this forum to see if there's anything interesting..

Amen, brutha! This forum is about as interesting as a room full of braniacks taking a math test -- you never know who will go to the front and ask the teacher a really wierd question about a question next.

If you need any more comments from the peanut gallery, just let us know!

[oRGy]

How do walls stop light from passing through? I know it doesn't work that well with 'portable' lights, but that only makes a wall glow, and doesn't continue traveling. If sound and light are similar to each other, then can we apply the same application here?

Thats what the Thievery sound engine does, as far as I know. Played sounds, such as footsteps, sound effects etc, use the pathnode network to determine how loud they should sound, which makes for a more realistic effect.

Except AmbientSounds, which don't. They're like "portable" lights in that respect, they travel through walls etc.