Broad soundscapes - repost

[Joss Sanglier]

Apologies - forgot to send as plain text!

So here is my post again:

--------------------------------------

Confused beginner!

I have got myself involved with a small independent MMO since I am a
professional composer and was for 30 years a sound engineer - though on
TV and film, not games stuff

We are rebuilding the sound and I want to get the broad panoramic sound
I am used to from the film world, allowing for 3d positioning and moving
smoothly from one environment into another.

My question is:

How do I put together the sound elements so that a player will be able
to wander round the massive world, from forest to lake, mountain side to
desert, in such a way that it is seamless?

As a player moves towards a different environment, they need to be able
to hear "where" it is in the 3d sound field and it slowly raise in
volume till they enter. Then the background sound should level out till
they leave again. Obviously the reverse would then happen to the old sound.

I have started by putting together layers of sounds for each environment
(just as a way of organising my old analogue brain) . I am putting
together a nominal "left" and "right" leg for each layer, since openAL
cannot handle stereo tracks in 3d (pity).

Layer 1 - very broad, unspecific, looped buzz track
Layer 2 - day and night variations, busier and less busy (randomly
selected) loops.
Layer 3 - weather - wind, rain (on leaves for forest, for instance)

All these are split into two files - I would have produced these in
stereo  or 4 channel in other circumstances.

There are other layers for music and spots - though since they are one
offs and not looped, they are the easy bit!


Any help or guidance would be gratefully appreciated. The development
team is missing anyone experienced in developing sound in this way and
there is one heck of a lot of guess work going on! We have good coders
though, so it is how we do this not what the actual code is they need to
know.

I just know there is going to be a standard, accepted way of doing this
which you are all going to tell me - I just don't know what it is!

Then I can run off and give them lots of gorgeous tracks to play with!


Thanks in advance



Joss

 

_______________________________________________
Openal-devel mailing list
Openal-devel@...
http://opensource.creative.com/mailman/listinfo/openal-devel

[Chris Robinson-5]

On Monday 10 November 2008 06:15:33 am Joss Sanglier wrote:

> My question is:
>
> How do I put together the sound elements so that a player will be able
> to wander round the massive world, from forest to lake, mountain side to
> desert, in such a way that it is seamless?
>
> As a player moves towards a different environment, they need to be able
> to hear "where" it is in the 3d sound field and it slowly raise in
> volume till they enter. Then the background sound should level out till
> they leave again. Obviously the reverse would then happen to the old sound.

Hi Joss.

I'm a bit tired and about to be getting to bed, so I apologize in advance if I
completely miss your question, or give lack-luster advice. However, it seems
you're asking how to get ambient area sounds to "fade" as you move between
areas, preferably with 3d positional cues.

I'd probably try something natural.. seperate the individual mono sounds and
place them in the 3d world, and let them play together to create a
multi-channel ambience in real-time. Scatter cricket sounds around that
play/loop at night (quieting down and stopping them as day approaches),
place "wind-through-leaves" sounds near trees thar'll play randomly/when the
wind blows, etc. Also eneabling a slight reverb to those sounds may help.

Then not only will these effects seemlessly and naturally pick up and rolloff
as the player moves around, they'll also pan around as the player turns, and
take advantage of the number of output channels being used, giving a more
immersive feel as the sounds will be part of the virtual world and not
just "background tracks".

Hope that's helpful. :)

- Chris
_______________________________________________
Openal-devel mailing list
Openal-devel@...
http://opensource.creative.com/mailman/listinfo/openal-devel

[Chris Robinson-5]

On Monday 10 November 2008 08:20:14 am you wrote:
> Part of the problem here is that the game is very big - as in a forest
> can be a couple of Km across, and getting a sound that sounds as broad
> as you can see seems difficult in openAL.

I think when going about it in a real-time game, you don't really need
every "seeable" sound source to produce a sound. Just enough that it sounds
like there's a bunch, and they appropriately start and stop based on
distance/gain (so the ones most audible to the listener will always be the
ones playing, regardless of where the listener is). The email I just sent to
slytron on openal-devel has a somewhat simplistic source-management method
that can help achieve that.

That, combined with a couple audio "tricks" (such as applying a slight reverb
and using different sound buffers with some having pre-mixed (but still mono)
effects) to make it sound like there's more sources, should be able to
produce a very convincing real-time environment.


That's probably how I'd go about trying it, anyway. It may or may not work
depending on the engine and types of environments, but the idea sounds
reasonable to me.
_______________________________________________
Openal-devel mailing list
Openal-devel@...
http://opensource.creative.com/mailman/listinfo/openal-devel

[Chris Robinson-5]

On Tuesday 11 November 2008 01:07:50 am you wrote:
> We have been avoiding EFX - since the game is developed in Java, it is
> truly cross platform and I cant seem what is the take up of EFX in the
> industry - so I don't want people relying on it. Let me know if I am
> getting this wrong - I don't want to be missing out on something!

EFX is basically just a more OpenAL-styled EAX. I'd agree that you shouldn't
require it, but I think it could make a nice enhancement for when it is
available. It should be possible to detect if the EFX extension is present
and use the appropriate functionality when it's there, while just skipping it
if not.

Creative supports EFX in the software driver, and I believe in the hardware
driver/dsound3d wrapper if the hardware has EAX (which I believe most
accelerated audio hardware supports at least EAX2), so Windows should
generally have it. OpenAL Soft supports EFX, so modern Linux/Unix systems
should have it (its "reverb" leaves something to be desired, though I'm
getting help on improving it). Unfortunately, I don't believe Apple supports
EFX, so OSX won't have it. However, I don't think this is really much of a
problem as long as it remains an optional, check-at-run-time approach.
Systems that have EFX will get additional effects, and those that don't will
still work.

> I will be producing certain sounds that have some built in reflections
> and are treated in a more filmic way to help give perspective as well as
> direction.

EFX also lets you apply the effect to select sources, so if you have a sound
that has built-in reverb, or that you don't want reverb/filters applied, you
can just not set EFX reverb on the sources that use those sounds.
_______________________________________________
Openal-devel mailing list
Openal-devel@...
http://opensource.creative.com/mailman/listinfo/openal-devel

[Chris Robinson-5]

On Tuesday 11 November 2008 03:05:18 am you wrote:
> By the way - has anyone ever developed an openAL equivalent of FMod
> Designer?
>
> If not, I think someone should (but something much, much better) -
> especially for thick old blokes like me. I would be happy to spec what
> it needs to do.

What is FMOD Designer? I'm looking at the description, but it's not making
much sense to me..
_______________________________________________
Openal-devel mailing list
Openal-devel@...
http://opensource.creative.com/mailman/listinfo/openal-devel

[Jason Daly]

Chris Robinson wrote:

On Tuesday 11 November 2008 03:05:18 am you wrote:
  

By the way - has anyone ever developed an openAL equivalent of FMod
Designer?

If not, I think someone should (but something much, much better) -
especially for thick old blokes like me. I would be happy to spec what
it needs to do.
    

What is FMOD Designer? I'm looking at the description, but it's not making
much sense to me..
  

Just based on the name, it sounds like Creative's ISACT (a sound design tool for OpenAL).  I've only seen a passing demo of it at GDC, so I don't personally know much about it beyond that, but it looked pretty cool when I saw it.  I believe you need to be a registered Creative developer to get it.

I don't see a mention of it on the new web site, though, so I'm not entirely sure if it's still available.

--"J"

_______________________________________________
Openal-devel mailing list
Openal-devel@...
http://opensource.creative.com/mailman/listinfo/openal-devel