Lets talk audio. - by Shinrazero
Shinrazero on 29/9/2013 at 05:41
It seems like there is little mentioned on this subject, something I think is critical to the Thief experience. I know that EB nor the missus, Thron, that Stephen guy, or anyone else who contributed audio in the previous games are involved in nuThief. I am more interested in how audio is going to be represented in the nugame. Is it reasonable to expect audio to be similar to its predecessors? Has there been any mention of audio additions not found in the previous games, enhancements, new tech, etc?
yxlplig on 29/9/2013 at 07:56
Honestly, I'd be shocked if they brought back the ambient 4 second loops from the old games. They'll probably just get someone to score it like any other modern title. Though to be fair I don't think any details about the sound have been released, all we can do is speculate.
Generally speaking, games don't have good sound. The only games I can think of that have impressed me in that regard are the Thief games and Battlefield 3 (Dice tends to have good sound in their games). In virtually every game you see the same problems. People talking in a normal tone of voice to someone far away. Not being able to tell where a sound effect is coming from. Complete lack of reverb.
I doubt Thief 4 is going to raise the bar with it's sound. Surely they would have hyped something like that up.
Gaestle on 29/9/2013 at 08:00
Thief was a topic (in a list of several games) at the AMD tech day this week, where AMD presented a new feature called "TrueAudio". Although "TrueAudio" is AMD-exclusive tech of AMDs newest GPU-Cards, I expect EM will take care for sound in Thief. But the problem is: EAX is dead.
Shinrazero on 29/9/2013 at 08:29
You are (
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049397/amd-unveils-hawaii-generation-of-gpus.html) right! This is the first I've heard of this.
Quote:
And with the R9 series, AMD launched TrueAudio, which Koduri said is to audio what programmable shading technology did for graphics—a differentiating feature that gave games like Crysis 3 a distinctive look and feel. “I believe that True Audio technology will provide the same artistic freedom to audio artists at these gaming companies,” he said.
What does this mean? I found some mentions of nuthief being demoed but nothing concrete.
jay pettitt on 29/9/2013 at 11:38
So I'm tres sceptical about AMD's TrueAudio tech. Not least, because for many years now there hasn't been any kind of hardware bottleneck to doing better audio.
What there has been is lots of really restrictive patenting mess. Yet another method that only works on specific hardware combinations isn't going to help. Audio just isn't enough of a priority (sadly perhaps) for anyone to go to the effort of navigating all the different patent locked routes to better audio to get better audio simulation consistently across the hardware landscape.
tldr version - TrueAudio is about as exciting as Lara Croft's AMD only floppy hair.
Anyways...
Eric B. and Co. really nailed the audio for Thief. They had it sweet for gameplay, for ambience, immersion and art.
The stuff Eidos M had going with that English chap was really exciting too. But then they went and sacked him for some reason. Everything I've heard since has been generic video game audio. Competent generic video game audio I'm sure, but generic and uninteresting all the same. Shame.
EM can't say they get the 'DNA' of Thief unless the audio is truly outstanding.
Gaestle on 29/9/2013 at 11:42
Quote Posted by Shinrazero
What does this mean? I found some mentions of nuthief being demoed but nothing concrete.
They played an old trailer (I think it was the first THIEF 4- trailer), so nothing new for thief fans.
"TrueAudio" mans they use direct geometrical data from the GPU (graphics chip) which should be good for accurate positioning (and maybe some environmental effect at the audio). Then they have some kind of "virtual surround sound sound" for headphones. This means 7.1-like sound but with stereo-headphones (it is possible - (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording) ). But "TrueAudio" is for some of the new AMD GPUs only (290 and 260-Series only, not for 270 and 280), if you have another AMD-GPU or an Nvidia-GPU there is no benefit of "TrueAudio". But there a similar solutions already on the market, like CMSS 3D from Creative (X-Fi-Soundcards) or "Dolby Headphone". Between CMSS 3D and Dolby Headphone is a difference in quality (I like CMSS 3D more), this means it is not enough to have this feature (somehow), the big question is also "How is it?" (quality).
EAX means different sound (hall and reverb) for different surroundings. A step or a closing door in an basement made of stone sounds different than in an wodden room. This is really great for immersion, all Thief-titles had the latest EAX-Version to date. But this EAX-tech (Creative-tech again) is (generally) not used anymore, because Win7 need some special things to run it (Win8 is said to support it again out-of-the-box, but maybe it is too late) and the curent-gen consoles didn't support it. This effects can maybe to some extend substituted with an good sound engine, but I don't know any sound engine which provides a sound which can be compared with EAX (4). But IMHO the main-reason is, that the huge majority of pc-players looked for graphics only (and spend hundreds of dollars for their GPU) but doesn't care about the audio (and use crappy but cheap onboad-sound instead). So there is (sadly) no real market for EAX anymore. I don't see a possibility for one single game to change this trend. And therefore I don't expect Thief4 to compete with Thief3 in terms of audio.
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
EM can't say they get the 'DNA' of Thief unless the audio is truly outstanding.
What is the definition of "outstanding"? Better than ... lets say Crysis2? This should be possible. But better than Thief3 with EAX4? I wouldn't expect it.
jay pettitt on 29/9/2013 at 12:18
It's gonna be slightly subjective - but the it's gotta have bags of character, be bang on as a gameplay mechanic, play with your mind and wrap you up in layers of glorious ambience.
EAX is dead because modern CPUs have all the oomph needed to do that stuff and more in software. You don't need to farm basic reverb effects off to separate chip anymore. EAX is also clumsy as hell. You're much better off using geometry to calculate reverb - like TrueAudio does ~ but the last thing you need is to lock that stuff down in propriety solutions which is what has happened in the past and what AMD are doing now. You need to get that stuff in OpenAL so when you make a game it's a core feature for all your customers, not just some.
Hit Deity on 6/10/2013 at 19:42
Good topic. Because if NuThief is missing good, quality, positional sounds, then EM is missing out on a big part of the heart and soul of Thief (well, okay, ears of Thief) and it would be a shame if EM ignored it or did it painfully bad. I could see them completely ignoring it, however, as a "why waste the effort on it" concept. From their thinking, "who cares, right"? Maybe they have thought about it, but I have seen no mention of it other than to say the focus ability will let you "see" the footsteps of a guard through walls. And that seems to say to me, "well, you're not going to be able to tell with your ears where something is in the game, so lets make it appear visually on the screen because that's easier to do." I hope that's not the case though.
Esme on 7/10/2013 at 07:13
The positional audio cues were a big part of what sucked me into Thief, I could tell where AI were from the sound they made, it all helped sell the immersion, I can't see them omitting something so fundamental, on the other hand they've changed and binned tons of other stuff.
jay pettitt on 20/11/2013 at 23:32
Oh, so prompted by an (
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/20/the-suite-science-paul-weir-talks-generative-music/) article in Rock Paper Shotgun that talks about Paul Weir, and another (
http://www.gamereactor.eu/previews/93894/Thief%3A+Hands-On+Impressions/) article somewhere else that says nice things about audio in T4, shouldn't we have an audio thread. I think so.
Sadly RPS doesn't illuminate what happened to Paul Weir or his wonderful generative music in Thief. It doesn't say it's still in. It doesn't say it's been thrown out.
I've tried listening as hard as I can with my special headphones on during the gameplay demo vids, and I can't hear much audio at all. The reverb sounds quite well done when NuGarrett is indoors, but that's as far as I get. I'm slightly worried (is worried the right word?) that nice reverb will be an AMD exclusive.
