Fingernail on 7/9/2004 at 19:01

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Ooh...need 3D modellers right now. We only have one who has shown any work, and he lost it all as detailed above. So we need furniture, lights, characters, you name it.

And in Doom 3, you need to produce 2 models - a high-poly one, and a low-poly one. The high poly model is used as a bumpmap reference.

We're fine for programmers until we get the SDK and realise that we're horrendously short-staffed. Or not.

Aja on 7/9/2004 at 19:49

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Keep me in mind for writing when it comes time. I know it'll be a while, but I'd love to help out with books, scrolls, story, etc.

Scarlett on 8/9/2004 at 00:16

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We're talking about how terrain formation affects the occlusion, and, technically, the actual render origin of the sound.

Consider this:
http://blackearth.homestead.com/files/images/SoundPropagation_D1.png
The player is in an enclosed room with a single door, no windows or anything, and a sound sources from, 'Virtual Sound'. On the render-side, for the player, the sound will need to actually be moved somewhere around the 'Render Sound' origin so it sounds like the sound is comming thru the doorway (from the outside) - instead of how Doom III probably does it by just going right thru the frickin' wall.

Just another example so you can, hopefully, kind of see how it works:
http://blackearth.homestead.com/files/images/SoundPropagation_D2.png
In this situation, you're going to have two actual render instances of the sound, because of how sound bounces off surfaces, it needs to sound like it's comming from two directions.

Then you'd also have to calculate the occlusion (ie. volume) for each of the render sounds, depending on how distant the render origin is from the actual\virtual origin (while also calculating the original sound volume into that). Then, for the situation of the first diagram, you'd also need to take into consideration of whether the door is open or not. Now, if the door wasn't there at all, and there was no open space to that enclosed room, then the sound would be completely culled from rendering. At least.. that's about how Dark did it, while thinking on terms of "All solid surfaces are completely solid. No fucking way will sound be able to travel thru it." - which isn't very realistic really 'cause sound almost always travels thru walls a little. So, what would be best is, to add in another render instance of the sound comming from the original\virtual sound origin, then lower the volume, and muffle it (that's where EAX comes in), and let it pass normally thru the wall. It'd be best to have some shader params handeling how sound, if at all, travels thru a surface, 'cause you'd most definetly want to have some options there.

So, to do this kind of thing, you'll need to setup somekind of pathfinding database for sound, like Dark does, or like they did in Thievery (by just using the already existing AI path data - if you want to get cheap with it ;)). In my project i've got Room brush support, like Dark does, for this - you'd probably want to consider the same.


Edit:
Err.. alright, in my arrogance, thinking that i knew what EAX's Advanced HD was, didn't read the link Domarius posted. And i'm surprised, very surprised. Especially considering that i'm working with Jedi Academy's code-base.. i had no idea it did anything like that. But then, the machine i'm working on doesn't have an Audigy card, so i never even knew... so fuck. All that time i spent putting in my sound system may have been for naught! :grr:
I'll still have to test it out though..

So, what exactly did you mean, Domarius.. by "sound propagation"? I'm wondering...

...and for the second Edit:
After testing on my Audigy card (and thus enabling EAX 4.0 Advanced HD), i've come to the conclusion that that Creative's claims of terrain influenced occlusion and positioning is bullshit. It really does no different on my Live! card. Maybe i'm just missing something? Has anyone 'round here done any extensive testing on this? Even Thief III didn't rely on EAX to handle that, what i've been calling "sound propagation". From the interview there on Creative's site it sounds like they were just using EAX for the acoustial effects.


People bees quite.. i feel like i'm blabbering now.

Scarlett on 8/9/2004 at 06:28

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Ah, right makes perfect sense to do that.. thanks for pointing that out. I was also considering that Dark maybe rendered the sound from a direction, rather than a specific point - it seems like it'd be a good idea. But i don't know if that's technically even doable...

Maybe you could accomplish that if you just keep the render sound origin aligned, in this case on the Z axis, with the view origin? Think i'll try that out..

Renzatic on 8/9/2004 at 07:05

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Really? The only example I can think of is when you go out to the abandoned comm center towards the beginning of the game. The rest of the time it'd just send you down elevators or through hatchways without giving you a way back.