Messages

1

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: December 07, 2012, 12:52:40 am »

is this set up to work without your added sound files?

No.  At the moment it uses grass5, carpet5, wood5, which are all my sounds.  I could put them back, but... 
Ok, here is a changed copy...

Sry have been busy with other things. Well atm i am replacing all stock sounds (grass1-4,snow1-4,sand1-4,stone1-4,wood1-4,metal1-4 etc.) just had not the time finish the stuff.

At the moment we only need one sound for each.  If you make your best #1 we can work with that until we can use multiple sounds per terrain type.

2

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: December 06, 2012, 01:56:39 am »

Updated the terrain.ufo to add the extra whitespace.

3

Coding / Formula for TU penalty

« on: December 04, 2012, 06:22:37 am »

I mentioned here an alternative method of calculating the TU penalty.  Currently it adds 0 penalty if you are under 20% weight, 30% penalty if under 50% weight, and 60% penalty if over 50% weight.  This is simple, but it doesn't allow changes in inventory to matter unless it puts you over the threshold.

I found the code and figured out the formulas to use linear scales between 0%, the light weight penalty point, the heavy penalty point, and 100%.  Using this formula, every change in weight will likely change your total TUs by a little bit. 

from src\game\q_shared.h

Code: [Select]

#define GET_ENCUMBRANCE_PENALTY(weight, max) (1.0f - ((weight) > (max) * WEIGHT_HEAVY ? (((weight / (2.0f * max)) - WEIGHT_HEAVY) / (1.0f - WEIGHT_HEAVY) * (1.0f - WEIGHT_HEAVY_PENALTY)) + WEIGHT_HEAVY_PENALTY : (weight) > (max) * WEIGHT_LIGHT ? (((weight / (2.0f * max)) - WEIGHT_LIGHT) / (WEIGHT_HEAVY - WEIGHT_LIGHT) * (WEIGHT_HEAVY_PENALTY - WEIGHT_NORMAL_PENALTY)) + WEIGHT_NORMAL_PENALTY : (weight * WEIGHT_LIGHT) / (2.0f * max * WEIGHT_LIGHT)))
I also modified the penalties a bit because as they were they gave basically a straight line graph.  I changed it from 30% @ 20% to 20% @ 30%, and from 60% @ 50% to 70& @ 60%.  That puts a little bend in the graph, giving more bonus at light weights and more penalty at higher weights.  The linear method also carries the penalty right up to 100% @ 100%, so you can't do much if you are power lifting.  The numbers can be adjusted, obviously.

Attached is an ODS spreadsheet with the linear and threshold numbers if you want to play with it.

4

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: December 03, 2012, 05:40:25 pm »

Crystan, if you want you can give me a list of sound file names to use for each category so I can generate a terrain.ufo with the right sounds so we don't have to search/replace to fix it in the future.

I have been using my terrain.ufo (and my sounds) in game and have not noticed any performance issues, though the AI turn can get a bit noisy when there are multiple actors moving at the same time.

5

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: December 02, 2012, 09:23:52 pm »

Since I am not very good at C++ or Python ATM, I used what I know, which is Lotus Notes, so it is probably not going to be very useful unless you want to download the Notes Designer  .  I can run it against the map files and have it identify textures that are new and need to be categorized.  If someone wants to rewrite this using something else, have at it.  I knew I could do it quickly and easily with what I know.  It was a way I could contribute without knowing much C++.

As mentioned before, I parsed the .map files, not including the tex_common textures, so only used textures are included.  The _nm textures are not included, as they don't show up in the map files.  I have also created a list of textures that are only used once or twice if someone wants to attempt some consolidation (attached)

I have noticed several maps with doors lying on the ground for instance that now have appropriate footstep sounds.

6

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: December 01, 2012, 06:56:55 pm »

I have attached an updated terrain.ufo to fix the issues that ShipIt has mentioned.  I believe that the footstepper script was intended to work with the footstep surface tag in Radiant, but none of the maps that I looked at had that tag set.  I could be wrong.  The game has to have some way of determining what grids are passable.    I thought about trying to decypher the map format and determine which brushes had large, horizontal surfaces, but it was easier to just grab it all.

As for the sounds, these are the only ones that I did because they were the ones that I felt sounded the least like they should.  The grass was very crunchy, and the bloodspiders making the same walking noises as humans was just odd.

I am not at all offended by my inability to read the standards first.     I'll see what I can do in the future about higher quality sounds, but we are talking about noise here.  I think the frequency breadth is more important than the throughput, and stereo doesn't really make much sense because the footsteps are going to be positionally located anyway.

One thing I found challenging, particularly with the looping bloodspider sound is that the sound plays for each grid you enter, so walking horiz/vert plays the sounds closer together than if you walk diagonally because walking diagonally takes longer.  So either the horiz/vert walking sounds overlap, or the diagonal sounds skip.  I almost think it would be better to have one, long audio loop for footsteps on each surface type (maybe even synched with the animation !) and have the sounds played by some kind of object that can be told to start, stop, or change the sound based on queues from the actor.  So I start walking on grass, it tells this object to start playing the grass footsteps loop.  I move over onto gravel, it switches the loop to the gravel footsteps loop.  I stop moving, it stops the loop.  I crouch and move, it plays a different loop of crouched footsteps.  It would eliminate the whole problem of having to piece together unnaturally tiny little fractions of sound from different sources, and all the timing issues involved, particularly with constant footstep sounds like spiders, hovernets, and eventually UGVs (and flying armor  ).  The end result would be much more natural sounding.

7

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: December 01, 2012, 05:12:53 am »

Oh you just assigned the missing footstep sounds to textures which haven't had a footstep sound using the current footstep system?  Well i thought you added a system we were talking about earlier,

I am a long ways off from attempting to implement that.

because adding footstep sounds using the current system is actually a waste of time

Well, there are sounds for every texture now.     I did it programmatically, so now that the textures are categorized, I can generate the terrain.ufo in seconds.

the hovernet got already a new (better) "footstep sound", just havent uploaded it yet because mattns code havent worked at that time.

So upload that sucker.  I would like to hear it.

if i understood you right, you found that sound in the bloodspider folder?

No, I created it.  I didn't find the one you made until I was looking for a place to put mine.  I haven't tested out yours in game yet, but mine is better than spiders with two feet, which is what it was.

grate1.ogg - doesnt match the quality standards
grass5.ogg - doesnt match the quality standards

By quality standards do you mean frequency and kbps or you just don't like it?  I had to back and forth between programs a bit because I only have one program that will save .ogg files, but I like some of the editing tools in the other better.

I can remove and exchange the stuff with the other sounds, so we can still make use of your work - if you want.

Do what you feel best.  I like it the way it is, personally, at least better than missing sounds and some of the clicky footsteps.  This part of the game is your baby, so it is your choice how you use it.

8

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 30, 2012, 01:10:08 am »

OK, here is the diff.  I can't get my SourceForge password until tomorrow.

9

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 30, 2012, 12:54:40 am »

It is pointless to upload a diff if the sound files are not in place, and I don't know how to handle that.  Crystan, you wanted to see the sound files first anyway, so here they are.  Feel free to add them or replace them as you see fit.

Terrain.ufo is completely new
move.ogg is the Hovernet move sound I put in sounds\aliens\hovernet\
move2.ogg is the bloodspider move sound from sounds\aliens\bloodspider\
The team_aliens.ufo adds these sounds
The rest of the sounds are from sounds\footsteps

10

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 29, 2012, 05:28:26 am »

I just committed some changes I made.  It is my first time so I hope I didn't screw anything up.

I parsed every texture out of the .map files and stored them in a local database, then went through and visually categorized every one of them (>1000) according to the sound they should make.  I then assigned one footstep sound as well as a bouncefraction to each category, then used that info to dump a complete terrain.ufo (now 10x larger).  I can use the same data to create a new, more compact terrain.ufo that will allow for multiple footstep sounds, etc. as I have proposed, but that is a ways off yet.

I also created some new footstep sounds for wood, carpet, metal grates (new category) and grass.  I also modified the hard-coded footstep volume up a bit.  It was at 20%, so the sounds would have to be recorded quite loud to be heard.  I upped it to 40%.
I also added movement sounds for bloodspiders and hovernets, as the team defs allow for an overridden constant footstep sound for them.

It is not a finished product, but hopefully better than silence.

11

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 24, 2012, 11:17:57 pm »

I am going to start playing with this as best as I can.  If there is anything you can think of to add to the terrain.ufo structure, let me know.

12

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 24, 2012, 12:39:34 am »

OK.  Moved it there (didn't know I could edit the wiki), but there doesn't seem to be any link to the discussion page unless you are in edit mode.

13

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 23, 2012, 10:33:42 pm »

I thought about categorizing the textures too.  It would make it more maintainable, but it is a bigger change and involves changes in more places in the code.  But I suppose if you are going to do it, do it right.  I was thinking something more like this:

terraintype grass
{
   bouncefraction 1.0
   sounds {
      footsteps {
         normal (
            "footsteps/grass"
            "footsteps/grass1"
            "footsteps/grass2"
         )
         crouched (
            ...
         )
         heavy (
            ...
         )
         spider (
            ...
         )
         wheeled (
         )
         ...
         
      }
      bounce (
         "weapons/grenade-bounce-grass"
      )
      
   }
   textures(
      "tex_nature/grass001"
      "tex_nature/grass"
      ...
   )
}

14

Sounds and Music / A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 21, 2012, 01:06:14 am »

While some of the footstep sounds are OK, many of them sound like someone whacking the ground with a stick.  There is also no variation in the step sounds, so they are all "clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk".  It would also be nice if the sounds could be standardized a bit more in terms of length and the general footfall sound so they blend together better.  I have been looking at the terrain.ufo file, as well as the team_*.ufos.  The team ufos have lists of sound files for wounding and dying sounds for the various units.  I think the same thing could be done to the terrain.ufo, allowing each terrain to have multiple footstep sounds, perhaps with alternate sounds for crouched walking, heavy steps (like Ortnoks, Power Armor), spiders, tracked,  wheeled (UGVs) etc. as needed as well as grenade bounce sounds.  The code should be very similar to how the team defs are parsed and used.  Terrain.ufo also needs new entries for the added textures, as well as bouncefractions set in each.

I don't know that much C++, but I think I may be able to figure out well enough how to reuse the existing code to create the new structure.  It will still be a lot of work though.  Is anyone else working on something like this?

15

Newbie Coding / Missing DLL from codeblocks/minGW zip

« on: November 18, 2012, 01:31:47 am »

I have downloaded the codeblocks zip from this site and set it and Git and such up, downloaded the maps using the python script, and compiled the code successfully with codeblocks.  It seems to work OK right up until I enter a mission.  Then I get an error message about the DLL libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll being missing.  I searched the code files, the built files and the installed version for this dll, but it does not seem to be anywhere.  Apparently it is missing from the MinGW/bin directory in the codeblocks zip.  I found a copy in a fresh install of MinGW and copied that into the MinGW\bin directory that I use with Codeblocks and rebuilt.  That seemed to fix the problem.  I'm not sure if using the DLL from a different version of MinGW would cause other unforseen problems. 

Maybe the dll could be added to the zip so others don't run into the same issue.