its always been fucked. no cmds that I know of... 3 level maps like silence and trinity are really bad D:

why dont they implement a3d? idtech3 supports it.

90% of PC users use Realtek ALC chip. Realtek chips support a3d.
Really easy to improve they game.

IIRC, they didn't do it to not give a disadvantage to a certain group of people.
Also the number of cheating accusations would explode yet again. :-)

What would a3d allow to do with respect to sound height?

i presume it uses HRTFs which emulate the position dependent filtering of a sound due to interaction with the human head, shoulders and ear.

How well does that work in practice?

It can be often be very convincing, however it depends on the individual head shape of the listener - for best results it needs to be similar to the head/torso that was used to measure the responses in the first place. They are also designed strictly for headphone use since pinna cues are already contained in the HRTFs.

Interesting.Is this easy to test? Demos, apps available? Thanks!

Yeah its an interesting subject. One way to test HRTFs might be to download the demo of Max 6 and have a look for some HRTF patches for it. The best one is probably IRCAM Spat~ but I think you might need to pay for it. A quick google search gives this as the first hit for a free HRTF Max patch, dunno how good it is though.

If you have access to a DAW like Cubase or Protools I'm sure there's a lot of free HRTF plugins out there and I think Winamp even has some.

I notice i don't hear direct rocket hitbeeps if i'm set to 5.1 surround sound like i used to a few updates ok. i have to switch to stereo.


at least firefox is finally updated where i can make that change from windows desktop and i don't lose the sound while in game lol.

i think different levels/heights should have different footstep/ground sounds.

this

ye. simple solution.

and jumping on different grounds has different pitch.

;)

simple, yes.
correct, no.

Neat idea, possibly a good thing to consider for future maps.

Could be done, in the maps you could put like a 'trigger' brush spanning over the map for each level, which changes the sound of the model.

Or just change the sound of the floor, like the footsteps are like on the wooden planks.

Either way would mean editing every QL map though, and making new sounds... a fair amount of work and bandwidth.

id rather have a pitch fine tune depending on height and distance

On the subject of sound... I've been wondering if it's possible to use a simple software compressor to fuck with the sound signal to drastically boost quiet sounds ingame. Or maybe turn the s_volume up to 5 or something, then soft limit the whole thing at where s_volume 1 would be, so in theory, you'd almost have that Quake 2 'hear everything' effect.... well, hear everything in your PVS at least :P

no - atleast not that easy like you think

well, from what I can tell, events beyond a certain radius have 0 in-game sound... ie, it's impossible to hear something outside that radius no matter how high you crank up s_volume. maybe someone can confirm this?

It should be easy on linux with ladspa plugins.
It isn't 'cheating' because I can already hear everything. The only problem is that in order to do so I need to set volume to such high level that I'm really concerned about my hearing.

wotan, you're right... but there are a few other considerations too. For some odd reason, when QL does the PVS calculations for BSP rendering, if your opponent is outside the potentially visible set, they make no noise... which would make sense as a hack, if QL needed something like this, Quake 3 didn't have this problem IIRC, so I have no idea why they added this 'feature' to QL.
fau... That's exactly the idea, to be able to hear every sound clearly without deafening yourself... which I'm worried I am on the road to doing!

On linux there is a possibility to apply ladspa plugins (exactly the same as used by audio editing software) to any output sound. For example I use bs2b crossfeed filter for my headphones.

If there is someone who knows ladspa compressor plugins and knows how to configure them then we could work it out. The solution would affect only ql and be trivial to use.
I've already tried it and it works, but I don't know how to configure compressor to achieve best effects (and cba to read 10 pages of wiki to learn). Maybe I'll do this later but I'd use some help.

I have no experience with ladspa, but I have a long background in audio tech. Just to give you a quick rundown of what you'd need to do...
A compressor usually has a few standard settings:
1) Input gain: This one is obvious, it controls the gain applied to the input signal before any processing is done, it makes more sense used on a compressor than most other dsp's.
2. Threshold: This is the volume at which the dsp begins to 'compress' the signal. Any signal under this amount won't be touched.
3. Ratio: This is the control of how much the sound will be compressed, to put it simply...

To explain it simply... A ratio of 2:1 at -20db will mean that once the signal hits -20db compression begins, and that for every 2db the signal goes over the threshold, the output signal will only go up 1db... you can of course set this to much more drastic levels... ( 2:1 is considered soft limiting, a setting of 6:1 or so would be considered a hard limiter... 6decibels above the limit would be a 1db increase. )

So basically, what you'd be looking for... is to 'tune' the input gain, or the game's volume, to the point where sounds at the periphery of the hearable range are where you want them..
Then set a soft limit of maybe 3:1 just above that volume, keep tuning the threshold until you're comfortable with the volume of your own guns.... I'd advise against hard limiting in this case, it'll distort and you'll lose audio details... ( not that you really need to hear every shot of your PG, or LG cell though haha )

Anyway, I hope that helps a bit, let me know if you have any more questions.

btw is there a way to decrease the sounds of ur weapons (in ur side), while keeping the sounds of ur opponent to the same level?

as it is now, u can hardly hear anything else when u fire with lg or rl (they are louder than they should be imo)

just checking

I don't know if it was Sync or someone else years back that stated the sound system in qlive is the same as q3a. Some people have theorized that the compression they used on the audio files has degraded the quality (flattened the sound).

All I know is I've played q3a and various q3 mods over the years, I've never had any trouble determining where and enemy was coming from. With qlive, it's like 50/50. There's been many complaints about the audio in qlive since closed beta, but apparently they can't do anything to fix it.

And sounds from the back :/ Hard to distinct them from bottom/mid/top sounds too imo...

If I had a nickle for every rocket I fired no where close to the enemy because I thought I heard him above/below me when it was actually the opposite...

> waiting at 2x25's near GL on ztn
> hear enemy at SG
> hear enemy take shards
> reaction:

THERE ARE SHARDS NEXT TO THE SG?!?!?!???

Gets me every time.

went to plus you but apparently you're not allowed to be :(

You're not in my tier.

I bow down to you supreme ruler.

why has nothing big and buggy happened in an important lan match!! still waiting :(

e.g. huge soundbugs, rockets exploding midair, etc

Because less than a fraction of 1% of matches are played at important lans... .....

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................

yeah that was a serious question thx for the answer

It was a serious answer. Do the math

(hint: percentages & probability)

ok...?

i have played an awful lot and the only major issue I have ever seen (or heard lol) are sound bugs, but are somewhat rare.

Rockets exploding midair and sticky grenades is something I've only watched in youtube. Never happened in my matches or when watching a live tournament (seen practically all the major ones. Haven't watched demos though)

i've 5,5k games on my profile and i've experienced like 3-7 major bugs, one midairrocketexplosion, few soundbugs, loads of nadebugs, falldown damage out of nothing, got stuck in stairs, etc.. so roughly 0.1% chance!

I've played a fair amount of games and I've seen direct rockets send players in wacky directions more times than I can count, as well as no splash damage on stairs more often than it actually registers. I know the stair splash damage has always been a coding issue, but I feel like it happened a lot less in osp/cpma than it does in QL. Other than those two I've only experienced sound issues and sg fuckups probably less than 5 times.

no splashdamage on stairs is a feature not a bug

really? when was that decided because it was considered a bug for the longest time. I've missed a lot of patch notes over the last few years though as I've taken quite a few extended breaks from gaming of any kind. If that's the case, then I guess I experience a bug of splash damage registering on stairs occasionally :P

It's never been a bug.

Either it stays the way it is now, or you implement some kind of thrufloor damage again so the explosions would travel THROUGH the stairs, which would lead to a ton of potential problems, or you " wrap " the explosions around corners. If it's only stairs you have to bake the maps again and add a flag for the stairs or something. Either way you're completely screwed because everybody and their mom have a different idea of how it should be done and they'll blame "bugs" anyway half of the time

I remember about 6-7 years ago when cpma was still being actively developed it was considered a bug by the devs.

just like strafing in q1 :P

Even if people consider it a bug doesn't mean it is one, it's a feature that sometimes annoys but it's always your fault and it's you placing your rockets badly, you can only blaim yourself. Like faerie said, if they "fixed" it, you would be able to do damage through walls/floors etc.

They could still change maps where there's random floors making this happen

*T7 RA*

could but dunno if they should :P

No, they can just replace the "collision surface" on stairs with a ramp instead of calculating the collision according to the actual steps. I have no idea why they haven't done this.

It's not necessary, like said it's a feature. Maybe would be more noobfriendly if it was fixed or something dunno

well it's certainly a buggy feature, because I get random splash damage on stairs very frequently

it's not random it's just you've placed your rockets better :d it may feel buggy though can't argue that

It makes rl on stairs random. If you hit below enemy (atm the 'skill' is to never hit below him unless you are shooting from above) there is a big chance that rocket will hit horizontal part of stairs and do no dmg. There is also a small chance that it will hit vertical part and you will deal dmg anyway so there is a random factor because "bad" rockets can still luckily turn out to be good ones.

it's not random....... using rockets on stairs is sometimes gambling and especially shooting them at the stairs is and if people whine about it it's just them being noobs :F

So it's gambling but not random. Ok.

yeah any problems with that? and still, not hitting those rockets are your fault and about the thing that you placed them badly, random would be that the exact same situation would have 2 different outcomes, which it won't

By definition gambling has to have random factor. Random != fifty-fifty.
My point is that you can place your rocket "badly" and still hit if you get lucky. You can stand below enemy (not much), place your rocket below him and still hit if you get lucky (and hit horizontal part). The same situation can indeed have two outcomes as you can't consciously aim at horizontal part of the stairs.

I know that there are many more random factors in ql but this one feels like a bug.

- _- well ok you're right about the definition of gambling but come on, you do understand what i'm on about? 100% of the situations are random if you take it like that, two exact same scenarios have two different outcomes every single time, but that's because the players played it differently

No. If your opponent uses rl up the stairs it's usually a mistake. If he insists on doing it he should try to aim above you. If he fails and hit below - it's double mistake but by small chance he can still hit you. This is random, lucky and it feels like a bug.
Ofc there are many situations where mistakes can turn out to be good for you but this just doesn't feel right to me.

on stairs, it's really not random, on floors like t7 RA it is imho

that might feel random but isn't, nobody aims rockets so well though =P however, i think spawns for example play a hugely bigger random factor. also i've got nades bouncing off enemymodel more often than that stair'bug' so that's not really a severe issue if you ask me, it just raises the skillroof!

Maybe better term would be "chaotic" rather than "random". (It is random but chaotic behaviour is more troublesome than randomness in this case).
Explain me how are nades bouncing off enemy model different from this?

yeh rocketfights in stairs end up randomly but aren't random! :))
nade bouncing is different because the exact same situation might have two different outcomes, e.g. one time it will bounce and the next ten it explodes.

I'm starting to wonder if you understand how does splash physics work.

Following your argumentation nothing is random because one can always argue that there is god who knows everything. Random colloquially as well as scientifically always means "random for our purposes" and that we can't find any rule leting us predict it's behaviour. Otherwise it doesn't haven any meaning.

Standing on t7, ra and shooting at the stairs is random for our purposes because nobody can consciously aim at horizontal parts of the stairs in this situation.

This is why I mentioned chaotic behaviour. Chaotic behaviour means that two very similiar, close states evolve into two completely different states changing whole situation.
For example rocket fight on flat floor isn't very chaotic because small change of aim direction changes very slightly enemy's bounce so the whole fight can be very similiar.
Spawns are intentionally chaotic.
On the other hand shooting stairs from ra has about 50-50 chances of success and missing or hiting the rocket can completelly change the situation and outcome.
The same goes for nade bounce. Btw how do you know that if you don't move the nade won't bounce again? There is some esoteric rule saying when does nade bounce because everything happens on Turing complete machines. Unless you blame quantum tunnelling :P

I know how rocket splash physics work and I'm pretty sure everybody consciously avoid hitting vertical parts @ t7 ra :f

And tbh when I think of it, I never shoot rockets at stairs either really, and if I do I shoot them clearly above the guy and probability to hit it is good enough. Just look at cypher or somebody he doesn't noob around with stair shots and if he yet decides to do so it's pretty much random yeah.

But I don't get what's wrong with it, if you're a noob and go in for risky shots you might get lucky but in the end you won't. No good player shoots stairs if you're on them, he either shoots the wall or aims at you or above you, definitely not below. And if there are any other elevation differences in the map that make this 'bug' possible you can only blame yourself if you place a rocket there and do no damage. E.g. rapha at t7 megahealth ya in some pre-qcon or pre-dh tournament was it zotac, he lost not because of the 'bug', but because his rockets sucked in that situation.

demon stuck in the floor after spawn on ztn (luckily it was first spawn).
A lot of sg exploding mid air everywhere (hard to notice).
Nades bouncing off the models left and right.

i have had a nade bouncing of me and damaging my opponent. I have seen tox warming up and he got a nade clipped on the enemy only doing damage upon the timed explosion.

Watch twister's analysis of rapha vs noctis. There is a soundfuck moment that results in noctis losing the control.

No idea how it works, but I simply can't understand how QL, a 2010 game, sounds miles worse than Q3, a 1999 game and that's essentially the same.

edit: did you know QL was released on Cooller's birthday? rofl

Because you simply couldn't hear shit in q3 unless the other guy was breathing down your neck.

but could distinguish if he was breathing down my neck or my balls. In QL seems like it's both

You could notice a volume difference, not a different eq or anything. It would confuse you just like it does now in ql if you were to play some prot4 again.

guess I'm spoiled by current games and don't really remember q3 sound.

inb4 jamerio claiming victory

there's a left channel and a right channel, and there's no A3D...

Once there were a3d in q3 dunno if it was a Test Version or an eaelry ptr. Was kinda buggy :(game freezes):

if that gets fixed, then imo footsteps should be removed lol. atleast in duel/tdm/ctf u shouldnt get freebies for not anticipating your enemy.

this is not to say that i disagree that sound should be fixed. it should.

i hate sounds honestly. faggots sitting on s_volume 1, just sneaking around the map pretending to be rapha.

ill say either be dumb and jump around or be smart and outplay opponent, but the cemper shit just borink

I remember reading somewhere there is a limitation with idtech3 engine which is why this happens.