DRL > Requests For Features

Better Sound Synthesis Technique

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thelaptop:
We all love DoomRL because it is an amazing rogue-like.  So far, everyone has been dealing with game play issues with regards to the features that they want, including better LOS algorithms, better AI and the like.

But there is one thing that is severely lacking that it needs to be addressed now: sound synthesis.

Part of the allure of DoomRL lies in the fact that if you want to do reasonably well in the game, situation awareness is key.  And by that, we mean that you must be able to hear where the enemies are and factor that into your calculations on your next step.

The current sound system of DoomRL suffers from 2 critical flaws:

* Inability to differentiate "top of map" from "bottom of map"
* Sounds that travel across 8 tiles of floor sound the same as sounds that travel across 8 tiles of wall
This request for feature seeks the improvement on the sound synthesis technique so that the two points highlighted are addressed.  This will make sound cues more accurate for the player to make better informed decisions.

Suggestions on how this might be done:

* Band pass filters that make sounds appearing behind the pinna a little more muffled
* "True" binaural synthesis where the actual two-dimensional position of the sound source plays a factor (by playing with the left-right channel mixing and messing with microsecond delays for the channels)
* Frequency damping to simulate the sound passing through multiple walls (by Law of the first wave front, we can assume sound takes the shortest Euclidean path to reach DoomGuy -- so we can reuse LOS code to determine how many walls to bash through)
This feature is probably more impactful to game play than say graphical tiles.

Thomas:
I don't have much to say beyond this should be a required feature for 0.9.9.2 to be released.

MDM:
Additionally one thing needs reworking: Multiple sounds played short after each other should not be louder.
Example: I move one tile. In the time one ore more lost soul(s) may move/attack several times. Result: My ears explode from the use of a headset because all the lost soul moves/attacks are played in one extreme loud sound. I mean extreme loud in comparison to the normal loudness of the sound.

Game Hunter:

--- Quote from: MDM on November 09, 2010, 22:42 ---Additionally one thing needs reworking: Multiple sounds played short after each other should not be louder.
Example: I move one tile. In the time one ore more lost soul(s) may move/attack several times. Result: My ears explode from the use of a headset because all the lost soul moves/attacks are played in one extreme loud sound. I mean extreme loud in comparison to the normal loudness of the sound.
--- End quote ---
I think that's just the way that multiple sounds coming from the same channel are dealt with, constructive interference an' all that. Although with each additional sound, the volume of the channel could be reduced temporarily to account for the amplification.

Maybe it's just me, but I can't remember ever hearing more than one monster per action. If that is a problem (and it's not just in my head) then it would be another problem to address.

thelaptop:
My take on the multiple monsters/actions noise is that if we have a true direction-based sound synthesis system, the sounds will all be different since no monster stands in the same square.

Oh, and there are ways of mixing more than one sound that will not raise the overall amplitude of the signal (and blow your ears out).  We just need to have them in place.

[Ed: Here's a link that explains how to do it for two sounds.  Just rinse + repeat for the total number of sounds needed.]

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