Problem while moding sounds

[mirens]

Hello, first of all I must say Evochron Legacy SE is a great game and I play it in VR on pico 4 and it is perfect.

I started changing some sounds following this documentation https://starwraith.com/evochronlegacy/c ... me.htm#401 and come to one problem.
Sound when something entering or leaving your ship. For example when you mine asteroid, when you buy something or when you launch your missile there is a metallic sound that is very loud and I hope it is not hard codded. I can not find it in the documentation. If it is hard codded can I somehow lower its volume with some kind of txt file.

Also I fount 2 small errors in a documentation page for modding sfx.
1) It should be noted that this sound is looped also - laser.wav = laser sound effect
2) missile.wav is misspelled in this line - missle.wav = missile launch

I made nice missile.wav but I can not hear it because of that hard codded metallic sound which activates when missile leave the ship.

I hope I make sense, english is not my first language. Cheers!

[Vice]

Hello mirens. Glad you're enjoying the game.

'weapload.wav' is the loading/unloading sound effect you are likely referring to. You can import your own with that filename.

The 'laser.wav' sound effect should not be looping, only playing whenever the ship's beam weapon is fired by the player.

I've corrected the 'missile.wav' filename listing, thanks!

[mirens]

Yes that is the sound I was talking about. Thank you so much!

Sorry about the laser.wav remark. I was under impression that laser is a weapon that is firing continuous beam because of the subtle new beam animation. Now I can see it is firing as a gun does but with no brakes between beam lengths.

This is all great, thanks again for such fast reply!

[mirens]

Me again...

I am making a sound for afterburner, I made tabon.wav, tabburn.wav and taboff.wav.
when I put them next to eachother in audio editor they play nice, without any clicks, pops or audible crossovers. tabburn.wav loops perfectly on its own.

I have problem in game where tabon.wav ends and tabburn.wav starts. I can hear artifacts in transition, it is short but I can her it and it annoys me

How the game handles it. Does it make a short fade between those two files or does it just plays raw file data?

[Vice]

It simply plays the raw file data, so the wave forms themselves and the audio device can have an effect. If the initial wave form ends in a sharp contrast to the beginning of the next, or even if there are simply abrupt spikes at each end, there can be a pronounced click. One step that can help is to make sure the end of one stops at 0 db while the beginning of the next does the same. Matching them in this way can help provide a smoother transition.

Edit: Quick additional note, the game does taper the audio samples between the looping sustained sound and the ending sound, just not between the startup and sustained sounds where you were modifying. That's where internal tapering can help.

[TraderDan]

It's been a while since I worked on the afterburner sound but I remember doing something in audacity where I joined and crossfaded some clips then separated them again

[mirens]

Yes, that is how I did it too, so when I put those two sounds one after another in audacity there is no artifacts at crossover, transition is seamless. But in game there is some kind of a very small delay between starting sound and sustained sound. Sometimes it is longer delay and sometimes it is smaller, I dont know how to explain but sometimes it is very obvious.

I understand the logic where sustained sound and ending sound must be tapered because player can release a button at any loop point in time so transition can not be seamless, I covered that by adding some kind of button click at a start of ending sound so it covers the transition.

Maybe my sound card is a problem because it does operate at 48000 and my samples are at 44100, I will try that later.

[Vice]

Another possibility is framerate/performance. When the game checks for the state of the initial sound playing to wait until starting the sustained loop and there is a lower FPS, that can increase the wait duration/delay between the two. That would also explain the variation. On a slower system, more detailed environments would likely provoke a longer delay due to lower FPS, lower detail environments with a higher FPS will have less of a delay.

If a system can maintain at least around 60 FPS, any delay would likely be minimal/unnoticeable at around 15ms. At 20-30 FPS, it would likely be much more pronounced at around 35-50ms.

[mirens]

I understand, and since I am playing in VR at 3120 x 3120 per eye resolution with everything maxed out in game. that is 6240 x 3120 on max details. I dont see a low framerate but that is probably because some frame gen adds fake frames in pico headset software. I will try to lower the resolution.

You are right about this issue, sometimes moving the ship is choppy, I will turn off fake frames generation and test.

[mirens]

I just want to confirm that you were right. I played on 1920x1080 monitor with everything on low. Had a stable 120FPS and sound glitches are gone. Thank you!

[Vice]

Glad that's all it was and higher performance improves it.