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Assist => Feedback & Suggestions => Topic started by: WORLDCHANCELLOR on Friday, November 15, 2013, 22:42:58 PM
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So I've long noticed that the sound in 2.5 is a lot worse than 2.8.5 and, in many respects, simply inferior. The doors and footsteps are literally, completely silent if you take advantage of certain peculiarities in the game. For example, a popular glitch we all used to use in Invite-level competition was on Pipeline. When, on assault, rushing Primary (or to Main Pump basement) from Oil, if you keep running without stopping, the sound you actually make won't render for the other team until a moment AFTER you are directly in the FOV of the other team. This occurs even if an OpFor is on Basement floor crouching down and looking at Primary. For OpFor, the enemies will simply 'appear' there like a ghost, or like the theoretical result of a teleportation device, with no precursor indication.
Another example is carpet sound, which changed in 285 and became not only, subjectively, better-sounding, but also better for people to hear it correctly. I believe 285 also changed the internal rolloff filters. The gun clicks and nade-pin sounds in 285 were crisp, sharp, and could be heard nearly anywhere on the map, which also balanced out some of the game's peculiarities in its sound production. And they probably did this because they had to remove/disable shadows altogether, as a result of a graphical anomaly (which still exists in 2.5 today) that allows big, black, boxy "shadows" to appear through walls, floors, etc.
I submit, basically, that we should try addressing the sound glitches of which folks who are in-the-know can take advantage, and simply allow everyone to hear more. I don't know if this encompasses modifying the internal roll-off filters or whatever, but I do know that even someone without an X-Fi (or any 3D-surround audio interfaces) will benefit from being able to hear more and get an idea of where people are when they are near -- rather than sounds randomly going straight to 'mute' when you were JUST able to hear them. Instead, I think the sound should gradually decrease with distance, which is more realistic. So if this is possible to implement, it would be amazing, and it would stop me from being able to sneak up on people all the time who, realistically, should have been able to hear me.
Lastly, the big, black box "shadows" are still here, and I think it's time we either disabled the "Full" option for the Shadows (which is the only way to promulgate the shadow glitch), or we figure out why it happens at all and fix it. I'd go with the former, seeing as though the AA devs didn't even really figure it out; instead, they simply disabled being able to put shadows to "Full," but they allowed "Blob" because you can't do the glitch with the Blob setting.
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The sound problem is because of Windows 7.
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The sound problem is because of Windows 7.
you dont know anything about sound in aa dude
what turnaments you won? who are you?
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The sound problem is because of Windows 7.
No, I've fixed the sound issue long ago. That's not what I'm referring to. If you need that Win 7/64bit fix, let me know.
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IMHO hearing people miles away, isn't really as realistic as you're making it out to be. When was the last time you were sitting at home and heard a neighbor open his bathroom door? Or hear him go from the kitchen's hard surface to his living room with a carpet?
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There are lots of things you can already hear; there are just anomalies that I think we should address and make it better for everyone. Like I said -- if you want players like me to have an advantage like that over others because they're not as experienced and/or in-the-know, fine. lol
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The sound is great as it is now, I dont experience anything what you described. So please dont try to "improve" the game again.
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good points, at least the shadow-problem should be solved. server-side option to turn it off like in 285 for competition would be good...
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There are lots of things you can already hear; there are just anomalies that I think we should address and make it better for everyone. Like I said -- if you want players like me to have an advantage like that over others because they're not as experienced and/or in-the-know, fine. lol
I do agree with you, as I have pretty much felt the same about sound being totally different for me since 2.8.5.
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I submit, basically, that we should try addressing the sound glitches of which folks who are in-the-know can take advantage, and simply allow everyone to hear more. I don't know if this encompasses modifying the internal roll-off filters or whatever, but I do know that even someone without an X-Fi (or any 3D-surround audio interfaces) will benefit from being able to hear more and get an idea of where people are when they are near -- rather than sounds randomly going straight to 'mute' when you were JUST able to hear them. Instead, I think the sound should gradually decrease with distance, which is more realistic. So if this is possible to implement, it would be amazing, and it would stop me from being able to sneak up on people all the time who, realistically, should have been able to hear me.
I think there's too much sound in AA. It should be lowered to keep the game fun and fair. Sounds makes the game shitty as it's the one that has the best sound, who pays the most for headphones or has the most knowledge about sound that will win. It's impossible for someone of average level to 1 vs 1 against someone with perfect sound. It's like a wallhack or something and it makes the game really unfair.
Just my 2 cents
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I think there's too much sound in AA. It should be lowered to keep the game fun and fair. Sounds makes the game shitty as it's the one that has the best sound, who pays the most for headphones or has the most knowledge about sound that will win. It's impossible for someone of average level to 1 vs 1 against someone with perfect sound. It's like a wallhack or something and it makes the game really unfair.
Just my 2 cents
I completely disagree. You should certainly not have to guess so much. As I alluded before, even people with ostensibly "crappy" sound cards will still be able to hear, if they listen. If someone doesn't listen, it doesn't mean that we should move toward lessening the ability to do so, all for the sake of evening things out. This will NOT even things out; believe me, it will do the complete opposite, as I often play without AA sound at all, and I STILL take advantage of these sound anomalies, to much success. Instead, I think that we should move toward perfecting the sound we already have, fixing the anomalies. This will make the game more enjoyable for all. As it stands now, however, I certainly have acquired enough knowledge -- esoteric and otherwise -- over the years about the sound production of AA, and it's not necessarily (and mostly) my 'ability' to hear that allows me to have a sound-centric advantage. Rather, my sound advantage -- irrespective of my overall experience -- has to do with exploiting the manner in which AA 2.5 produces sound. So I'm on here admitting to you that I exploit, but I'm doing so in a very strange manner that isn't at all illegal and "checkable," which brings us to my proposition.
Oh yeah, and the matter of the black, humongous, boxy shadows DEFINITELY has to be addressed. A temporary solution could be implementing a CVAR check that disallows putting Shadow Detail to "Full." If players want shadows, just let folks use Blob.
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Sound:
The issue with sound is that there is no objective way to make it go away gradually without sacrificing CPU usage. Additionally, I am not entirely sure this can be addressed through code or whether it'll require someone to load every single map into the Editor and tweak the sound inputs all the way.
Maybe a simpler solution to this issue would be to take the 2.8.5 sounds and import them to 2.5 altogether? This would require less effort than the above mentioned. It may be a risky operation to take-on if the disparity between the audio files, audio sizes and audio names are of high leve, though.
Shadow:
Fixing shadows altogether requires some heavy-moderation (I think!) so I'd say disabling the Full-option would be most doable. Quite frankly, this shouldn't be too hard of a feature to edit.
Either way, I'll post this up on the Admin boards for further consideration.
/Dan
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My sound is terrible on win7 x64 compared to what it was on xp. More than likely a simple fix but i dont know of any.
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I've not had any issues with sound or shadows. I'm not quite sure what's being discussed. Seems like a bulk amount of complaining. Does anyone actually have screenshots or video of the problem?
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I've not had any issues with sound or shadows. I'm not quite sure what's being discussed. Seems like a bulk amount of complaining. Does anyone actually have screenshots or video of the problem?
Haha, don't worry, Spanky. I'm definitely not complaining. I just want to prevent folks like me from having such a BS advantage by masking my own sound via the game's deficiencies. This is quite BS, to be honest. It definitely feels that way, and I get accused of hacking daily, and I honestly don't blame folks for accusing. You wouldn't believe how often and easy it is for me to sneak up on people. As for those shadows:
(https://aao25.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimageshack.us%2Fa%2Fimg24%2F5098%2Fepty.png&hash=1dd6a1601923130d7f959b300e1fe0e8)
(https://aao25.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimageshack.us%2Fa%2Fimg22%2F7226%2Fysft.png&hash=380d7b4661b06021f844e3edfe507c6a)
(https://aao25.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimageshack.us%2Fa%2Fimg46%2F285%2Fnzqb.png&hash=3b913c2fb0a58a87305954bc8011b49b)
And don't be silly enough to think I play with these shadows and this is the reason I can "sneak up" on people. Don't make me video record you!!! I've been doing that lately. ;-)
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What graphics card do you have? I've honestly never seen that before, even on forums and old Intel onboard graphics.
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What graphics card do you have? I've honestly never seen that before, even on forums and old Intel onboard graphics.
I have an ATI. Any ATI can do this. Back in the day, in competition, and before they removed the "Full" function in versions subsequent to 2.5, teams would make it a prerequisite to have these types of shadows in order to even be considered a serious invite-level player. This was a pretty common thing, and since we're back in this version, I think it's only right that we disable the "Full" function, because Blob is good enough for people who want shadows. Shadows make you lag anyway. pfff
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No, I've fixed the sound issue long ago. That's not what I'm referring to. If you need that Win 7/64bit fix, let me know.
gief =p
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Shadows are nice but even with full shadows, you can see players through walls. Maybe it is best to disable it. I've only ever had Nvidia and Intel GPU's but I know Killaman has an AMD GPU and I don't remember him mentioning this issue. Is yours an actual ATI card? That would indicate that it's older and perhaps it has issues with UE-based games?
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Shadows are nice but even with full shadows, you can see players through walls. Maybe it is best to disable it. I've only ever had Nvidia and Intel GPU's but I know Killaman has an AMD GPU and I don't remember him mentioning this issue. Is yours an actual ATI card? That would indicate that it's older and perhaps it has issues with UE-based games?
HD Raedon 4670 1GB DDR3. Some older Nvidia can get these shadows, too. But ANY ATI card can get these shadows. Alternate Pixel Center**
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http://archive.forum.americasarmy.com/viewtopic.php?t=196309
this is an old issue. first came with ati cards, later also with nvidia. driver-dependent.
in later versions devs made a server-side option to disable it.
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Do you have the latest drivers? I'm not trying to discount your issue, just wondering what's going on. We've definitely talked about removing shadows before.
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I have the latest drivers. This doesn't have anything to do with drivers, though. Trust me; we need to disable the ability for folks to choose "Full" shadow detail. I don't get these shadows by default. You have to change your video card settings to use "Alternate Pixel Center," although some report that it simply comes glitched out like that by default. I enabled Alternate Pixel Center just to show you that the problem exists.
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Yep A good old tweak that many used until they turned them off. I do agree they should be blob or none, as you can see it really is a big issue.
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yap i hope they remove it
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gief =p
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ormtgf5hxcggfb1/x64.zip
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If i remember doesn't this also give you something along the lines of the power strip back in the day? I remember ATI/nvidia cards with certain drivers had the power strip feature, and it would leave a 2 pixel edge on the side of your screen so when you got flashed you could still see.
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Powerstrip is a 3rd party utility I believe. Never heard of this though.
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Powerstrip was for old CRT monitors, don't think it works well with modern flatscreens
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Powerstrip was for old CRT monitors, don't think it works well with modern flatscreens
Good point. Moreover, that pixel alternate setting has been removed from recent
catalyst editions.
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I thought AA Devs added an option to disable Shadows cause they are buggy and can bee seem through walls and other stuff, wich give advantage and isnt "realistic" :P
and this is a Game/Engine problem :D, as you said the black boxes are just you "exploiting" :P
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If i remember doesn't this also give you something along the lines of the power strip back in the day? I remember ATI/nvidia cards with certain drivers had the power strip feature, and it would leave a 2 pixel edge on the side of your screen so when you got flashed you could still see.
The 2-pixel edge on the side of your screen, when flashed, is yet another glitch of enabling Alternate Pixel Center on an ATI Card. I remember some folks claiming that they used this, but when I tried it while flashed, it didn't really help, as this line was way too thin. I concluded that I do much better by simply using my memory when flashed (I can be pretty BS at it, too -- muwwhahahah).
Powerstrip was for old CRT monitors, don't think it works well with modern flatscreens
Powerstrip was never all that good to me. Personally, I used to prefer Nvidia's 'Color Correction,' as its features and controls felt like a relatively natural extension of the colors your monitors already produce. Powerstrip, on the other hand, feels as if something is being layered over your monitor. It hurts my feelings -- ESPECIALLY today with my ATI, because I can't do ANY Color Correction at all, as there's some stupid glitch that allows me to change my Desktop colors, but as soon as AA is loaded, those CC settings do not, in any way, affect AA; in fact, it even brings the desktop color back to default. And it's DARK. :-/ In-game gamma-brightness binds, and my monitor's brightness settings, simply aren't enough, but I've long gotten used to this darkness in AA. And worst of all, Powerstrip can't even fix my darkness issue; it does the same thing, so I guess I'm just S-O-L in that respect. :-/
Good point. Moreover, that pixel alternate setting has been removed from recent
catalyst editions.
Many people don't use Catalyst, though. It's too bloated, so, instead, people will opt for ATI Tray Tools. I use ATI Tray Tools; it gives a lot of control over FPS-increasing tweaks, enabling multi-core support, and a whole plethora of other performance settings -- all in a tool that's small, convenient, and straight to the point.
I thought AA Devs added an option to disable Shadows cause they are buggy and can bee seem through walls and other stuff, wich give advantage and isnt "realistic" :P
and this is a Game/Engine problem :D, as you said the black boxes are just you "exploiting" :P
Yeah, they removed the "Full" option for Shadows in versions subsequent to 2.5 (or maybe just 2.7 and onward), because of the big, boxy, wall-glitching shadows exploit. Yes, it's a game-engine problem, but only when it's in conjunction with video cards that, inherently, contain those Alternate-Pixel-Center (and similar) capacities -- which means at least ALL ATI Cards, old and new.
Back in 2005, I had an Nvidia Card (one of the 6000 series, I think the 6200) that has these humongous, boxy shadows. The ATI Cards were the prevailing "It" thing, but my 6000-series Nvidia card produced shadows that were even crazier than any ATI Card, and only two known people -- me and an old British invite player, "Trig" from uNk (Team uNknown) -- had these mythical Nvidia shadows. So it wasn't exclusively an ATI problem, and it still might not be, depending on people's rigs and tools. The best way to deal with this is to disable access to "Full" Shadow Detail. CVAR checks could easily do this, but some players have a difficult time conforming to new CVAR standards. This might frustrate some people who don't check the forums, are not well-versed in figuring out why they got CVAR violations, and haven't ever 'changed' too much about their game. And I would just hope that these players wouldn't give up after receiving their notification to conform to new CVAR standards.
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Cmon, be serious. How many current players using this? That was so old, if 5 or 6 were in fact using it, now that you mentionated it, i bet 20 more will appear. Some stuff is just best left to death...
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Cmon, be serious. How many current players using this? That was so old, if 5 or 6 were in fact using it, now that you mentionated it, i bet 20 more will appear. Some stuff is just best left to death...
I mean, just the other day, a player was in the server talking, publicly, about how he can see these shadows from across the map. lol -- People talking about these shadows is one of the reasons I even promulgated this whole thing. Plus, as I'm watching many players, I notice that they're watching and responding to things that aren't even there, particularly on the floor. This is how I know people are still using it. And finally, even without the "Full" Shadow Detail+APC glitch, the regular shadows still glitch and can, at times, be seen through the walls, floors, and ceilings. Personally, I'll admit that I don't think it's that much of a factor, but those big, box shadows are. I guess I don't absolutely need ATI Tray Tools, so if we can blacklist having it running with Assist, that could be a viable solution, I suppose.
But I also think we need to talk to Maz3, as he says his big shadows across the map are not the result of Alternate Pixel Center, and that he can still get them, even when set to "Blob." It's never worked this way before, so I'd like to see proof of that. lol - I think he's just pulling my leg with that, but he maintains that he DOES get these BS shadows. I'll find out soon.
This whole thing may be old and all, but the version of AA we're playing is just as old. If there are 5-10 people using this in this small community, that's kind of significant, as these folks will have things on their screen that the majority of players will not, and this is an advantage over them.
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But I also think we need to talk to Maz3,
Ninjamafia?
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Cmon, be serious. How many current players using this? That was so old, if 5 or 6 were in fact using it, now that you mentionated it, i bet 20 more will appear. Some stuff is just best left to death...
Im sure more than you think do use it.
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All in all, I think that noof made an excellent and honest post on a real problem here..