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ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

This forum is for the new audio renderer for UEngine 1 based games, like Unreal, UnrealTournament, DeusEx and Rune. Missing a Game? Want to develop yourself? Let us know!
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han
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by han »

What about EAX/EFX effects? I heard, OpenAL Soft doesn't feature EAX beyond version 2 (EAX 3, 4 and 5). UT2004 uses EAX3...
As stated above, we don't use any features not present in ALSoft (e.g. we use EFX, not EAX). Our UE1 ALAudio has nothing in common with UT2004's ALAudio nor are we the Authors or maintainers of it.
Can I parallelly use OpenAL Soft and original OpenAL together? (OpenAL Soft for certain games, original OpenAL for all other games...)
Yes. That is what we intend. Just extract all filtes into your UT\System directory and it uses ALSoft. The OpenAL32.dll inside this directory will no influence on any other part of your system or game.
Is it nevertheless possible, to still use original OpenAL for UT99 with the actual version (2.2) of your OpenAL driver for UT? I would have to reconfigure and re-test UT99, if I would switch to OALSoft... (UT1 would perhaps sound different - maybe better than before but maybe also worse than before...)
Just test it. Don't have the details in my head, either use the config option or plain delete/rename the OpenAL32.dll inside of the UT\System directory. That will use your system defaults OpenAL32.dll, which should be your creatives i guess.
If there are any issues, report them, so we get an overview, though we might not fix them. In case you do want to fix them, we can sent you the ALAudio source.
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Morpheus2396
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Morpheus2396 »

Just test it. Don't have the details in my head, either use the config option or plain delete/rename the OpenAL32.dll inside of the UT\System directory. That will use your system defaults OpenAL32.dll, which should be your creatives i guess.
I already did it (copied the original OpenAL32.dll from Windows\system32 folder and then I changed the audio device in my UT.ini file) - it seems to work, except...
If there are any issues, report them, so we get an overview, though we might not fix them. In case you do want to fix them, we can sent you the ALAudio source.
... the problem with the skipping sounds (after 1-2 minutes) which is also present in UT2004. Since only UT99 and UT2004 have this bug (at least so far...) and the bug is exactly the same for both games, it might be an anomaly of the UE - despite UT99 and UT2004 use different versions of the UE (UE1 versus UE2), both engines certainly share several similarities...

This bug does not seem to occur with OpenAL Soft - now I'm going to test other games with OpenAL support (e.g. Q3A) to determine whether this bug occurs there, too...

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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by han »

I have some idea what might cause the issue. While there is in OpenAL Soft basically no limitation about the simultaniously playing sound sources, this might be severly limited in hardware.

So we could try using ALC_MONO_SOURCES / ALC_STEREO_SOURCES at context creation to supply at context creation a hint how many sources should be supported. But this is just a hint, no guarantee. Thats all I could find out about this while overflying the so called "OpenAL specification". It is more some programming documentation, and looks like it was written after the code as it is really vague and on certain issues certainly unclear.
So maybe we should readd a MaxChannels options, supply that hint at context creation and hope for the best that limiting it works for Creatives OpenAL implemtation.

/edit:
One can indeed query them using alcGetIntegerv().

Smirftsch: go ahead. :D
Last edited by han on Tue Mar 15, 2016 1:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Morpheus2396 »

I have some idea what might cause the issue. While there is in OpenAL Soft basically no limitation about the simultaniously playing sound sources, this might be severly limited in hardware.
No, I have to update this - the problem definitely lies not in UE! I installed Q3A (ioquake 3 with OpenAL support) yesterday in order to check, whether the same bug occurs there, too - bingo! After a certain time, the sound completely disappears (except the Hit-Sound when you hit an enemy) - but in the case of Q3A, this happens just after a few seconds after starting a match!

It's definitely a bug in the actual Creative driver since driver version 2.40.0008 for the X-Fi Series.

In this case, there is nothing you can do for the original OpenAL implementation - that's Creatives job!

M2396
Last edited by Morpheus2396 on Tue Mar 15, 2016 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Morpheus2396 »

I have an entirely different question:

Is it possible to play UT with OpenAL/OpenAL Soft AND the original EAX libraries for UT99 (the EAX-Patch for UT99 by Creative for select UT99 DM- and CTF-maps)? These libraries add EAX-effects (especially reverb) to certain map points - I never expected the reverb to be so OUTSTANDING when listened through headphones (with CMSS-3D). Especially the reverb effects in CTF-EternalCave are ETHEREAL!!!111

Unfortunately, I couldn't get these libraries to work with the ALAudio driver - only DS3D (via Galaxy driver) with EAX + Surround sound options enabled (in UT Preferences) and enforced via ALchemy does work properly - when I change the audio driver to "ALAudio" there comes no sound at all...

Can you add this feature for future ALAudio (both OALSoft and original OAL, if possible) releases? That would be PHANTASTIC - these reverb effects are ELECTRIFYING when listened through Headphones...

M2396 
Last edited by Morpheus2396 on Tue Mar 15, 2016 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by han »

Regardless it is an issue in our implementation we need to fix. Just took a quick peak on ioq3 src. Looks like it also lacks the handling code for a possible limited amount of simultanious sources playing. They neither supply ALC_[MONO/STEREO]_SOURCES as context creation argument, nor query the values for it after initialization. So the issues exists there as well and you should file a bug report against ioq3 complaining about the issue and that the handling for maximum amount of concurrently playing sources is missing.

/edit:
Regarding the EAL stuff (or how it was called), go back a few pages in the thread, we basically have all the information needed to do so. But there are currently no plans in doing this, and in the case we support them, they will likely just add input for a new system which also supplies emulation for them.
Last edited by han on Tue Mar 15, 2016 5:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Morpheus2396
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Morpheus2396 »

But there are currently no plans in doing this, and in the case we support them, they will likely just add input for a new system which also supplies emulation for them.
Why? I say it again, these reverb effects are phantastic - I never expected them to be so good. But I also have to say, they only sound good if listened through headphones - I also have a 7.1 speaker setup and DS3D and also the EAL reverb effects sound pretty shitty through speakers...

regarding the sound bug: this problem did NOT exist in the previous version (2.17.000x) of the Creative driver in ANY legacy game (UT99, UT2004, Q3A, etc.) - so it must be related to the new driver version. There are already existing topics on the Creative forums about this issue...

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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Morpheus2396 »

Regardless it is an issue in our implementation we need to fix. Just took a quick peak on ioq3 src. Looks like it also lacks the handling code for a possible limited amount of simultanious sources playing. They neither supply ALC_[MONO/STEREO]_SOURCES as context creation argument, nor query the values for it after initialization. So the issues exists there as well and you should file a bug report against ioq3 complaining about the issue and that the handling for maximum amount of concurrently playing sources is missing.
I also have to mention another issue: when I use the original OpenAL implementation from Creative (OpenAL32.dll from Windows folder), I have TRUE surround/3D-sound on my headphones with both "SBXF-Audio" and "OpenALSoft@speaker" sound devices. With the OpenAL32.dll supplied with ALAudio package for UT (file size 340KB - more than 3 times the file size of Creative's OpenAL32.dll) there is NO (or at least VERY BAD) surround sound/3D-sound if listened through headphones - AFAIR I can only feel correct 3D-sound when I listen through speakers, but not headphones!

Is this a known bug or do I have to configure something?

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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by han »

Did you use the UseHRTF option when using a headset with OpenAL Soft? If not try enabling it.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by han »

Why? I say it again, these reverb effects are phantastic - I never expected them to be so good. But I also have to say, they only sound good if listened through headphones - I also have a 7.1 speaker setup and DS3D and also the EAL reverb effects sound pretty shitty through speakers...
There are different factors. I am currently pretty deep on getting things on rendering straight and I want to focus on that. Then this is an UT only thing, there are no EAL presets for other UE1 games. The Editing tool they used only starts when you own a Creative sound card. I have no idea if they would even work on any recent OS, so we need to implement a way for creating new ones. At least they do have an documentation how to use them with OpenAL though using the EAX extension and not EFX, but that shouldn't be much of a concern.
And for me personal, I favor getting away off custom made preset to either full non preset based audio rendering or at least autogenerate these out of a map and maybe use them a bit like a shadow map. Deus Ex in particular is very interessting for this, because the used texture groups to indicate the footstep sound, so basically for the whole game and custom content there is already pretty much all data in needed for this. Unreal 227 uses an enum in the Texture class to handle similar things. In any case this is a large scale endevour, so this is pushed back a bit.
regarding the sound bug: this problem did NOT exist in the previous version (2.17.000x) of the Creative driver in ANY legacy game (UT99, UT2004, Q3A, etc.) - so it must be related to the new driver version. There are already existing topics on the Creative forums about this issue...
To recap what is the issue. There is no minimum of supported simulatanious playing audio soures required. So they could even implement that unless you use the hint for requesting a certain amount, so always get zero simulatanious playing audio sources, e.g. no audio playback at all. This would still be not a bug on Creatives side, but a perfect (though unresoable) valid behaviour of an OpenAL implementation. Maybe they just decreased the by default minimum supported amount of simultanious playing sound source in their application, or had some compat code in, to always allow new sources and they just dropped that. So arguing that this is a bug in the driver while there are obvious bugs in the applications which would exactly explain this behaviour is unresonable. So I just checked the binary of UT2004, they don't supply the hints at context creation, nor do they query the limits. So exactly the same bug in UT2004.

However what you can try in case of UT2004, in my UT2004.ini there is a "Channels" setting. I don't know whether this is used but you should try some low values starting off 1, 2, 4, 8... and see if it works before (though most sounds will be outruled using these low settings anyway) and see where it starts to break.
Last edited by han on Wed Mar 16, 2016 2:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by lowenz »

Maybe Creative IS using OpenAL Soft code.....
Last edited by lowenz on Wed Mar 16, 2016 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Dr.Flay™ »

I notice it says in the openal soft document to install the creative labs files first for the wrapper.
Since Creative no longer host the openal site, would it be good to host it here and the ALcaps viewer ?

The newest I have is v2.2.0.7
[img]http://ft.trillian.im/0d9824f506f3c7f4446f085bf2e8cd3eeb5144b2/6G3e3jbtnkTbHlF9TKM99fzo0yFA8.jpg[/img]
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Karbofos »

Actually these recommendations are only needed if you install OpenAL Soft (native) as an additional device. The scheme works like that:

OpenAL32.dll (from the Creative OpenAL)  just router, creates a list of available devices and performs a redirect to ->

wrap_oal.dll - (from the Creative OpenAL) "Generic Software" and "Generic Hardware"
sens_oal.dll - Creative SB without HW accelerated sound such a SB 24-bit, Audigy SE, X-Fi Extreme Audio etc
ct_oal.dll   - Creative SB with HW accelerated sound (EMU10K2 or EMU20k)
rtk_oal.dll  - Realtek 3DSoundBack, DS3D translator
rapture3d_oal.dll - BlueRippleSound Rapture3D
...
soft_oal.dll - original OpenAL Soft

But we use specific OpenAL Soft (U/UT/etc), not native.

Hmm. Well, install files to SysWOW64 or system32 ? Ok...
softU_oal.dll ? - renamed OpenAL32.dll from OpenAL_v2.4.5_227i.7z for Unreal only.
softUT_oal.dll ? - renamed OpenAL32.dll from OpenAL_v2.2_UT.7z for UT only.

Now we must check ini for ALDevice=DefaultDevice
Why such complexity?

In our case it doesn't matter because UT\System\OpenAL32.dll has the higher priority than OpenAL32.dll in SysWOW64 or system32
So the entry point is UT\System\OpenAL32.dll and there is no redirect. We are already here and have only one OpenAL device instead of list.
Last edited by Karbofos on Wed Mar 16, 2016 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by lowenz »

I notice it says in the openal soft document to install the creative labs files first for the wrapper.
Since Creative no longer host the openal site, would it be good to host it here and the ALcaps viewer ?

The newest I have is v2.2.0.7
[img]http://ft.trillian.im/0d9824f506f3c7f4446f085bf2e8cd3eeb5144b2/6G3e3jbtnkTbHlF9TKM99fzo0yFA8.jpg[/img]
For the *router*, not the wrapper :D
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by lowenz »

Any news from the audio front about new OpenAL dlls? :D (Unreal, UT, Rune, *RUNE CLASSIC*, Deux Ex, etc.)
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Smirftsch »

Any news from the audio front about new OpenAL dlls? :D (Unreal, UT, Rune, *RUNE CLASSIC*, Deux Ex, etc.)
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Smirftsch »

OpenAL_v2.4.7_UT.7z added. As usual, details on first page.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Morpheus2396 »

OpenAL_v2.4.7_UT.7z added. As usual, details on first page.
I tried the new version, and the sounds disappearing/skipping bug still exists after switching from OALSoft to Creative HW-OAL whenever I replace the "OpenAL32.dll" file (in my UT\System folder) provided by the ALAudio Package (v2.4.7) with the native one from my C:\Windows\System32 folder...

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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by lowenz »

Thanks! 8-)
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Smirftsch »

OpenAL_v2.4.7_UT.7z added. As usual, details on first page.
I tried the new version, and the sounds disappearing/skipping bug still exists after switching from OALSoft to Creative HW-OAL whenever I replace the "OpenAL32.dll" file (in my UT\System folder) provided by the ALAudio Package (v2.4.7) with the native one from my C:\Windows\System32 folder...

M2396
Guess this means that the number of sources is not the culprit of this issue. Regardless, could you post a logfile?
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Morpheus2396 »

Guess this means that the number of sources is not the culprit of this issue. Regardless, could you post a logfile?
It's also possible that my system (or my UT) isn't configured correctly - despite I always pay serious attention to installation & configuration...

Do I have to use the OpenAL32.dll provided with the ALAudio package, or may I use the native one from my Windows directory?

@Your request: Yes, of course I can do that! Does UT itself automatically create a log file or do I have to enter a command?

@Current Build: Where is the "UseOriginalUnreal" command? Is it gone? If yes, is there a replacement command?

M2396
Last edited by Morpheus2396 on Sun May 08, 2016 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Smirftsch »

it automatically creates a logfile, its in your UnrealTournament/System folder and it's called UnrealTournament.log

You can either paste it here, as code (the # symbol in the menubar) or in something like pastebin .com

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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by sn260591 »

OpenAL_v2.4.7_UT.7z added. As usual, details on first page.
Now I have a problem: some sounds are becomes too quiet (shooting from a minigun, for example), while others are very loud (shock rifle combo).
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by []KAOS[]Casey »

HRTF enabled?
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Re: ALAudio for UnrealTournament - development and links

Post by Smirftsch »

OpenAL_v2.4.7_UT.7z added. As usual, details on first page.
Now I have a problem: some sounds are becomes too quiet (shooting from a minigun, for example), while others are very loud (shock rifle combo).
Unlike minigun, combo ain't a viewport sound, means, its not "the player itself" causing the effect, which is named "ViewportVolumeIntensity". Try adjusting ViewportVolumeIntensity. Perhaps need to adjust the defaults some more, but I noticed that while stereo speakers usually play this often to loud, a 5.1 setup f.e. seems to reduce volume a lot, so there is maybe no perfect default for this one.
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