GRiN_desmond22

Anyone has a good tip for a pair of teamspeak headphones? I'm thinking about buying a pair for the Saturday Big Bash, and future similar events (I hope they are many)! Currently I'm looking at Steelpad Steel Sound 5H, Koss Headset SB45, Cosonic CS-7, in declining price range. Anyone use any of those and can give me some feedback on their quality? Thanks in advance - and see you on Saturday!

Ok then, fine, Wille blames them.

This is one of the reasons people need to think twice before arguing that a game in 2006 should have everything a game had five years ago, and more. At the same time - who blames them? Thing is, stuff like graphics, sound and AI are expected to get better, and it's not just to pile up on the features you already have. You often have to do things from the ground up to make it work well - and the next time, when hardware standards have changed, you have to do it from the ground up all over again. From my end, I can say that better sound doesn't come from just raising the quality of the same samples from 22kHz to 44kHz - there's a lot more to it than that, and as DiGiTALY -TC- stated; you need to see it from the inside to get the real picture. Games get more and more advanced, and subsequently also more and more difficult to develop. In the cradle of game creating, you could just draw a 2d object for you character to walk around on, and have yourself a nice little sidescrolling platform game. Then you could do 3d objects and slap the 2d image on it as a texture - now suddenly you needed two people to create the game world. What, you think games stopped evolving at that point? Now you need to render lightmaps and different layers of mapping and add advanced physics and what not. I know you modders have good insight in how tricky it is to create all the different pieces of a game and get them all to work together, but I've read so many ignorant posts on the forum that I just wanted to let those people know, get it off my chest you know. People need to think twice before arguing that a game in 2006 should have everything a game had five years ago, and more. Then again - who blames them?

Yeah that's what you gotta do to make it sound this good! I don't just rip sounds traight off a soundeffect CD and put it in the game - anyone who thinks so need to get their heads straight and give some respect to the art of sound design. There is no shortcut to the perfect sound /Farbror Barbro I'm afraid Farbror Barbro was right. It's always a matter of balance - more sounds make the sound more "real" and "alive", but it also takes more RAM. To save RAM you can lower the quality, but then it becomes a balance of quality vs RAM, so there are always decisions that have to be made. Ask yourself the following questions: How often will the sound be repeated? If often, then it needs several variations, but more than four is excessive. How near the player's ear will the sound most often be heard? If it's the player's own gun (which has its own unique stereo samples), it needs to have top qualoity. If it's an enemy weapon it can have lower quality. To make it simple, I can say that there needs to be at least one of ALL sounds in the weapon's soundbank. If you have 1shot01.wav 1shot02.wav and 1shot03.wav, you can cut the latter two just to ease your workload, but yoy WILL need a 1shot sound - otherwise you won't hear any NPC who fires single shot rounds with that weapon. Random pitch can be used to make a single audio file sound different each time it's triggered. All weapon sounds (shots, reloads, echoes, etc) are processed manually by me - I didn't use any batch tools for that. I used a batch converter to add echo to the voices of people, and distortion to the radio chatter, but no batch converter was used when editing the weapon sounds. Sorry - you just have to do that work yourself, as I did. It needs to be done with a great passion and ear for sound to make it sound good. I use Sony SoundForge 8.0 for sound editing.

I still don't understand. You say that everytime you fix the problem, a new one comes up - but then when you think you've fixed the error, there will be no sound? This implies that you don't always think you've fixed the problem and that's when the game won't run. You post could be rephrased as: "Every time you don't think you've fixed the problem, a new one comes up, but when you do think you've fixed the problem, the game will run but without sound." This sentence is REALLY weird - it makes not sense to me. You have to be much much more specific and clear if you want any help from me. For example, when you state that "the game will run, but there will be no sound" - do you mean that the game is completely silent, that no sounds work - or do you mean that the single sound that you are trying to mod doesn't work?

What do you mean "if I don't get the error..."? You mean you sometimes get the error, and sometimes you don't? I don't quite get it...

Good luck. If you stumble upon some tricky stuff, please hesitate to ask. Nah I'm just kidding. But make sure you've followed the instructions in the tutorial, and really tried to understand that before you ask me - I wrote the guide so I wouldn't have to go on the forum and lead everyone by the hand all the time. Of course there are things that you might try to do which aren't described in the tutorial, but then just ask away. Don't be shy.

I'ma be there!

I don't think they mind, after all, Tom Salta composed the music, not GRIN Tho I think the menu music rules GJ Tom! sooo.. can you help me out on actually doing this? im kinda new at this and could only follow up so far on it, then get confused. The tutorial I've posted (original post of this thread) shows you step by step exactly how to do this. In my example I exchange the sound of the radio - you just have to apply all that is done in the tutorial to the soundbank which contains the menu music. Hint: Use Nemon's decompiler to browse through the .xml files to find the one you should mod. May I suggest looking in the data/sound/music/ folder?

I'd say yes. Anyone here who has done The Upgrade, and has something to say?

By the beard of Zeus, this was one of the nicest posts I've ever read! My kinda thread, indeed. Thank you.

zero_distance is in meters. Remember that the value is the distance from the sound source where the sound becomes so low that it's inaudible - this doesn't mean that you immediately hear the sound as soon as you step within this radius - if zero_distance="100", the sound is still aaalmost inaudible at 90 meters. It of course depends on the character of the sound - a deep humming sound with zero_distance="100" probably become inaudible (e.g. mix with the background noise until it's impossible to distinguish) much earlier than a sharp, grinding noise even if that sound also has zero_distance="100". You'll just have to start your map to try those values out in order to tweak them. The .bank file is both grouping and compression. As you won't be able to create .bank files, your .wav files will have to lie "lose" in the soundbank folder (together with your soundbank and wave bank xml files). Also, you'll have to optimize the .wav files yourself - preferably by lowering the sample rate to a kHz value that is just high enough for the sound quality to be ok. This is to save RAM (if the sound is to be loaded into the RAM) or stream capacity (if the sound is to be streamed). The amount of quality you can reduce a sound to is of course different from sound to sound - sounds that only contain deep bass can have a very low sample rate, like 8kHz, while music (which has a lot of treble which you want to be crisp) should be at least 22 kHz. In other words, treble is the first thing you lose as you start lowering a sound's sample rate. When creating our .bank files we use ADPCM compression - I guess you can do that too to your "lose" .wav files, if you have the ability to save as ADPCM .wav in your sound editing program. However, I don't promise it'll work because there are like ten different ADPCM standards and our system only supports one of them.

Hehe, you, [99]-Athenian and GRIM-GENERAL are pretty much the only ones who have shown interest in this, but that doesn't matter cause here at GRIN we show our love to the minorities too.

The Twelve Step Program to editing an existing soundbank/wavebank In this example, I'm gonna edit the radio that can be heard in some maps, e.g. mission 2 in the SP campaign, or the Shanty Town MP map, and make it play your favourite music. 1. Creating the folder In your graw folder, go into local, and create a folder named "english". You will need to copy all the files we're messing with in this folder into the other "language" folders if you want the mod to work in these languages as well. Then, create all the entire folder-and-sub-folder tree that branches out to the soundbank/wavebank you want to edit (corresponging to the folder tree in the "data" folder). In this example we want to edit the radio_sound.xml and radio_wave.xml, which are located in data/sound/environment/radio, so we create local/english/sound/environment/radio. 2. Install Nemon's decompiler Install Nemons decompiler (http://www.ghostrecon.net/files/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=323). You'll need Microsoft .Net to make it work - that download is also linked from the site. Just put Nemon's decompiler exe-file in your graw/Bundles folder - it's not dependent on lying in a certain folder or anything, so just put it where you think it's best suited. I'd prefer the graw/Bundles folder. 3. Check out the bundle file Start Nemon's decomiler (BundleReader.exe) and click "Open Bundle" in the lower left corner. Go into graw/Bundle folder (if you're not already there) and open the .bundle file containing the soundbank/wavebank you wish to edit. Some soundbanks/wavebanks were not in the retail version and have been added in patches, then that data is available only in the patch.bundle file. Other data was in the retail version of the game and have not been altered by any patch - then that data is only in the quick.bundle file. The data that was in the retail version and has been altered by patching are in both the quick.bundle and patch.bundle file - but needless to say it is the data in the patch.bundle that is used when the game runs. The best way to know whether a soundbank/wavebank has been patched or not is to just open the patch.bundle file, check the data/sound folder and its subfolders, and take notes of everything that is there - if the thing you are about to mod is there, you should mod those files and not the ones in the quick.bundle file. 4. Check out the right *_wave.xml in the bundle file So now we have the quick.bundle opened (the radio_sound.xml and radio_wave.xml have not been edited in any patch, so in our example the data is only available in the quick.bundle file). In the left hand window, click your way down the folder tree into data/sound/environment, and click the "radio" folder to see a list of the files in that folder, shown in the same window as the folder tree. Clicking on any of those files (we are interested in the .xml files, not the .xml.bin files) will show the content of that file in the right hand window. Do so with the radio_wave.xml (click it, that is). 5. Create your own copy of the *_wave.xml to mod So there, in the right hand window, you have the xml file that ties in the sound that are supposed to be played by the radio. You'll see a list of .wav files beginning with "illnino_", those are of course the Ill Nino songs played on the radio in the unmodded game. Mark all this data ("<?xml version..." etc. all the way to "</waveank>") with your mouse cursor and copy the text into your favourite text editor (which of course is UltraEdit). Save the file right away in the local/english/sound/environment/radio/ folder you created at stage 1 of this guide. It should, of course, be named "radio_wave.xml". 6. Collect the sounds you want to use Take your favourite CD (or a bunch of songs in mp3 format that you like, however, remember that illegal downloading is theft), rip/convert it to your computer in .wav format (not .mp3 masked as .wav or anything weird, just plain ol' .wav format). To cut the hard disc streaming some slack, you can convert the files to 22 kHz format. In this example I'm ripping Pearl Jam's "Ten". Put the songs in your local/english/sound/environment/radio folder (where your copy of the original bundled radio_wave.xml already is). Name the files in a simple way (no weird non-english characters, also replace spaces with underscore ("_"). My list of .wav files now looks like this: pearljam_once.wav pearljam_even_flow.wav pearljam_alive.wav pearljam_why_go.wav pearljam_black.wav pearljam_jeremy.wav pearljam_oceans.wav pearljam_porch.wav pearljam_garden.wav pearljam_deep.wav pearljam_release.wav 9. Add your songs to the *_wave.xml file Go back to the text editor with the radio_wave.xml file. If you are adding more songs than are originally in the radio's playlist (five), you'll have to duplicate the existing lines to get all your songs in there. Note that they should all have a unique "name" tag. I suggest you do as I've done and just call the songs "song01", "song02"... etc. I have eleven Pearl Jam songs I want to be played by the radio, so I add six lines to the existing five, and call the additional songs "song06" through "song11". 10. Clean up the *_wave.xml file Get rid of all the "quality", "size_before", "size", "compression", "offset" and "bank" tags in all of the xml file - that data will only mess your mod up. After I've done so, my example radio_wave.xml file looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <wavebank name="radio_wave" dir="data/sound/environment/radio" xmlns:xi="x"> <wave name="song01" file="pearljam_once.wav" stream="true" /> <wave name="song02" file="pearljam_even_flow.wav" stream="true" /> <wave name="song03" file="pearljam_alive.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> <wave name="song04" file="pearljam_why_go.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> <wave name="song05" file="pearljam_black.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> <wave name="song06" file="pearljam_jeremy.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> <wave name="song07" file="pearljam_ocans.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> <wave name="song08" file="pearljam_porch.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> <wave name="song09" file="pearljam_garden.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> <wave name="song10" file="pearljam_deep.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> <wave name="song11" file="pearljam_release.wav" stream="true" stream="true" /> </wavebank> ...a neat and tidy little playlist, ain't it? Note that I leave the stream="true" tag in there, as the song files are large, and we don't want them in the RAM. If you're editing some other file, like frogs_wave.xml (to edit the frog sounds) you should get rid of the stream="true" tag as you want to keep the amounts of streams to a minimum, and frog sounds are small enough to fit in the RAM. 11. Create your own copy of the *_sound.xml to mod Now, go to Nemon's decompiler again, and click on the "radio_sound.xml" file in the left hand window. The contents of that file will now be shown in the right hand window. This is the file that decides how the .wav files listed in the *_wave.xml document are treated when they are called for by the script - this includes gain (audio volume), pitch or pitch randomization attributes, etc. etc. Copy this data into your text editor and save it as "radio_sound.xml" in the same folder as your radio_wave.xml files and .wav files. 12. Edit your newly created copy of the radio_sound.xml file, and add/remove the correct amount of files. In this file, the songs are only referred to as "song01", "song02", etc. - which of course are the names they were given in the radio_wave.xml file. You understand now why it is easier to let go of the actual song titles in that step. This next part is hard (and lengthy) to describe, but I hope you have some basic programming experience (html at the least, to get some "eye for code") and I'll give it a shot: Look at the bottom of the radio_sound.xml file. There is a tag named <sound name="radio"... Whenever the script calls for the "radio" cue (that is, if you place a sound source in a map, tells it to play the "radio" cue and then start that map), this sound is called for, and the cue then randomizes between either of the cues "radio_a" or "radio_b". The weight tag is to makes sure that in four times out of five, the randomizer chooses the "radio_a" cue - you can use weight tags to make sure there is a larger chance for one or more options to be chosen over the others. The "radio_a" and "radio_b" cues (above the "radio" cue in the xml file) then contain song01 through song04, and song05 respectively. This means that every time a sound source calls for the "radio" cue (every time you start a map with a sound source calling for the "radio" cue (this is only done once as the "radio" cue then loops and is never retriggered)) that sound source becomes either a "radio_a" or "radio_b" cue, and then loops that "playlist" for all eternity. I, however, want a simple radio that doesn't randomize between different playlists, so I slim the code down and reduce the number of cues so that every time the radio is called for, it always plays the Pearl Jam songs in the album order, and then starts over. After editing, my radio_sound.xml file looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <soundbank name="radio_sound" default_wavebank="radio_wave" xmlns:xi="x"> <sound name="song01" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song01"/> </sound> <sound name="song02" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song02"/> </sound> <sound name="song03" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song03"/> </sound> <sound name="song04" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song04"/> </sound> <sound name="song05" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song05"/> </sound> <sound name="song06" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song05"/> </sound> <sound name="song07" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song05"/> </sound> <sound name="song08" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song05"/> </sound> <sound name="song09" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song05"/> </sound> <sound name="song10" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song05"/> </sound> <sound name="song11" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" gain="-12" occlusion="false"> <wave name="song05"/> </sound> <sound name="radio" group="ambient_loop" has_custom_distances="true" zero_distance="60" loop="true" occlusion="false"> <queue> <sound name="song01"/> <sound name="song02"/> <sound name="song03"/> <sound name="song04"/> <sound name="song05"/> <sound name="song06"/> <sound name="song07"/> <sound name="song08"/> <sound name="song09"/> <sound name="song10"/> <sound name="song11"/> </queue> </sound> </soundbank> If you study the original radio_sound.xml file, or better yet the birds_sound.xml file, you will get a good idea of the possibilities with the *_sound.xml system. The birds_sound.xml is a great example of how sounds can be made more "alive" and not as repetitive, by chopping up the .wav files into short, short pieces and have the xml code piece it together in a random manner each time it is triggered, to make each bird call sound different from the other (or, rather, be a new combination of the same set of chopped up sounds). This is all possible with the help of "random pitch" attributes, sounds that randomize to All set and donw - now run the game and start a one player LAN server hosting the Shanty Town map, where there should be a radio in the Echo zone. Head there and listen to your playlist being heard from the radio. The muffle and echo effect added to the original sounds, to make it sound like the radio really is heard from inside a building, you have to add yourself with the help of a sound editing program, such as Sony Sound Forge. Here is a list of some of the different attributes you can give a sound tag. To learn about more attibutes, browse the sound folders with Nemon's decompiler and just chek out what attributes are used in some of the *_sound.xml files. If you have questions, ask me here in the forum. Pitch Use: pitch="0" Sets the pitch of the sample, 1 unit = The step between a white key and the next black key on a piano. "12" is one octave up, "-12" is one octave down. Pitch can be set from -60 to 60. Pitch the original .wav file rather than using this attribute. Random Pitch Use: random_pitch="1" Applies a random pitch value on top of the general pitch value. This means that if the general pitch value is set to "-10", and the random pitch is set to "2", the pitch will randomize between -12 and -8. I usually set general pitch to "0", and random pitch to no higher than 1, maybe 2. Gain Use: gain="0" Gain 0 is the loudest a sound should be played - if you push it above that (e.g. gain="10" you risk creating distortion - it's better to maximize the gain in the sound's .wav file. Group Use: group="music" Defines what group the sound belongs to, and inherits certain attributes from. Groups are edited in the data/sound/sound_settings.xml file. Zero Distance Use: zero_distance="30" Defines the distance (in meters) at which the rolloff of the sample reaches inaudible value. In other word, it defines how far from the sound source the sound can be heard. Exlplosions should have a very high Zero Distance value, the buzz of a lamp should have a very low Zero Distance value. Loop Use: loop="true" Self describing. Default is no loop, so if you omitt the tag, the sound will not loop. I extend this list as you come with questions about other attributes. Alright, let's immediately go on to the next tutorial! The Seven Step Prograom to create an entirely new soundbank/wavebank setup Now, if you want to have custom music for your own map, you can add that with the procedure described above, together with some additional attribute tweaking. In that case, you preferably don't want to mod the original radio sound/wavebanks, but rather add an entirely new soundbank and wavebank to the game - or you will have two layers of music playing simultaneously (both the original GRAW music, and your own custom music) in every SP map that has a radio. So, it's better to create your own, new soundbank and wavebank, and connect that to sound sources that are only in your own custom map. In this example we will create a soundbank/wavebank setup that plays a song from "The Rock - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" on your level. Here's how: 1. Use Nemon's decompiler to open any wavebank, copy that data to your favourite text editor (which of course is UltraEdit) and save that as custom_music01_wave.xml in the local/english/sound/music/custom_music01 folder that you simultaneously create (always use numbers in the name of file types that you suspect you will create more of, hence the "01" in the file name - you might want to have another custom song for another custom map in the future). 2. Rip your copy of "The Rock - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" (remember, illegal downloading is theft) and save the first track as therock_track01.wav in your newly created local/english/sound/music/custom_music01 folder. If you can, convert it to 22 kHz so that the file isn't such a chore for the computer to stream (we don't want a several minutes long song in the RAM). 3. Edit the custom_music01_wave.xml file so that it contains only the tag that "brings" your .wav file "into it". The "name" attribute should be whatever you want to call your wave bank (preferably a describing name and/or on that is easy to remember), I choose "custom_music01_wave". Also, the "dir" attribute should be the non-existing data folder that corresponds to your existing local/english/sound/music/custom_music01 folder - see below how it should look. Note that you don't need to create a dummy folder in the data/sound/.. folder of your GRAW installation - the game will realize anyway that the sound data isn't there, and look for it in the local/english/sound/.. folder instead. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <wavebank name="custom_music01_wave" dir="data/sound/music/custom_music01" xmlns:xi="x"> <wave name="custom_song01" file="therock_track01.wav" stream="true" /> </wavebank> 4. Use Nemon's decompiler to browse through the sound folders and find a suitable soundbank - in my example I am only going to create a simple sound bank with only one cue playing only one music .wav file, so data/sound/music/menu_music/music_menu_sound.xml is a perfect .xml file to start from. Copy that data to your favourite text editor (which of course is UltraEdit) and save that as custom_music01_sound.xml in the local/english/sound/music/custom_music01/ folder where your custom_music01_wave.xml and therock_track01.wav file already lie. 5. Edit the newly created custom_music01_sound.xml file so that the default_wavebank attribute names your custom wave file (in my example "custom_music01_wave"). <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <soundbank name="custom_music01_sound" default_wavebank="custom_music01_wave" xmlns:xi="x"> <sound name="custom_music01" group="music" zero_distance="10.0" pitch="0" loop="true" positioning="2d" attenuation="none" occlusion="false" reference_distance="1.0"> <wave name="custom_music01"/> </sound> </soundbank> Look at the attributes of the sound tag above. It would have been nice if you could set the group attribute to "music", which would make it earn all attributes of that music group - mainly the connection to the "music volume" slider in the game's setup menu, and high priority (which is very high for music). However, I just now realized that it is not only an MP map's lack of event manager script that stops it from playing music - for some reason one of our programmers have set any cue with the group="music" attribute to mute on MP maps. I suggest you give your custom music cues the attribute group="ambient_loop", in which case it will at least get a very high priority - however, no one will be able to turn the music off, which kinda sucks! I'll see if this can be patched. Furthermore, the zero_distance="10.0" attribute means nothing as attenuation is set to "none" - this means that the sound does not get weaker the farther the listener is from the sound source. Pitch is of course set to "0" as you want the music to be played in its original pitch. The attribute "loop" is set to "true" because I want the .wav file to start over every time it reaches the end. If you're skilled you can edit the .wav file and make the end of the file blend perfeclty with the beginning of the file, making the music loop seamlessly, without ever going silent. The "positioning" attribute is what makes this sound cue different from the sound cues of the radio cue we created in the first example: Now we're making a 2d cue, so that the music always is in the listeners ear, as opposed to being heard from a position in the world around him/her. Occlusion should be false so that EAX doesn't muffle the sound as soon as an occluder (static object or large dynamic object) comes between the listener and the sound source. You want that to happen if you're creating a yak sound cue to add atmosphere to your Himalayan MP map, but not for music - which is what I'm making in this example. As no one will be able to turn the music off, make sure it isn't too loud and too much "in your face" (or maybe here it would be "in your ear"). Use the "gain" attribute (use: gain="-10") to do so. "0" is maximum volume, and -100 is the lowest (although the sound's volume has become so low it's inaudible much earlier than that, I'd guess at about -40). 6. Go into the editor, load the map where you want your custom sound, place a sound source where you want it. Iin my example we're adding a cue that plays music that is supposed to be heard all over the level, and takes no occluders or falloff into account, so it doesn't matter at all where we place that sound source. In the "cue" text box, write the name of your custom cue. For me, that's "custom_music01" (the "name" attribute of the sound in my cursom_music01_sound.xml file, see stage 5 of this tutorial). 7. Ok, we're almost there but not quite yet: As we are adding a new soundbank and wavebank as opposed to just modding existing ones, we need to let the game know what we have added. This is done in the sound_settings.xml file in the data/sound/ folder. In the "wavebanks" tag, duplicate any element and edit it to match the custom *_wave.xml file you want to add, and do the same for your *_sound.xml in the "soundbanks" tag. For me, I would have to add this line of code in the "wavebanks" tag: <wavebank path="data\sound\music\custom_music01\custom_music01_wave.xml"/> ...as well as add this line of code in the "soundbanks" tag: <soundbank path="data\sound\music\custom_music01\custom_music01_sound.xml"/> Now, run GRAW and start your custom level - and listen to the music. Hope this helps. PS. Please don't quote this post in your reply - this thread would become unbearable to scroll through!! This tutorial was written in UltraEdit-32.

I don't deny that music can heighten the stress and add flavour to an MP game - it does so to an SP game so why wouldn't it do it to an MP game? Whoever denies that is flat out lying. I merely stated that music (albeit atmospheric and tension-heightening) is an unnecessary element and most players will probably turn it off in favour of hearing other sounds better (like the sound of you enemy's feet). It's a tactical decision that makes sense. I talked to one of the mission scripters and none of the two scripts that are needed to state what music is to be played and start it are present in the set of files that makes an MP map - and he wasn't sure it was possible to add that code to another script or add those two scripts containing only the music code to an MP map. It just looks like an excessively tricky thing to do. I am, however, writing a little guide on how to add new sound elements to you map, and using that you can add music to it in an "ugly" way (not the way it's meant to be added, but it works fine). "Edit Milieu" is a feature for altering echo-characteristics between different parts of a map. The process of adding these nodes never got user-friendly enough for the feature to be used in the final game.

Wish I could be there - I'm gonna go see Pablo Francisco on Saturday night, though. Sorry, you don't get to pwn me.

In the single player campaign, the music is started from the event manager script - a type of script that is not present in a multiplayer level, so I really don't know how you would add music to your multiplayer level. Fact is, I don't know why you would want to add music to an MP level - while SP is a storytelling experience with cinematic elements (where music has a natural place), MP is a lot more competitive as players play against other players, and they don't want music because it only masks the sound of the in-game surroundings (which becomes a great handicap). If you want to add a radio that plays in a certain part of a map, this is really easy: Basics: You fly around in the editor with the W A S D buttons on your keyboard, and press space bar to lock position and use your mouse to edit stuff. While flying, the mouse wheel can be used to alter the speed. In the editor, select the "sound" layer from the layed drop-down menu. "Fly" with the camera close to where you want the sound source - as the sound of the radio is muffled as it is supposed to come from inside a building, you should place the radio sound source inside a building. Click the right mouse button to spawn the sound source (it is represented in the editor by two cones pointing their tips at each other - in profile they resemble a bow tie). The sound source that is currently selected is always green, and all others are red. Click on the little floating window that says "name:" and under it, "cue:". Mark the empty box right of the word "cue", and write the "radio". That sound source will at the start of the level make a decision at random to play and loop either a set of four Ill Niño or that "All Along the Watchtower" cover. If you want to make sure it plays only Ill Niño write "radio_a" in the sound box, and if you want to make sure it only plays the "All Along the Watchtower" cover write "radio_b" in the sound box. Tip: Radios are perfect to place in buildings that are close to good sniper positions or are themselves good sniper positions - to make it harder for any sniper hidden there to hear people sneak up on them: A sniper position becomes more interesting if it isn't perfect - you don't want to create spots where people can camp an entire match. Sorry can't help you with the "gameplay type" music, but I hope I managed to talk you into not using that on MP levels...

I don't know why you are discussing this - even if the Ghosts did use sub-sonic .223 rounds, that's not the bullets you are hearing whizz by your ear, it's the Mexicans' bullets - and the Mexicans surely don't use sub-sonic .223 rounds. You're making up excuses for me and that really isn't necessary. No need to take my sound design decisions in defense. The truth is that bullet whizby noises with the "crack" in them are available; they're not impossible to record and there are sample libraries that have those - I had access to such sounds. There are two reasons why I chose to take the "crack" out of the sounds: 1. The difference in character in the arrary of bullet whizbies with "crack" noise I had was not that different. In fact, I don't think different caliber round sound that much different at all - at least not as different as I wanted them to sound. Therefore, I started to create my own set of bullet sounds, with individual for each caliber. My idea was that you should be able to hear by the whizby noise how dangerous the bullet that almost hit you actually was - it's a good example of realism having to make way for gameplay indication. The sound should be realistic, sure, but also useful in a tactical aspect. The series of realistic whizby noises I had just didn't provide the wide array of character I wanted to add to the whizby noises in GRAW. 2. The "crack" noise makes the bullet whizby confusing. If a bullet comes from in front of you and passes your left ear and "cracks", you might mistake the "crack" noise for a gunshot and think you're getting shot at from the left side. For those who aren't familiar with how bullets should sound, this would only be confusing and frustrating. The % of people who are military geeks (such as yourselves ) and think the lack of "crack" is a drawback (wow, that sounded like a piece hiphop lyrics) is in fact very small. Sorry.

Bullets already do that. You mean you can't hear it on your computer?

Grenades make one type of sound when they land after being thrown, and another sound when they're rolled across the ground (equip grenades, tilt camera down - the ret changes to indicate that you roll the grenade instead of throw it - and press fire). In addition, these two types of grenade-to-surface sounds come in many different version depending on what material the grenade connects with: broken glass, plank, metal, catwalk, water, dirt/sand, grass, gravel, stone, iron and asphalt. The fallof of a grenade's impact sound makes it reach zero (complete silence) at 60 meters, so you should hear clearly whenever one lands close to you. Screw-on silencers do indeed little to surpress the sound (they sound way cooler though!)- as in real life they're mainly to cut down on the muzzle flash as to not give away your position visually. For the sake of tactical elements in the gameplay, I have made the silencer make a difference for a weapon's falloff: In GRAW, the falloff distance of regular non-silenced rifles are 200 meters (meaning the sound drops in strenght so that if stannding 200m or more from the sound source you can't hear it anymore). However with screw-on silencers the falloff is immediately cut in half (100m), so Haz4rd can't possibly "have no difficulties to hear supressed wpn from 100m" as he puts it. If so, he is way closer than 100m, or it is in fact not a silenced weapon he is hearing. The MP5-sd however, is built to be silent (the silencer is not a screw-on) so that weapon is by far the most silent weapon in the game. When firing, it's quite simply the mechanism that is audible (no "bang"). This would in combination with low falloff value be a way too silent weapon (to superior to other weapons) so I had to in fact increase the falloff value a tad bit in relation to other rifles with screw-on silencers (MP5-sd falloff value is 110m). GL falloff is as with the regular rifle firing sound 200m and should be clearly audible up till at least 100 meters. If you think you have found a bug that it is in fact possible to recreate, then PM me.

I totally agree, it would be nice if the ability to check scores during the match was a server option.

If you can hear 3d sounds all across the map then you have a hardware problem. I sure haven't made it so that footsteps are audible that far. Do you by any chance have an on-board soundcard?

Done. There are nearly 300 (297 to be exact) footstep sounds in the game - all characteristic for a variety of different surfaces (including dirt/sand and wood), and at different power (harder sounds when you run, softer sounds when you walk) and even unique sound for when you drag your foot or body against the surface (crawl etc). All you wished for is already in the game.

Haha, that was fun. Considering the name of the site they pretty much have to hate everything about the product. The description of how the machinegun sounds sure was... innovative, haha.

One has to draw the line somewhere, we drew it at "M". Why, you may ask yourself, didn't we draw the line at "Z"? Well, if you're not satisfied with a maximum of 13 zones (A-M) then why would you be satisfied with 26 (A-Z)? Because that's the entire English alphabet? For someone who wants to create a map with more than 26 zones that's no valid excuse - he would ask for more zones (A-Z + 1-9). Then someone else would want A-Z + 1-99, and at that point you might as well skip the alphabet stuff and just go with numbers (1-infinity). As I said, one has to draw the line somewhere, we drew it at "M".