GRiN_desmond22

...even if you're just hit in the arm? About the hit sound, we're (once again) working on it. We though we had it fixed (it sounds great on my computer, and for the programmer who worked with me to solve it) but it seems it somehow didn't make it into the patch. We're at it, though.

Yes we are aware that our work on the hit sound somehow slipped the patch. Me and the programmer I worked with got the hit sounds to be really loud, and we submitted our code changes to be incorporated in the patch - but when the patch was released people started to post about the hit sounds and how they were still missing. We're looking into this issue, and hopefully we'll have it fixed until the next patch. This thread was, however, not about the hit sounds, but the overall mix of the game (the OP wanted to raise the volume of the weapon, and lower the volume of the narcom messages).

I'm not sure what you're telling people to do here - "set the sound cues to..." something. What does that mean? Anyway, you guys shouldn't have to hack the xml's to address this problem - we're working on it. I doubt messing with the sound xml's (as mirr suggests) is even the solution - the problem lies elsewhere, in the code that triggers the sound. It's turned out that people here at the office also have the isse, which helps us isolate the origin of it. Hopefully you'll all hear what I'm hearing now, once you've installed the upcoming patch.

The audio of the narcom messages are "baked" into the video files, and it is therefore treated differently from all other audio in the game. You can't raise or lower the volume of the narcom messages with standard methods - you'd have to raise or lower the volume of everything else in order to make the sound of the narcom come across as louder or more quiet. Quite a hassle, I know. Regarding the sounds of the weapons - are you talking about yoru own weapon, or the weapons carried by NPCs (other characters)? If you think the sound of your own weapon is too low, I would actually guess you have some kind of messed up sound settings, hardware wise. Make sure you don't have headphones connected but 5.1 signals coming out of your system, or the other way around. I have a hard time believing someone would like the 1st person weapon sounds to be any louder than they are (with correct sound setup, they are pretty darn loud), and I don't even think it's possible to raise the volume of them because they're already maxed out, both the amplitude values of the original .wav-file, and in the gain treatment in the software sound system. However, if you want other people's weapons to be louder, I think you can hack that if you find the right parameters. I think you'll have to do it individually for each weapon though, which is kind of messy - at least if you have the ambition of balancing them. It'll become a big job tweaking the values, start the game and see if the new values are good, exit the game, tweak the values, and do it all over again until you're satisfied. I've done this eight hours a day for a year (ok, it wasn't my only task in GRAW, but you get the drift), and it's a tricky thing getting it right. But, as I said in the beginning; if you really think the audio mix is messed up, it might be your hardware settings. It might be worth it checking that out first, before diving into the sea of XML values.

Thanks for the compliments. Note: By acknowledging the OP's positive notes, I do not in any way state that the game is flawless. In other words: No need to turn this thread into another "well what about this and that? There are still so much to fix, blah blah blah" thread. We're aware of the flaws - it's good to hear some well written and thought-through praises once in a while. Warms a developer's heart, and keeps him going...

It says "sunny south carolina (near Ft. Jackson)" in his board profile.

Make a dom map with only spawn zones - there's your TDM. Otherwise, wait 'til mid July.

The texture set optimization also increases the rendering speed.

To answer your question, Lightspeed: No, it wouldn't be easier and it wouldn't make more sense.

I'm sitting here working overtime at the office and I can't post about trivial nonsense if I want to? I'm not even the guy who should deal with your not-so-nicely-put request. Enough with the attitude. Thanks.

I sure as hell ain't serious. I sincerely hope no one else is either.

When people here on the boards started to compain about the "flesh" hit sounds not being loud enough (even after the latest patch, that is) we started to check if we had missed something here at the office. We set up a LAN server here at the office and started shooting at each other. We discovered, actually, that one of our programmers had very weak hit sounds - and we thought we had the ability to isolate the issue. The sound on his computer was strange, and we started to try out all sorts of combinations of settings regarding software/hardware sound, EAX etc... It turned out, however, that the issue was due to something completely different: After a minute of playing, I discovered that the guys didn't have any direction in his audio whatsoever! He only had a mono signal going to his headphones, so even 3d sounds were only played in mono. As he spinned around, sounds coming from the environment went up and down in volume (depending on whether the sound source was in front of him or not) but the sounds never travelled from left to right. He had never noticed this, which is strange. It took me a minute to hear it too, as it isn't an error you usually listen for. I just heard something was off, but couldn't understand right away what it was. Anyway, it was the sound signal. I immediately thought it was a poorly fitting headphone plug in a worn out connection in his computer - and I turned out to be right. It was the headphone connection on the front panel of his computer that had been nudged or whatever, so the signal going out of there was like when you pull your headphone plug halfway out and only get a weird phasing mono signal to your ears. This, of course, effected all sounds coming from his computer, and the game didn't sound very impressive at all. All sounds were weak, but especially 2d sounds, like your own gun, and the hit effect. We tried out the connection on the back of his computer (which is the equivalent to the one on the front panel, just less accessible) and what a differance. To the guy who owned the computer, it was a world of differance, and he exclaimed "what? Is THIS how it's supposed to sound?" He had had this weird sound for quite some time, and though that was how it was supposed to sound. It was kind of a funny moment... Good for him, but sadly for you guys, we are back to knowing nothing of how to isolate the problem you say you have. Enough of you people have complained about it for me to doubt that it's a problem as simple as you having the wrong audio output settings - it would be quite an odd coincidence if all of you had this messed up - but regardless, I want you to check it out to make sure that the problem really isn't on your side (software/hardware settings, or connection glitches).

We have been working on this for quite some time, without finding an adecquate solution. It is in fact this bug that delayed the game from December to May.

Regarding the sound, we have deafening volume on the hit sounds here at the office, playing the retail version with the latest patch installed. I find it impossible to believe that anybody would want the hit effect to be any louder than this. I want everybody to check their speaker settings and make sure that they don't have a 5.1 speaker system connected but headphone signals coming out of the computer, or the other way around. "Smartplug" or whatever it's called is a program some have installed, that changes your output settings depending on what connections you've made on your sound card (or onboard sound connections), so "I haven't changed any of my sound settings, so I should be ok" is not an valid excuse. Everyone should check this.

"BR Leksaker".... fniss, fniss...

This is a AAA title - you seriously think we'd settle for the sound designer for voice acting? This is hardly even a matter that's up for discussion.

We got the same sound resources as the 360 version, and they don't have enough voice samples to make that feature complete. We considered it, but it wouldn't be good enough. My philosophy - as with most of the GRIN team - is do it right, or avoid it. Also, I figure all who really want to communicate with quick responses use an external VOIP program.

That audio is not available in the sound folder - it's all in the b!nk file "GKE_DEA_PLA_NLI.BIK" under data/movies.

I doubt it will be fixed, because as it is, it has very little negative impact on the gameplay (or even immersion, for that matter), and the fix would make the game demand even more memory - and we're already straining that limit.

I agree that you can argue over the amount of bullets that would be needed to actually shoot the door off a car, but the question was whether or not you should be able to take the doors off a car with anything (including grenades), so that the right amount of doors would be a part of the car wreck when you completely demolish the car with a close proximity grenade. I can't even believe we're actually having this discussion.

But then if you blew up a completely intact car (one with all doors still attached to it) nothing would actually be sent flying from it. That wouldn't be very cool. Personally I think it's a fair tradeoff to make the explosions look more impressive. You guys aren't really serious when you speak of this as something annoying, a problem that needs to be "solved", are you? Seriously?

It was a rethorical question, and the obvious answer was "no".

It's because when you blow it to pieces completely, the "intact" car model is exchanged for an "trashed" car model - it's not the same car model after the explosion. If we were to take into consideration what car door(s) had been shot off, and spawn a "trashed" car model that matched that, it would mean that we would have to have one "trashed" model for each combination in regards to car door(s) being shot off or still on the vehicle: Only front left door off, only front right door off, only rear left door off, only rear right door off, both right doors off, both left doors off, both rear doors off, both front doors off, front left and rear right door off, front right and rear left door off, all but front left door off, all but front right door off, all but... well, you get the picture. It's something you have to sacrifice to avoid excess memory usage. I dare say we still have a pretty good eye for detail. Would you rather have it so that you couldn't shoot things apart at all? That would solve this "problem".

Show me the computer that can keep all decals in memory, and render them, in a game such as GRAW. You computer would go down on its knees in seconds if the decals didn't fade with time.