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The EAX@Play section also features many EAX supporting games.
Brad Phillips posted this in the newsgroups: This may have been asked before but I don't have time right now to look. Is it Also, to remove both the EAX support and the DM level files you have to Had to reinstall the 4.36 update from Epic to get my Galaxy.dll back. Thanks for Harvey Fong replied: That is correct the galaxy.dll file is uninstalled when the EAX effects are The installation of the 'no delta' patch to an EAX enabled version of UT will also
Creative will release enhancements to Raven's Soldier of Fortune in 3 separate downloads. They have added dynamically changing reverbs, obstruction & occlusion filtering, and adjusted sound source parameters to many of the multiplayer and single player levels. Check out the EAX website for more details!
Jake Simpson from Raven updated his .plan with important information on EAX and A3D problems: We found the cause of the EAX and A3D problems after the 1.04 patch. (And before the patch in the case of A3D). For EAX, the patch deleted EAXsnd.dll, ready for the new one that was supposed to be installed. Of course, since this was yanked at the last minute, there isn't one. So it got deleted and not recreated. No wonder EAX doesn't work. :) You can either go to one of the SOF websites out there and grab it - I just sent Email to everyone (or got Kenn to :)) with this file, - or you can re-install the original version of SOF, copy out the file, install the patch, and then put it back. We apologise for the mistake on our end for this. This is our fault, and we take the responsibility for it. A3D. We shipped with an old version of A3DAPI.dll. This is why some are having problems with Montego II cards and the mx300 in some cases. Again, go to any of your favorite SOF websites, and the revised version of a3dapi.dll should be there for download. Just replace the original version in windows/system and Raven/sof and you are good to go. This will be updated in all future patches. Not quite sure how this one happened - we should have shipped with the latest version. Still, at least we caught it. Happy noise making.:) While we are talking about sound stuff I should mention that we've seen some activity on the SOF forums concerning EAX support. I feel I ought to take this opportunity to explain what happened with the last patch (1.04). Creative Labs sent us an EAX update because they were about to release a version of the Eagle product on the market for developers (for the un-initiated Eagle is the sound mapping tool that we use to create map sound environments). However, it's .eal map files that it produced weren't compatible with the version of Eagle we had used during development. Creative offered to update our code so we could read in new .eal files and re-generate all our .eal files we used in the game. So we took them up on the offer. However, after trying the rtPatch program we use to update our pak files, we found it barfed on these files when operating under win98. Now this wasn't the only update Creative had applied to our codebase. They also touched some file searching alogrithms, and the autodetection code, if memory serves. When we found that rtPatch vomited on the .eal files, Rick removed the entire update, although I think the new detection code was still there. Hence some of the EAX problems people are seeing. I'm pretty sure that's what's going on here. The next patch should fix that, as soon as rtPatch gets back to us with the fixes. Rick is out this week, so it's hard to know exactly what is going on.
Here are my modified Quake3 sound settings which work with the A2D file (the A3D 2 emulator for DirectSound cards). It substantially reduces the tinnyness and sound dropout with these drivers. Put it in your baseq3 folder, and having enabled 3d sound in the settings menu, go to console and type exec sound.cfg. This is a result of me spending an hour fiddling with the settings. I suspect the main thing which affects it are the mixahead type variables towards the end. I would like to kepp improving it. Users with any suggested variations on it which they think are better please email me on systemshock2@my-deja.com
Greg Steele informed me that the latest Quake 3 point release still doesn't save the setting of A3D. Guess we'll have to keep clicking on that when loading up the game.
Travis over at Aureal A3D Central sent in some detailed info on how the A3D "patch" works. It is actually A2D, which translates A3D 2.0 sound into DirectSound 3D that the SBLive! supports. Here's more: Just thought I would try and make the news about 3D sound working on other sound cards in Quake 3: Arena more cleaer... The so called patch is actually the Aureal A2D driers which have been available for awhile now but few people took notice of them since they were only mentioned on Aureal's WWW site recently. The A2D drivers allow basic 3D sound through DirectSound3D on sound cards which support DirectSound3D and basic software Aureal A3D on sound cards which have no 3D sound support. But only if a game uses Aureal A3D 2.x with it resource manager, so far the only titles I know of which do this are Flatland Rover, Quake 3: Arena and Star Wars: Episode 1 Pod Racer. If you want to find out more about this I suggest you read the Aureal A3D 2.x technical brief or read the documentation included with the Aureal A3D 2.x SDK.
I just tried Quake 3 Demo Test and if you enabled A3D in the sound setup screen, you can hear 3D positioning! Cool! Now if only ID Software implemented EAX.
Those of you experiencing crashes with Revenant on a Live!Ware 3 installed system can use the auto update feature when starting the game to download a fix.
DVD-ROM drives have actually become pretty affordable nowadays and the industry was predicting a rapid move from CD-ROM to DVD-ROM media. But nothing is moving! 3DsoundSurge's editorial tries to figure out why.
From a post in the Red Storm Forum by Greg Stelmack: Once again there seems to be quite a bit of confusion as to what sort of sound API(s) Rogue Spear supports. Some of this confusion stems from some technical issues, and some from us not mentioning clearly on the box or in the manual what we use. So it's time for me to spell it out again, plus discuss some of the technical issues people might run into with our sound support.Once again there seems to be quite a bit of confusion as to what sort of sound API(s) Rogue Spear supports. Some of this confusion stems from some technical issues, and some from us not mentioning clearly on the box or in the manual what we use. So it's time for me to spell it out again, plus discuss some of the technical issues people might run into with our sound support. Rogue Spear uses DirectSound3D plus Creative Lab's EAX 2.0 extensions. DirectSound3D gives us 3D positional audio, assuming you have a decent 3D sound card. The software 3D algorithm is not very good, so older sound cards may not give the player a very good 3D effect. But a good, modern 3D sound card should give the player quite nice positional audio effects. EAX 2.0 adds reverb plus occlusions and reflections if your soundcard supports it (as of this writing, this is only the SoundBlaster Live! series of cards, although others may support it in the future). In simpler terms, this means you get echoing gunshots indoors, plus muffled gunshots and explosions if they are heard through a wall. Some players have reported not hearing the EAX effects, not hearing any sound effects, or having poor positional results, even with a modern card. Below are some things to be aware of: Windows98 Second Edition shipped with an updated version of DirectX labelled 6.1a. This version of DirectX broke VoiceManager, which is used to decide which sound effects should be played in hardware, and which in software. The end result was that most effects played in software or not at all, leading to any of the above symptoms. The current solution to this is to upgrade to DirectX7. Some SoundBlaster Live! users stopped hearing EAX effects after upgrading to DirectX7. The common solution is to reinstall the LiveWare drivers; DX7 may be overwriting them. You may want to make sure the game is using your best soundcard. Sometimes modems will report themselves as being a soundcard, and sometimes players will have audio support on the motherboard in addition to an add-on soundcard. It is possible that the game may pick one of those. Run the "Configure Rogue Spear" program and make sure the game is using your best soundcard. Finally, make sure you've told your soundcard what sort of speakers you have hooked up. If you have headphones but it's set to 4-speaker support, you're not going to get very good positional audio results. How you set this depends on the soundcard. On a related note, some players have expressed confusion over what the "Use Maximal Sounds" option does in the Sound Options screen. If checked, this tells the game that it can have more simultaneous sound effects playing. Since just about every sound effect in the game is 3D, you only want to check this only if you have a soundcard that accelerates 3D audio. If your soundcard provides no 3D audio acceleration, checking this option will bring your machine to its knees. I hope that clears up some of the recent confusion.
This information is from a post in the Red Storm Forum by Greg Stelmack (Rogue Spear's core engineer) in response to a request in adding A3D 2.0 support .... No, we will not be adding A3D 2 support. Because we have sounds going off all over the level, we'd need to either send down our entire level geometry to A3D, absolutely killing framerate, or we'd need to come up with a reduced-poly version of the map for audio purposes, which would take a TON of engineering time. Most games only have sounds in your immediate vicinity playing, so they can get away with sending only a portion of their level geometry down to the A3D engine. We can't. EAX 2, on the other hand, worked very well for us given the way we build levels (we already break things up into rooms, plus calculate sound propagation for AIs, so we have all the info needed to figure out what EAX presets to use). Note that unless you have an SBLive, you only have EAX1 support, which means you get reverb but no occlusion/obstruction support. Rogue Spear on an SBLive will muffle sounds coming through walls, etc. This makes a world of difference. So make sure when you compare, you are comparing EAX2 vs. A3D2 (run Rogue Spear on an SBLive and compare to Half-Life on your MX300, for example). I don't know what you would make of this, but to me, this is a testament to the ease of adding EAX 2.0 to games. The last thing developers want is to increase their development time and costs.
Ear On Games has posted reviews on the audio implementation in Thief: The Dark Project and Unreal Tournament Demo.
I've just downloaded and played the highly anticipated Rogue Spear Demo which is the 1st game that supports occlusion and obstruction features in EAX 2.0 . So what's my impression of it ? All I can say is that this demo convinces me that Rogue Spear is a must-get once it hits the stores ! In terms of EAX implementation, this game is simply one of the finest one out there. For example, at the start of the Pandora Mission, if you belong to the blue team, you would be venturing through the bathroom and hall as your waypoints. Firing your weapon in the bathroom and hall definitely delivers a great sense of realism due to the reverb applied via EAX . To really test for obstruction properties, all you need to do is to lob a grenade/flashbang into an adjacent room and hide behind the wall separating the rooms and you would hear the muffleness of the explosion. Step in full view of the explosion and it should sound bright and clear. I didn't really get a chance to experience occlusion because sound needs to be activated through a adjacent enclosed room and the scenarios that happened didn't fulfilled that condition. I pretty much guess that this feature will be more prominent in multi-player battles when there's plenty of action to be heard via the door in an adjacent room. Anyway, don't take my word for it. Check out Rogue Spear's Official Forum for more positive comments on EAX implementation in the game !
3DsoundSurge has put up an interview with Scott Snyder, the sound designer for Slave Zero. Here's a short take: 3DSS: Will your A3D 2.0 implementation include wavetracing
support? 3DSS: What about EAX 2.0/3.0? Have you started to work
with that SDK yet?
Thief was a really good game which made full use of EAX to create the tension and atmosphere in the game. Now Looking Glass, the developers of Thief, are back with the sequel to System Shock - the original which was very innovative in the time when simple Doom (and its clones) were around. Check out this review at The Hive! Here's a snippet: Thief was a game that relied a lot on sound, and sound helped make the game creepy, and the environments portrayed very eerie. System Shock 2 is no different in this respect. I can't remember the number of times I was almost knocked out of my seat, or shocked by an explosion, or general sound in the game. Running with EAX support on a SoundBlaster Live! via four speakers, I was constantly looking all around me while playing, as I was truly paranoid of being sneaked up on by a creep with a pipe, or who knows what. Ghostly apparitions appear out of the blue, mutants appear almost out of nowhere, and something is always happening audibly. The audio in the game will immerse you into it even more than the graphics. That's no lie.
From VoodooExtreme: One of the guys over at Tactical Planet received word from Jeff Wand of Red Storm Entertainment that Rogue Spear should be going gold any day now. He also mentioned, that once Rogue Spear goes gold, a demo will be released. Rogue Spear should be the 1st game that supports occlusion and obstruction via EAX 2.0 when it debuts..so watch out for it!
3DsoundSurge has posted an interview with Surreal, the developers of Drakan. Here's something they got to say about the aural aspects of Drakan: "Positional audio creates a sense of "being there" that normal stereo sound doesn't. Added with environmental audio effects, we can create a world around the player."
Saw over at drakan.net that you may experience some problems if you do not have the latest Live!Ware installed. You can check out the download section for more links to Live!Ware downloads. If you have no idea what we're talking about, you can check out the official Drakan site. Creative's Environmental Audio Technology Now De Facto Industry Standard for Immersive 3D Gaming Over 50 Leading Game Titles Now Shipping From Top Game Developers MILPITAS, Calif., Aug. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Creative Labs, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREAF - news) the world's leading provider of multimedia products for the PC, today announced that over 50 leading game titles are now shipping with support for Creative's Environmental Audio technology. The availability of these games underscores the broad support for Environmental Audio technology through Creative's Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) application programmer's interface (API). Microsoft's recent licensing of EAX technology and plans to incorporate effects into a future version of DirectX, further establishes Environmental Audio technology as the de facto standard for 3D game development.
If you remember Thief: The Dark Project, you'll know that games from Looking Glass are really good, plus they have a pretty good implementation of EAX. PlanetRiva has upped a review of the latest System Shock 2 and from their feedback, it has excellent sound effects with EAX.
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