[REL] Sound Distance Boost

[WilhelmTell]

I always found that many sounds in SH4 should be hearable at a greater distance.
For example the explosion of a battleship's fuel bunker can barely be heard at a distance of 3000m and the AA-guns cannot be heard past 300m.

Thanks to skwasjer who made a useful summary of the content of the SH.sdl.(http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=121497) This brought me to take a closer look at the SH.sdl with a hex editor.
Since that time I have increased the sound radius of the following sounds:
machine guns (AA guns and plane armament)
all sizes of the ship's and sub's cannons
torpedo impact and most explosions of ships and airplanes
airplanes engines
sub's diesel enginesIf you are interested, you can try my modded SH.sdl .
You can download it here --> http://www.speedyshare.com/519612765.html
It's JSGME ready of course.

Fair comment is appreciated. :yep:

[leovampire]

and closing a little easier to hear then your talking my language LOL!!! But with using the sound effect's Redwine came up with for under water explosions I feel like the hull is going to buckle on the sub so if you raise that volume I will duck faster than my crew will!!!

:rotfl:

[skwasjer]

See what the result of my thread was? A new mod the next day ;)

[leovampire]

You have definatly helped a lot of us modder's out!

And WilhelmTell I will take one with just the torpedo door loudness enhancment for now if your willing. ;)

[WilhelmTell]

[...]
But with using the sound effect's Redwine came up with for under water explosions I feel like the hull is going to buckle on the sub so if you raise that volume I will duck faster than my crew will!!!

:rotfl: Actually the sound source should not get louder. But the sound should get faded out at a greater distance than before when moving away with the camera. Isn't this the case ?!? :hmm:
And yes, I will give you a torpedo-door-only-sh.sdl tomorrow, now it's bedtime for me here.

See what the result of my thread was? A new mod the next day ;) Skwasjer the muse !:D
Thanks again for the SH.sdl - chart. Must have been quite some work.:up:

[skwasjer]

Skwasjer the muse !:D
Thanks again for the SH.sdl - chart. Must have been quite some work.:up:
Not really, no effort at all with my local S3D which opens, allows edits and saves the file :)

[Gunner]

Downloaded yer mod mate, have a question. do you have to have sound distance travel time option in sound settings enabled for your mod to work , it says nothing in your read me about this:arrgh!:

[WilhelmTell]

Downloaded yer mod mate, have a question. do you have to have sound distance travel time option in sound settings enabled for your mod to work , it says nothing in your read me about this:arrgh!:
I recommend to use realistic sound travel time as for realism purpose. But it is not necessary for the function of this mod.

[WilhelmTell]

Not really, no effort at all with my local S3D which opens, allows edits and saves the file :)
Okay, one for take away, please.:lol:
Really look forward for the next release.

[leovampire]

but it says the file is deleted due to it being too old.

Did you go any further with the work you were doing on it or intend to put this up for download again?

[WilhelmTell]

Yes, I did some more 'sound-tuning' for my own game but I decided not to upload it yet as I thought nobody was really interested in it anymore. There was not much feedback here as you can see, so I never knew what people do like or don't like with this little mod.
Furthermore, as soon as Skwasjer is done with his updated S3D, which supports editing of the SH.sdl then as you know, people will be able to easily change all that to their own liking.

*edit* Link to the file is working again, Dave. It is my latest version.

[rcjonessnp175]

I thought this mod was great, the way the sub diesels fade out at a further distance adds alot to the atmosphere, not only that if ur lucky enough to get in a middle of a naval battle, well it sounds like war and from a distance. Im downloading ur current version now. And one this is true u hear aircraft before u see them alot of the times, which is quite realistic in my opinion:rock::rock:

[Hawk_345]

i never even knew this existed till now, i will give it a try soon.

[leovampire]

Yes, I did some more 'sound-tuning' for my own game but I decided not to upload it yet as I thought nobody was really interested in it anymore. There was not much feedback here as you can see, so I never knew what people do like or don't like with this little mod.
Furthermore, as soon as Skwasjer is done with his updated S3D, which supports editing of the SH.sdl then as you know, people will be able to easily change all that to their own liking.

*edit* Link to the file is working again, Dave. It is my latest version.

I will download it and add it to my game tonight!

[The General]

:up: A terrific, compulsary MOD, thanks very much! :up:

[leovampire]

Thanks for doing it Wilhemtell. Sorry I didn't check it out sooner.

[WilhelmTell]

Nice to hear that some people use it. Thanks alot, guys ! :sunny:

[leovampire]

Nice to hear that some people use it. Thanks alot, guys ! :sunny:

Like the creaking sounds for the sub's. I find they are a little too quiet for me. Maybe if they slowly got louder the deeper you go if you under stand what I mean?

Slightly louder for 1 then more for 2 and so forth. I want to get nervous when I go deep with the sub.

[WilhelmTell]

That sounds like a good idea. But for some reason the 'Creaks_Level1.wav' to 'Creaks_Level4.wav' aren't listed in the SH.sdl. Which means that those Creaking sounds are not implemented in the game.:hmm:
I am sure I heard them in SH3 but in SH4 they are just unused sound files I think.

[leovampire]

That sounds like a good idea. But for some reason the 'Creaks_Level1.wav' to 'Creaks_Level4.wav' aren't listed in the SH.sdl. Which means that those Creaking sounds are not implemented in the game.:hmm:
I am sure I heard them in SH3 but in SH4 they are just unused sound files I think.

They are just too quiet for my taste. I have only been able to change them to set's that are a bit louder in how they are made but figured they were adjustable like you did with the others.

[kriller2]

Nice work on this one, just downloaded it and tested it, the sounds are much better now on my Audigy 2 :p
Kriller2

[WilhelmTell]

I hear them in my game okay
They are just too quiet for my taste. I have only been able to change them to set's that are a bit louder in how they are made but figured they were adjustable like you did with the others. Just had a second look into the file and found only this here, which seems to correspond to the creaks:
Interior.Playlist.DepthCranks
So there is no possibility to change volume for every single creak-sound to a different level.

What we can do is to change each creak wave file's sound volume via a sound editor to accomplish what you have suggested.


Nice work on this one, just downloaded it and tested it, the sounds are much better now on my Audigy 2 :p
Kriller2 Thanks alot, Kriller.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Just saw this WT, d\l it now, thanks :up::up:


RDP

[leovampire]

I hear them in my game okay
They are just too quiet for my taste. I have only been able to change them to set's that are a bit louder in how they are made but figured they were adjustable like you did with the others. Just had a second look into the file and found only this here, which seems to correspond to the creaks:
Interior.Playlist.DepthCranks
So there is no possibility to change volume for every single creak-sound to a different level.

What we can do is to change each creak wave file's sound volume via a sound editor to accomplish what you have suggested.


Nice work on this one, just downloaded it and tested it, the sounds are much better now on my Audigy 2 :p
Kriller2 Thanks alot, Kriller.

And they are set up in the Interior file's for the sub's CR.dsd files to be exact.

Sound Play list properties:

But I don't see individual sound volume control's as of yet in my search. But I will keep looking none the less unless someone set's up differn't volume's for the actual sounds.

[panthercules]

I was going to try this out, but when I tried installing it JSGME reported that this file had already been altered by the Kosh Stealthy sub mod. I like that mod, so I was going to try to make these changes manually to the file from that mod, but I couldn't open/manipulate the file with S3D (I thought I had seen some post somewhere about being able to edit the .sdl file with S3D, but I can't seem to find it again and am probably remembering it wrong anyway).

I've never really gotten the hang of hex editing - is there any reasonably easy way to make these changes to the .sdl file so I don't have to lose whatever the Kosh mod did in order to try this out?

[leovampire]

I was going to try this out, but when I tried installing it JSGME reported that this file had already been altered by the Kosh Stealthy sub mod. I like that mod, so I was going to try to make these changes manually to the file from that mod, but I couldn't open/manipulate the file with S3D (I thought I had seen some post somewhere about being able to edit the .sdl file with S3D, but I can't seem to find it again and am probably remembering it wrong anyway).

I've never really gotten the hang of hex editing - is there any reasonably easy way to make these changes to the .sdl file so I don't have to lose whatever the Kosh mod did in order to try this out?

His sdl file over powered the rest of the in game sounds and the radio playing but used his other sounds instead without it. But what WilhelmTell is using to make changes is a simple set up from skwasjer to give the temp ability to make some changes to the sound controls until he gets it implimented to the S3D editing tool and released.

[panthercules]

I'm not sure what the .sdl file does as compared to the other sound files in the Kosh Mod - is it just a volume controller kind of file, so replacing it with the one in this thread wouldn't really lose much of anything in terms of the sounds the Kosh mod added?

[leovampire]

I'm not sure what the .sdl file does as compared to the other sound files in the Kosh Mod - is it just a volume controller kind of file, so replacing it with the one in this thread wouldn't really lose much of anything in terms of the sounds the Kosh mod added?

Some of the sound effect's have extra volume controls in it and other adjustments. With out Kosh's sdl file the sounds go back to stock value in volume. With Willhemtell's sdl file some of the control's have been changed for sounds so they can be heard further away than normal. That is the best way I can explain it from looking at their files and changes vs the small program skwasjer made.

[WilhelmTell]

That's right.
The SH.sdl file controls the
volume
volume variability
sound's minimum radius in meters
sound's maximum radius in meters
pitch
pitch variability
delay
doppler factor intensityfor almost every sound effect in the game, except all the crew speech files.
Also it controls if a sound is looped (like wind) or just played once (like cannon shots).

Skwasjer has made an excel document which lists all the original settings in this file in tabular form. You can find a link to it in the first post.
I used this in order to find the values with an hex editor much easier. I never hex edited before but I found out it is relative easy work.

Finally, what I did is to increase most sound's minimum and maximum radii which means you can hear the sounds at greater distances. For example you can hear machine gun fire 1 kilometer away now, before it was 0.3 kilometer.
For example:
min radius 100
max radius 2000
-> the sound file will be played at full sound volume up to 100 meters. After that distance, the sound slowly fades out until it has reached the max radius of 2000 meters. At 2000 meters the sound cannot be heard anymore.

I don't know exactly what kosh did with the SH.sdl in his sound mod, but I think he just raised the sound volume of some sounds, not the radii they can be heard.
Just try my file out and see if anything works fine.
There should be no problem at all, maybe the sub's engine sounds are more soften, as my "mod" uses the original sound volume. That's what leovampire already noticed.
If you don't like it simply deactivate via JSGME.

[panthercules]

Cool - thanks for the prompt and thorough explanations - I've loaded this up and will give it a try as soon as I can get back to sea :up:

[Metl]

Just found this, I can't wait to try it.

[AVGWarhawk]

Yeah, this looks (sounds very interesting).....sometimes the what would seem to be a small mod can speak volumes!!! I will be loading this tonight. Thanks!

[Laffertytig]

ive spent many hours using mini tweaker to play about with this sdl file in SH3, so to find a thread like this is great.

does this file increase the range and sound of destroyers as they close overhead?