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News: March 1 - 7, 1999
Dave
Rossum Interview @ ALive Part 1 is a general introduction with a focus on music and EMU10K1 . Part 2, which is coming soon, deals with 3D Audio , EAX and the SBLive!Experience
Developer Interview and Preview VE: Sound is becoming bigger and bigger
in today's games. Will you be taking advantage of A3d 2.0 or EAX extensions? Will gamer's
with 4 speaker set-ups (Such as myself) get extra Gaming Goodness (tm) from Experience? Saturday, March 6, 99 Slave
Zero Tech Demo Mini Review We got the following note from Tech-Junkie: We have a short writing on the recent released Slave Zero pre-alpha demo,do check out what we have to say about this anime inspired game. We truely believe its much better than SHOGO They also had the following to say about sound: The demo also sports EAX, and we were very impressed with the stomping sound effect while the slave moved; it filled the gigantic atmostphere. As the demo was introduced in an industrial area, we didn't get a chance to hear what it's like to be indoors. Lots more on the rest of the demo is contained in their review. New
Version of Crystal Space What is Crystal Space and why might you care that there is a new version? Well its a free (LGPL) and portable 3D engine written in C++ and according to their site they are going to be doing "more work on the sound system (like sounds which are influenced by the 3D position of an object and so on ...)". Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for the pointer. Derek Smart
Update Dr. Smart of BC3K fame has posted an update which among other things mentions that his next title will be supporting EAX and A3D 2.0 via a single third party API layer. We are following up with Aureal to identify the API layer as the only thing we are aware of is the Miles Sound System with does support EAX but only supports A3D 1.x Thanks to AGN3D for the pointer. 'Montego
2' Audio Interview The Lilith & Eve show over at All Games features an interview with Seth Dotterer from Voyetra Turtle Beach to talk about the new Montego 2 soundcard and a bit about A3D technology. This was live at 7:00 pm EST yesterday so you will have to catch it on the replay and best of all you can skip forward to about the 22.5 minute point of the show to get to Seth. New 3D Rad AGN3D reports that there is a new version of 3D Rad. 3D Rad is a 3D Games creation program that is available for $50. Whats of interest to us is the latest version now has fully working 3D sound support via DS3D. Evolva Preview Avault has posted a preview of Evolva, which is an upcoming title from Virgin. According to information in the preview "it's 70 percent action and 30 percent strategy with a nod towards role-playing and adventure games". Here's the juicy bit though. According to the preview Evolva will sport "3D sound support, including support for EAX environmental audio, providing useful positional cues about the direction of an attack; and the proprietary Mutator and Audio Mutator technologies". Something new to followup on. Audio Mutator technology... Aureal/3DsoundSurge Reverb Survey/Contest Aureal is in the process of fine-tuning their reverb implementation, and we would like your help in getting some specific feedback on reverb. To help generate some feedback we have, with the assistance of Aureal, developed a survey with a number of questions focussing on reverb. Note that this is not a full survey on future features that Aureal is going to work on this year. To encourage your participation Aureal is offering three (3) sets of Sennheiser headphones which will be awarded to three lucky people to be randomly drawn from the completed survey submissions. So what are you waiting for? Head on over and give us your feedback. Maybe you will be one of the lucky winners. Quake3: Arena 3Daudio Petition
Final Stats On March 25th, 3DsoundSurge posted a quake3 petition asking gamers which 3D audio implementation they would like to see support for in Q3. To read why we created a petition and John carmack's (id software programmer) response on the it, please go to our week in review page. We have ended submissions to the petition and would also like to note we will be contacting ID shortly to provide the results along with the reasons why we did the petition and why we and our readers find 3D sound exciting. To check out the stats, click HERE SB
Live Value Edition Review Extreme Hardware posted a review of the
SoundBlaster Live!
Thursday, March 4, 99 Interview
Gabe Newell Gamespot UK has popped out an interview with Gabe Newel, managing director of Valve Software. Here's a tasty bit about Team Fortress 2 GameSpot UK:What is Team Fortress 2? Gabe Newell: Team Fortress 2 is our next game, and it's a role-based multiplayer action game with a wide variety of mission objectives that role up into extended campaigns. For the real-time strategy fans, you can be a commander and direct the activities of the other gamers in your squad. You can be an engineer and focus on building. You can be a spy and infiltrate the opposing team's lines. The mission objectives are controlled by the map, and are pretty varied - capture the flag, Command & Conquer style resource acquisition and territory control, escort missions where one side is keeping a dignitary alive while the other side tries to assassinate him, ... The individual missions role up into campaigns, such as the 'Saving Private Ryan' (our name for it) campaign where you start off coming in on amphibious assault vehicles to storm a beach, go through the hedge rows, and then finish by attempting to secure a bridge before the opposing team demolishes it. Team Fortress 2 will use the Half-Life engine so expect A3D2, DS3D and EAX to be supported. No 3D
sound in Daikatana? Here's the story from Ion Storm: The demo won't, at least not in it's full glory. Mike has been busy with the DM demo and has not had the time to work on the sound. Now that we have completed the demo. He will begin work on sound again. Ok so their may be some 3D audio in the demo but probably not. The full game will as mentioned earlier today feature A3D2, DS3D, EAX and maybe even EAX2. Dave Rossum
interview Creative's Chief Scientist Dave Rossum was asked several questions about EAX, 3D audio and the Live. He says there is still a lot of enhancement will be available to the Live sound card and they will continue to improve EAX including the 3D positional aspects. He also says EAX is a lot more than just reverb and speaks about EAX like it includes 3D sound and occlusion even though neither of them are really part of the EAX 1.0 API. I guess he includes them in the Environmental Audio technolgoy and he doesn't really care about what each API include. If you want to listen to the 10 minute interview you can download a 2.3 MB MP3 file or use real audio. Both are available on Creative's site. For a more detailed description on the EAX API you can read our EAX article. A3D console
variables We just got a list of A3D console variables for Sin from Aureal's David Gasior. You can find them on our A3D console variables page, where the variables for Half-Life are also available. Creative
press release Creative has put up a press release about all the new EAX titles coming out. Here is an excerpt: PC Intern, a top German publication that follows the multimedia industry has awarded EAX the Innovation of the Year '99 award. The latest titles now available that support Environmental Audio through EAX are SimCity 3000, Descent Freespace, Blood 2, Thief: The Dark Project, FIFA '99, Half-Life, Baldur's Gate, Myth II, Motorhead, SiN and Wages of SiN. For a complete list of titles and patches for download with EAX
support, please visit :
http://www.soundblaster.com/eaudio/eax/. Montego II
OEM review Avault has done a review of Turtle Beach's OEM and 2 speaker only version of their Monego II. Here's their final verdict Overall: Daikatana
previews 3Dgaming has slapped up an excellent preview where you can read everything you ever want to know about Daikatana. They even have some new info about the sound: Lately, sound has come to play as
important a role in games as graphics, and if what the head DK sound guy Mike Monatague
promises is as good as he says, then we're all in for a lush audiofest. In a recent email
received from him, he revealed to me the plans Ion has concerning Daikatana. U-games has also put up a good preview of Daikatana. Wednesday, March 3, 99 More PSX2000
info Tech-Junkie has put together all the info they got about the next playstation and slapped up an article about it. This is what they have to say about the audio stuff: Let’s not forget the audio. According to the specs, the PS2 audio controller is Dolby Digital AC3 and Sony DTS capable. We’re not talking EAX and A3D here boys and girls. This is the REAL DEAL. Cinema quality audio from games! I guess that 3D positional audio will be encoded into AC3 or DTS and then output as audio. And I wouldn’t be shocked to find a SPDIF digital output connector on the back of the PS2 either. Audio Specifications - 2MB Ram From the specs, 32 MB of RDRAM (Direct Rambus) is shared between the CPU and the GPU while 2 MB is dedicated to the Sound Processor The benefit of doing AC-3 encoding with games is to let you use your DD 5.1 or DTS 5.1 system. It isn't superior to what the A3D engine and other 3D sound engines could do with a 5.1 system as far as I know. AC-3 doesn't even try to do place sounds above or below you. I wonder how many games that will actually do AC-3 encoding
considering it probably takes away a bit of processor power you can use for graphics, I
doubt they got a dedicated chips to do just AC-3 encoding but it's of course possible. I just took a look at the log file and it seems a lot of you missed all the good info/speculation we put in the The week in review article. If nothing else you can read it to get a chance to complain when we fail deliver the reviews/features we promised in that piece :-). Homeworld
Preview U-Games.com has slapped up the best Homeworld preview I've seen so far. Here's some tasty stuff: Space: Above and BelowEveryone says they're doing strategy in 3D nowadays, but when Relic say that, they mean it ever so slightly differently to anyone else. We're not talking about strategy in 3D where you can go up to the top of hills and fire down here, we're talking about strategy in the boundless reaches of space where one squadron of fighters can swoop down underneath the others and attack from all directions and all angles. A whole new dimension, if you will. One of the first bits of the game Alex showed us in fact, was a small group of ships clustered around an asteroid which he'd instructed them to attack. Bearing in mind also the exceptionally innovative feature of having asteroids and indeed all the larger objects with a gravitational pull of their own which affects the smaller ships, the idea of two opposing attack forces of ships clashing amoungst an asteroid field in real 'true' 3D is absolutely mind numbing. Just watching the five or six ships versus the inanimate asteroid was exciting enough to set my mouth watering as they swirled round, breaking formation and ploughing down once more, little trails of energy streaming out behind them. Here's the juicy bit about sound: The music which accompanies the epic scene as the mother ship gradually breaks free from the vast scaffolding that has surrounded it throughout its construction, little ships whirling giddily around it, is originally an Agnus Dei in G minor for strings, but Relic have had it re-recorded as a choral arrangement, multiplying the voices of the small choir who they actually paid to make it sound like a very big choir indeed. Very effective. In fact, it's no secret that Relic have been paying attention to their audio. Alex has been quoted elsewhere as saying that "we do about 32 channels of audio, we've got Dolby, we've got Doppler shifting, we've got 8 to 1 compression on all of our effects at 44Khz with almost no loss, we've got mixing in the frequency domain, not the time domain, we've got… The list goes on for quite a while. Real time speech ditching, multiple streaming channels off multiple devices." So now you know.So what 3D sound API's will they use then: I can even tell you about the sound cards in that Homeworld will support both of the major 3D sound APIs available which is Creative's EAX and Aureal's A3D 2.0. and release date: Of course, the only true test will be when the game is released in June. I've been having some fun with the beta version and I certainly can't wait to get my hands on a copy of the real thing. First place I see they will use A3D 2, hopefully it includes wavetracing. EAX includes 3D sound through DS3D according to our sound wave from them. Recoil
works with any A3D card The Avault review I mentioned earlier today that said Recoil does support 3D sound, but unfortunately the Aureal A3D drivers it contains work only with the newer Vortex 2 cards rather than the far more widespread Vortex 1 cards (I confirmed this with the developers). fortunately got the incorrect info. Recoil uses A3D 2 (but no wave tracing) and just like the other A3D 2 games it will work vortex1 cards and other hardware using Aureal's A3D engine like the older Monster sound cards. I confirmed this with Aureal's David Gasior. If you want more info about Recoil be sure to check out the "fan" site The Recoil Zone. Unreal
Tournament preview Gamesmania had Mark Rein from Epic Games demonstrating Unreal Tournament, nothing about 3D sound but a lot of other good info. Here's how they started it off: GamesCon attracted some pretty big names and some pretty big games. Probably one of the biggest was Unreal Tournament and Mark Rein was there to do the demonstrating. "Most of the improvements we made this time around were gameplay-based," Mark was explaining. Well, it's not as if Unreal's graphics were behind the times. Although, it does look like they did a little polishing anyway. Mark did say that the character models have been improved. They certainly do have more animation to them--instead of just "walking" through water, players now actually swim. We also noticed a few new map motifs--there was a map with an Egyptian theme that was mainly done in white and yellow, colours which didn't get a lot of use in the first Unreal. Recoil review Avault has just finished a review of Recoil, unlike the version bundled with the MX300 the full version supports Multiplayer. Here's what they think of the sound and their final verdict Sound FX: The sound effects of the machinery and gunfire are uniformly excellent, conveying a real sense of being on the battlefield. Different weapons systems make different noises, all convincing, and I am delighted to report that the sound of the BFT itself never gets irritating. The voiceovers are exceptional, not only conveying the seriousness of the missions (with no campiness) but also displaying exactly the right amount of distortion for real remote communication of this type. I got a kick out of the fact that these narrators of the mission objectives appear to get a special kick out of emphasizing words like "obliterate" and "destroy." My one complaint about the vocal effects is that I constantly heard the phrase "BFT armor low," which repeated incessantly in the background when you have taken too many hits. Recoil does support 3D sound, but unfortunately the Aureal A3D drivers it contains work only with the newer Vortex 2 cards rather than the far more widespread Vortex 1 cards (I confirmed this with the developers). Overall: Recoil is so well done that it is now for me the standard by which I will be judging all other 3D arcade combat shooters. But I fear it will not get the recognition it so richly deserves. No, it is not Half-Life, but the important thing to remember is it does not aspire to be Half-Life. Too much has already been written about the game inappropriately comparing it to 3D first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, action-strategy combat hybrids, and mech-combat simulations. Recoil does not belong in any of these categories, and putting it in one of them only serves to diminish what makes the game so much fun -- its unquestioning provision of a sumptuous meal of the very best kind of arcade action, without any of the trimmings like complex resource management or interactive conversation with others that serve only as distractions from the main course. I thus enthusiastically recommand it for a Reviewer's Choice Award. The part of not working with Vortex1 cards is new to me and we will try to find out if that's the case. Diamond
Announces MX25 Diamond Multimedia issued a press release yesterday listing some of the accolades the MX300 has received and more importantly announcing the first of the add on cards in the form of the MX25. The MX25 will add a S/PDIF output to the MX300. It is expected to be available in late March through Diamond's Online Store for a U.S. estimated retail price (ERP) of $39. Witness
the Birth of the 3D Web This link from David Gasior of Aureal. A little teaser :) Invisible
speakers? Thanks to 3DAI for catching this article about a UK company, NXT PLC, transparent panel speakers. Here are the juicy parts: NXT PLC says its transparent speakers - glass or plexiglass panels that emit sound through subtle vibrations - rival conventional speakers in quality. The panel speakers are much less bulky than conical speakers, so the new technology should allow for further miniaturization of electronic devices like laptop computers and televisions, the company says. See-through speakers could, in theory, be as large as movie screens and small enough to fit on a business card. Refinements in the technology might even enable a car windshield to double as a stereo speaker. NXT says its see-through speakers have a wider frequency than conventional ones, giving them a deeper bass and a less tinny sound. And they project sound in all directions at once, making it unnecessary, for example, that an audiophile face a stereo speaker to hear music at its clearest. Peerless Fabrikkerne A/S, a Danish company that makes the exciters for speakers using NXT's technology, is trying to develop its own type of transparent speakers. Company president Nils Erik Kristensen,
speaking from Copenhagen, acknowledged NXT's lead in the see-through technology race. But
he suggested that competition in transparent speakers may not be far off. NXT thinks we will see their new technology within 18 months and it will appear in laptops, televisions and home-theater systems. There's more info in the article about how it works. Heretic II EP will be released soon Thanks to Blue for spotting the following post at the Heretic II forum: We know the natives are getting restless, so we thought we'd give you a word of assurance. Right now, the EP is done. Jake (The Gent) Simpson has finished with the coding that I observed him working on first-hand yesterday. The EP has been turned over to QA for one, hopefully final session of bug inspection. But this won't be a week-long QA thing - although, obviously no one involved is about to release a buggy EP, which is why this process has gone on as long as it has. But as you can tell, things are wrapping up, and you should be playing the EP VERY soon now! This patch, or enhancement pack as Raven calls it, will include EAX and A3D 2. AC-3 and
DTS encoding? We don't usually cover consoles but Sony has announced the PSX 2 will be released before end of March 2000 in Japan and fall 2000 worldwide and put up a few press releases about the spec. Here's what they say about sound: In the vital area of sound processing, we have gone beyond the capabilities of the current PlayStation to allow for even more complex digital enhancement and processing of sound effects and music. Software generated sounds, using the massive calculation performance of the system and complex enhancements to the sound processor, allows for the encoding and processing of advanced 3D digital sound techniques such as AC-3 and DTS. With this leap forward in technology, we anticipate a New World of digital entertainment that will surpass the experience of conventional video and music CDs. and Sound "SPU2+CPU"Number of Voices ADPCM: 48ch on SPU2 plus definable, software programmable voicesSampling Frequency 44.1 KHz or 48 KHz (selectable) I don't think we will see AC-3 decoding on the PC for awhile but if Sony can do it at a reasonable cost in a console next year I would expect it will be available for the PC within 2 years too. More details about the PSX2 are available at PlayStation Europe. Unreal
engine and Tournament news Over at Planet Unreal Mark Rein gave the details about the new features of the 221 patch (which will get a new name) and that it will be released soon. They are just waiting for a few issues with OpenGL on the ATI Rage 128 to be fixed. He said nothing about any new enhancements on the sound front but we will try to find out if there are any soon. Planet Unreal also had a link to an interview over at Gamespot UK with Jay Wilbur where they talk about Unreal Tournament and for more Unreal Tournament details you can check out PC Paradox's preview. Here's a taste from the preview Domination is yet another type of game in Unreal Tournament. While playing this game, control points are scattered around the amp. The objective is for either team to control the most points. The players must run throughout the level trying to conquer and hold these control points. When a control is seen, a player can take control of it by standing on it for a certain amount of time. The time will be four seconds if the point is neutral, and eight if it was previously controlled by the other team. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. It sounds easier than it looks, because not only do new control points have to be taken, but old ones have to be protected. This game reminds me of Myth: The Fallen Lords' Territories where flags are arranged on a map with a designated time limit and at the end of the period, the team with the most flags, wins. and a bit from the interview: GameSpot UK:What improvements have been made to the engine? Jay Wilbur: Tim's been working a lot 'under the hood', especially on the Net code. So an Unreal Tournament player who jumps in and plays on the Net won't see any of the nastiness that existed in the original Unreal. We admit that it had its shortcomings, but we've worked quickly to address them and I believe that we've overcome all the Net issues. Unreal Tournament will have the very latest Unreal engine Net Code which runs superbly. Tim's speeded up the character rendering and the character animation system, so you have a much more fluid, life-like experience. The characters look a lot better and, overall, we've added a whole year's worth of knowledge to the game. Unreal Tournament will ship with support for D3D and Open GL out of the box, and for anyone who has a capable 3D card, we're going to support it. GameSpot UK: Slave Zero Games.net has made a demo of Slave Zero available. Don't know if the demo feature 3D sound but the game will feature A3D and EAX. So what's the game about then: Slave Zero™ is a giant robot action game. Slave Zero utilizes the proprietary Ecstasy engine to create interactive, animated worlds and high action giant robot combat. As Slave Zero you undertake many missions to take apart the infrastructure the evil ruler has put in place. The missions vary from destroying the communication array, disrupting the weapons factory production, all the way to taking down the capitol building itself. Kingpin Preview Gamers Central has slapped up a preview of Xatrix Quake 2 engine powered game Kingpin: Life of Crime. Here's a taste: A touch of RPGRather odd options for a FPS are the 'quests' you will have to do. Unlike the usual FPS Kingpin has quite some RPG elements. Now this either isn't completely new, especially for people who have played games like HeXen2 (building up experience in Hexen2) but the implementation of it is unlike I have experienced before in any FPS. First of all, you not only just find weapons and ammunition. You can also purchase the requirements in with the "pawn-o-matic" pawnbrokers. The money you need for this can be acquired by looting dead people's bodies. And then there is the communicating with the peasants and possible soldiers. A demo should be released soon and at least the fullgame will feature 3D sound. Monday, March 1, 99 More on the Quake III MP3 Interviews I saw over on Blue's that the Mat Bettingson/John Carmack interviews were never meant for public consumption in their unedited form. In respect of the wishes of IDSoftware we have pulled the 12.5 minute clip that covered 3d sound and other audio questions and answers that we had been carrying locally on 3DsoundSurge. Soldier
of Fortune interview Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for the pointer to another interview with one of the men behind Soldier of Fortune. Nothing about sound this time but still a good read. Here's why the game will stand out when it arrives this summer: Q. Many games in 1998 used the Quake II engine, some with success and some failed in their attempt. What makes your game unique?A. From a gameplay standpoint, the Soldier of Fortune experience will satisfy both action fans and tactical strategists. The gritty realism and real-world locations will be a refreshing change of pace. From a technological standpoint, Raven's modifications and enhancements to the Quake II engine will make Soldier of Fortune a great technical achievement. The GHOUL modeling system adds a whole new dimension to the graphics and lighting and gives us greater versatility in the game design as a whole. SoF runs in hardware only, so we can do a lot of things that other games couldn't while still supporting a software renderer. The combination of all of these things (and many others) will make Soldier of Fortune truly unique. The game should ship with EAX and A3D2 out of the box and will have, according to Raven, an even better implementation than Heretic II which is said to have the best A3D2 implementation yet. Hopefully the same will be true for the EAX part. The week in
review From now on we will every Sunday (yes one day late) publish an article about the last week and what reviews or features we are working on. This week the focus was of course on the Quake 3 petition and Carmack's latest comments about the petition and 3Dsound: There are plans for a petition to put in 3D
sound for Q3A. You are known for not bowing to public pressure. Would a petition make any
difference at all to you? A Gamer's
Guide to EAX I just finished an article called A Gamer's Guide to EAX. Here's a bit from the introduction: In this article I will briefly describe the features of EAX 1.0 and a very basic description what reverb is for those that don't know. Extreme
Hardware Launches Our friends Vince Freeman and Mikael Brinton asked us to let you know that they have both left Hargame to start Extreme Hardware. Why not head over and pay them a visit?! 3D Sound, Quake III and the Allgames
Rant Page The Allgames Rant Page has a rant on John Carmack's recent comments on 3D audio. You can here those comments or get a quick summary right here on 3Dsoundsurge.
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