inselaffe on 21/6/2009 at 18:28
Ok, i found this (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxIYNG4TQ7U) video on youtube concerning eax in thief. Either eax in thief 1 is not setup properly compared to t2x or i have never gotten it to work properly with thief - however i now have an xfi extreme music card so should be able to get it working at last :).
Anyway, in the video his voice changes depending on what room he is in. I am assuming this is happening while playing the game and isn't down to editing the microphone input later to give it such effects.
If this is happening realtime, then would that mean that basically all sound played by the computer while the eax game is running is effected by the "eax environment" that you are currently in?
So if you were playing music in the background and then ran thief with eax, the music would be affected by eax too. This would be a rather amusing side effect if so.
Dan on 21/6/2009 at 22:39
All you need to run EAX on Thief 1/2 is a Sound Card that supports EAX 2.0 as those games support no higher. A Creative Audigy or even an old Sound Blaster will do the trick. But your xfi will let you play EAX 4 on Thief Deadly Shadows. Its a good sound card, I can tell you as I have the same.
Anyway I've never heard that your mic voice can get affected by Thief sound environments. This is a really cool feature that I will try soon:)
As for listening music in an environmental output you don't need to be in Thief. Since you have an Xfi all you need is to go to the Creative Control Panel and switch EAX on. You can even choose the effect. Then you can listen music or watch a movie like you're in a cave or something.
inselaffe on 21/6/2009 at 23:17
Yes, sorry i didn't explain properly - I am aware that you can do that with eax. Even my onboard realtek ac97 can do that in it's control panel. Not that i would recommend it - it is move for the novelty hehe.
However with eax in thief it doesn't sound exactly how it should with my onboard sound - quiet footsteps and overdone echo. Also if you set sound to be "hardware" in the options, it resets itself each time you run the game.
I just decided since i could get that card cheap that I might as well go for it since there will be less problems getting it to work "as intended". (I hope it works hehe).
There is a thread about getting eax to work with realtek though, although I think i tried it and it didn't seem to properly work.
Anyway, i meant the focus of this thread to be if eax effects everything running :D So yes if you could report the focus of your findings that would be interesting. I will test myself once i manage to rebuild my machine.
I wonder if it even effects things currently being played in windows media player or such while the game is running.
I am just wondering whether it is a "feature" of the game or a side-effect of how eax behaves. hehe
Dan on 22/6/2009 at 09:20
I understand inselaffe. It would be interesting to see if playing music is affected by the environments in Thief. That would be like Garrett having a Walkman or MP3 player:)
I will try it sometime later today.
Dan on 22/6/2009 at 17:26
Well I tried it and it definitely works! I'm amazed by the results and I really thank you inselaffe for informing me of this:thumb:
Still there are some options that must be adjusted. For example, you must set your seekers to output your mic and in a high enough volume or you won't be able to hear yourself and the effects. Also in the Game Mode interface of the Xfi you must make sure that the Mic Enviroment FX is set to a good level. I tried to 100%, but I guess that 50 will make do. Unfortunately I'm not sure of the effect on other Sound Cards, but I encourage more people to try it out.
In the end, my voice came out like I was in the room itself. I was playing a sewers FM and it felt like I was indeed trapped in a small space. I'd recommend this to any taffer. At least to try it.
Dan on 22/6/2009 at 18:30
Well, I did some more research and it turns out it's not a Thief unique feature. Almost all OpenAL supporting games includes environmental mic effects. When I tried Call of Duty 4 and Source engine games like Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead it didn't work. My voice was coming normal. But when I tried Unreal Tournament 3 and Quake 4 it worked the same as in Thief. Problem is that it seems to be a feature of the newer Creative cards.
jtr7 on 22/6/2009 at 19:37
It would be cool to record a walkthrough and have a narrator's voice reverberate according to the EAX room settings. And I mentioned this in the first Multiplayer thread that it would be cool if players using headsets could fade or increase in volume according to distance and Thief world sound propagation. Now add to that startling feat, the EAX effects.
inselaffe on 27/6/2009 at 16:11
Oh wow sorry, I did not realise you had replied. Wow it seems to be a sort of hidden feature then. Do call of duty 4 and half life 2 support eax? If so then i guess they did something slightly differently.
I still wonder if it is intended, or just a side effect of eax effecting all audio when it is enabled hehe.
Oh yes also, I heard another thing a while ago that thief actually also supports some old technology for 3d audio that is better than eax (in concept at least), that relies on the actual level design and physical room sizes / shapes. Does anyone know about this? I can't even remember what people said it was called. I guess it kind of got crushed under creative's market monopoly :erg: .
Dan on 27/6/2009 at 21:26
Everything after 2002 supports a version of EAX! I don't know any other technology Thief utilizes except the (
http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Sound) 12 EAX environments. If you find out anything on this matter please share it.
lost_soul on 27/6/2009 at 23:20
I've never experienced it in Thief, but I used to play Unreal and use voice-over-IP software to talk to my friend. Whenever I was in a cave, her voice would echo... it was cool.
