Waves volume way to loud?

[Aerick]

I've been using the creepy hut on the island south of Skara Brae as my testing grounds for various hacks and dropped a music egg to play Stones, which I find goes well with a hut full of dead animals. I've noticed that the crashing waves sfx are REALLY loud though and totally covered up the music(and then some). After testing out a few other sfx, I've come to the conclusion that this is really the only one(that I tested) which was simply jarring in volume. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just being too sensitive?

[Mike Mayday]

Large viewing area= multiple wave sounds playing at a time= LOUD!

I'd like to get my hands on the sound files, edit some of them, replace... can anyone tell me how to do that?

[Aerick]

Well, I'm only using 320x200 resolution so I guess that's not what's happening with my instance... I was considering adding an SFX volume setting to the Audio configuration menu but as I said the rest of the SFX seem ok. I need to try playing original U7 in dosbox to see if the result is the same there or not..

Regarding the sound files, the SFX are simply .wav files that you can grab from the Download section(Additional Files, look for Sound Pack for ...). I imagine you can simply replace a given wav. I'm not sure about music though, haven't played around with the audio stuff much.

[Aerick]

sorry, I guess the sfx are in the .flx file(like jmsfx.flx). Use the "expack" tool to extract them and repack them. For example "expack -x jmsfx.flx" will extract the wave files, naming them like 0.u7o.

[Andrea B Previtera]

ASM, I agree. The crashing wave volume is not only loud but.. for some reason (Original U7, not Exult as far as I remember) the volume seems to ramp up suddenly now and then.

[Aerick]

Just checked the original U7 engine and crashing waves are definately much quieter in the original. Maybe the volume of that .wav needs to be altered?

[Dominus]

AFAIR wasn't there something done with the sfx code so that it behaves differently, depending on the source of the sfx, distance and so forth...? Maybe that screws with the wave sfx...

[Aerick]

hmmm, it certainly seems to be a cumulative effect. The more "waves" there are, the louder it is. I used hackmover to drop some of the waves on the screen into my pack and it got less and less loud with each shape that I got rid of. Maybe in the original there was a check in the original that would only allow one of a specific type of effect to play at once? I just checked in the original and it didn't seem to me that the number of wave shapes on the screen changed the volume at all.

[Dominus]

If you compare something, compare exult 1.2 with cvs. I really think it has something to do with what I wrote before.

[Donfrow]

Was there ever any fix for the loud wave issue that anyone came across?

[Fuzzy Dragon]

The latest snapshot has the waves sound effect too loud to me, too. However, they don't sound as loud in Exult 1.2, even though I'm using the same .flx files for both versions.

And since we're talking about problems in the latest snapshot, why does the spot that shows my location in Britannia when I'm looking at a map and have a sextant, is black in the latest snapshot? It was yellow in previous Exult versions, and it worked much better that way. Now it's very hard to see, and practically invisible at night.

And lastly, was the cheat feature to teleport to any location in the world by clicking in a map after pressing Ctrl+Alt+T eliminated? If so, will it ever come back?

[Malignant Manor]

The map pointer is dependent on the amount of light like everything else in the game. The teleport option with a map changed to an easier to use default. Look it up.

[Malignant Manor]

Wave Fix

This package contains everything needed to patch the sfx packages in Windows. If you use another operating system, you will have to build expack yourself (unless using Wine, etc) and I doubt the batch file will work. Everything else should still be relevant.

This will lower the volume of the wave sfx of the Sound Blaster sfx (jmsfx.flx and jmsisfx.flx) to tolerable levels. It will replace the wrong sounding Roland wave sfx (sqsfxbg.flx and sqsfxsi.flx) with the lowered volume versions from the Sound Blaster package. Each batch (.bat) file will create a backup of the sfx being replaced. You might want to rename it so that it won't be overwritten if you run the batch file again.

The sfx file to be patched needs to be in the same directory as these files. Run the batch file with the same name as the file you want to patch. Move the .flx file back to the appropriate folder if needed.

[Dominus]

@fuzzy, I'm very strict nowadays when people steer a thread off topic these days. If you have further problems with the snapshots open another thread, please. This avoids cluttering problem threads too much... Thanks

[Donfrow]

Thanks for the link and instructions MM.

One question though. It seems to work on all the shore pieces but the left side waves (the ones that are going onto the left/west shore lines).

I copied my jmsisfx.flx to the wave_fix folder, ran jmsisfx.flx.bat and copied jmsisfx.flx back to the original spot. I see each wave uses the same sound so I am not sure why one would stop working but the others wouldn't.

[Donfrow]

I meant to say I ran jmsisfx.bat.

[Donfrow]

Err ignore my previous post about what I meant to say please.

[Malignant Manor]

Are you saying there is no sfx or it is too loud on one particular side? Is this without any patches? I've never noticed any problems when I was testing. If it is still too loud for you, then you can edit the wav file with Start>Programs>Accessories>Entertainment>Sound Recorder or another tool). Anyone else try the patch?

[Lathlas]

I had done my own patch for this issue a while back by just silencing the waves, they just annoy me too much. I tried your patch though and it worked out fine.

[Wizardry Dragon]

The wave SFX is overly loud in the ORIGINAL Ultima. Exult replicates this. Of all the things to replicate, though, that probably wasn't one of them.

Unfortunately, the SFX is loud because there is quite a gain on the original sound fx. You would have to extract them, possibly convert the file format, and then turn down the volume, and then re-archive them, to use them.

I _believe_ there is a way to patch them without rearchiving, but if there is, I don't recall it.

Cheers, Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer, Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands
www.thefeudallands.ca

[Donfrow]

There is no sfx for waves that are coming in on the left.

It is with my modded game however. I removed the patch folder and it does seem to work from the left in a normal game.

I checked the wave objects (in my mod) for the left had side and they have the same sound number as the working waves.

Any ideas as to what could be causing this?

[Lathlas]

Maybe the left channel on your speakers isn't working right?

I'm not sure if exult uses stereo channels, but it would be my first guess if you asked that same question about any other game.

[marzo]

There is no sfx for waves that are coming in on the left.

Off topic. But: is the 'sound effect' check toggled on in the main shape info page?

[Donfrow]

It seems I've found the issue.

All the wave shapes in my mod in the SFX tab seem to have Play type set to "Sequentially" with a number of sequential SFX set to 255.

I removed my mod and checked a normal unmodded game and the SFX tab is set to Type "Single Sound Effect".

I changed all the wave shapes to Single Sound Effect and it appears to be working now.

I am not sure why my mod ones are different since I don't recall changing the SFX info. However I did have an issue some time ago where my wave sounds were incorrect (it was a chime or something) so I fixed that by modifying a text file (I believe this was before the SFX tab was available).

[Malignant Manor]

Wave Fix B


I've added .sh files for *nix users, altered the batch files so that the path to the flx can be chosen instead of having to move it, and separated OS specific files. If you already patched your flx file with the previous version, you have no reason to download this package.



This package contains everything needed to patch the sfx packages in Windows. If you use another operating system, you will have to build expack yourself, download it from a package, or use a Wine type program.



This will lower the volume of the wave sfx of the Sound Blaster sfx (jmsfx.flx and jmsisfx.flx) to tolerable levels. It will replace the wrong sounding Roland wave sfx (sqsfxbg.flx and sqsfxsi.flx) with the lowered volumes versions from the Sound Blaster package. Each script file will create a backup of the sfx being replaced.



Windows:

The flx file to be patched is defaulted to be in the same directory as the batch (.bat) files. You can edit the first line in the batch file to point to where the flx file is. Run the batch file with the same name as the file you want to patch. Move the .flx file back to the appropriate folder if needed.



OS X:

You may be able to use the *Nix instructions and files if the "bash" command that invokes the Bourne-again shell uses the same file management commands.



*Nix:

You need to edit the first line of the corresponding sh file to reflect the paths where expack is located unless it is in /usr/games. The flx file to be patched is defaulted to the same directory as the sh files. You can edit the second line to change the path. Then run the sh file. If you use Wine to run expack, you will also need to change the sh file to use "wine expack" instead of "$expack_path/expack and move expack.exe to the Linux folder.



Other system:

It is setup to have the flx file in the Other directory. If you Run "expack -x FLXNAME" and then "expack -i create-FLXNAME.txt" (replace FLXNAME with the appropriate flx name). Backup 49.u7o for BG and 109.u7o for SI if you want and clean up the files.

[Christoph]

Same Problem here with the volume of fields (for example pison fiels, sleep fields etc.). Is there any possibility to change their volume to? Thanks in advance.

[Malignant Manor]

I'm not sure when I can do proper testing for sfx volume and make scripts for it.

You can do it yourself by running
expack -x (whatever the name of your sfx flx is)
to extract the files.

Edit the create- files of one with the name of your sfx package in the old version of Wave Fix or edit the appropriate script (.bat or .sh) file. Rename the jmsfxwave.wav or ..\jmsfx_wave.wav to whatever number fits in between and add the u7o extension. (example 49.u7o)

In SI, poison and sleep Fields are sfx 129 with energy fields being sfx 71.
In BG, poison and sleep Fields are sfx 52 with energy fields being sfx 11. Edit these files in a sfx editor like Sound Recorder to lower the volume. Back them up first if you like. Then run the script file and the sfx package will be patched.

[Malignant Manor]

Wave Fix B

The old file got deleted. I never did get field spells to get a satisfactory volume. They just get amplified too much. This is the same fix that only lowers the volume of wave sfx.

[Malignant Manor]

Wave Fix B

Filefront is really being annoying.