How many sounds can the game output simultaneously?

"

spiralofhope wrote:

It's good to read that this is a known issue.


I regularly have audio cutout issues, particularly with firestorm, when my ludicrously fast cast on crit is triggered.

Is there any chance that particular spell can be looked at? The others are either not a problem or aren't particularly noticeable.

The character in question is Slomic. Feel free to clone him, start up clarity, and hold the button down on lightning arrow at a pack of mobs. I promise you will laugh. Hard.

Disregard, I got nerfed.

But I was only casting 15 firestorms a second!

continuously..

=)

I came here to mention the same thing, audio should prioritize your own character sounds higher. With no impact sounds you feel even weaker than you already are.

"

Phero1 wrote:

I came here to mention the same thing, audio should prioritize your own character sounds higher. With no impact sounds you feel even weaker than you already are.

Also, drop sounds should be the highest priority. Not having the drop sound at all, I focused with my eyes for drops, but now that we have drop sounds, my eyes get lazy, so if something drops and doesn't make a sound, I may not notice it.

I was leveling with firestorm and I joined a party. Someone went into an instance I created and said "Whoever cleared whereverIwas, you left an exalted laying on the ground." Now he may have been lying, but if I killed something off screen with firestorm, I wouldn't hear the sound as firestorm causes all kinds of sound clipping all by itself.

the fact that you guys only used software that allows 32 sounds is astounding. What was the reason for it? It honestly ruins my group play. makes that game sound terrible.

Well, when Path of Exile was first created there was no real money to purchase or develop a audio engine, so OpenAL was used. Unfortunately it's fairly dated in what it can do.

Like I have said previously we have looked at ways to use different OpenAL drivers that might give us more freedom, there was nothing that works for us. We also looked into costs of switching out the audio engine, but at this stage of development it's just to costly in both programmer hours and money.

The good news is we can improve some parts of the engine, which is always happening but playable content and our fortnightly updates take priority over any general improvements like this.

"

Andrew_GGG wrote:

Well, when Path of Exile was first created there was no real money to purchase or develop a audio engine, so OpenAL was used. Unfortunately it's fairly dated in what it can do.

Like I have said previously we have looked at ways to use different OpenAL drivers that might give us more freedom, there was nothing that works for us. We also looked into costs of switching out the audio engine, but at this stage of development it's just to costly in both programmer hours and money.

So about how much money would something like a new Audio Engine cost? What Audio Engine did you guys look into?

I'd like to know so I can compare to other Audio Engines that at least support 64 sounds (not 32,) that are better than openAL (created in 2000,) and that are cheaper.

Have you guys even tried reaching out to the company / people that made openAL to get them to make some changes to it so it can support 64 sounds instead of 32? (among other things.)

If not, ask yourself what's going to cost more: a new audio engine, or hiring a guy / talking with a guy that was involved in creating openAL to help fix the issue(s).

There has to be something you guys can do.

"

Andrew_GGG wrote:

The good news is we can improve some parts of the engine, which is always happening but playable content and our fortnightly updates take priority over any general improvements like this.

But can it be improved to support 64 sounds? That is the question...

P.S. It's very unfortunate PoE was created in such a time where the technology, etc. was still limited. Now we probably won't see these improvements until PoE 1 dies, and PoE 2 (if ever) comes to be.

Something has to happen before that happens, otherwise, it's going to be a grueling long wait.

There's OpenAL Soft which is an unofficial continuation of OpenAL, however it doesn't support Vorbis or MP3 (The former I assume refers to OGG files). It doesn't mention if it supports 64 channels either.

I can't think of a program that supports configurable number of audio channels while using OpenAL, except maybe Fruity Loops and/or Cakewalk (And similar software).

"

Nicholas_Steel wrote:

There's OpenAL Soft which is an unofficial continuation of OpenAL, however it doesn't support Vorbis or MP3 (The former I assume refers to OGG files). It doesn't mention if it supports 64 channels either.

I can't think of a program that supports configurable number of audio channels while using OpenAL, except maybe Fruity Loops and/or Cakewalk (And similar software).

It's quite silly (even if unofficial) there's a continuation of openAL but doesn't support what the original openAL does via Vorbis, MP3, etc. You would think it'd be an improvement to openAL, but I guess that's not the case.

And if you can't think of a program that supports configurable number of audio channels while using openAL, my question is what programs (other than openAL) do support these features?

P.S. I'm going to try and get a hold of a friend of mine that is involved in audio engineering / sound equipment that deals with anything related to audio, what applications are out there, what's best to use vs. what not to use, and pricing.

He's got a busy schedule, so if all goes well he should be able to provide the answer(s) I am looking for since the audio guy doesn't want to talk about it.

Sometime down the road, a new Audio Engine is something to look into since I don't think openAL in its current state can be improved much more. Cutting corners also doesn't resolve the issue(s). OpenAL is nearing 15 yrs old, and that's just 5 years shy of 20 (not far behind.)

There's XAudio2 which I believe most major companies have been slowly shifting to since Vista came out iirc. Requires users under Windows XP to install an update to DirectX to use it though (Devs shouldn't expect the general user to be unable to perform such a task). I believe it supports 128 channels, EAX etc. (Various emulators have started supporting it too)

There's also ASIO, though that's more for professional audio as far as I know (I've only really seen programs like Cakewalk/Fruityloops feature it).

XAudio2 would be great, if it wasn't for the fact it would still take many people out of action for far too long.

Something you guys need to consider is that we still have fairly limited resources and switching to a new audio engine, like Xaudio2, would require a huge amount of work. Anything audio would pretty much have to be re-written from the ground up, which would take a programmer months. I really can't stress enough how much work would go into doing something like this!

IF we ever had the chance to do this in the future I would only really want to go for FMOD. It's an incredible tool and I have had enough experience with it to know how brilliant it could make the audio in path of exile.

But it's unfortunately not going to happen any time soon.