Early Morning
It's early, dark and quiet in the Bamber household. I woke from what I though would be a huge sleep but it seems eight hours un-interrupted was all I needed. It's now 5:30AM and I am about to set off for my meeting, which just happens to be 108 miles away from where I am typing (that's almost three hours of morning traffic to the layman - six hours round trip).
The Plan
Going to nip over to England, have a chin wag for six hours, then pop over to Wigan to drop off some presents, then hop, skip and jump back to Wales and try to avoid any snow. My place-holder rent-a-vehicle is a Peugeot 107 which I have been reliably informed has only three cylinders (even my outboard has four). Can't remember the last time I drove a car under 2.5 litres so it's gong to be an interesting ride! Sods law says I get a freak snow drift! I don't think I will have any time to do much work when I get back so will probably make it an early night so I have more of Tuesday to work from.
Reloaded News
Though not mentioned in the Kickstarter or any blog post since, one of the things I bought to plug holes in the new PC was a sound card. This sound hard had a 3.5 front panel gadget which allows volume control and port access from the front which is a feature we don't get these days. I mention this because the sound card has what is called a 3D chip, which I am guessing hardware accelerates the process of figuring out what sound to produce when you bounce it off complex geometry. It's early days and I have not seen the sound card API yet, but one of the things I will probably do after the main Reloaded product is do a little research into sound tech. I did a little environmental audio and 3D sound when I worked more in DirectX land, but it will be interesting to see if these types of API are still around. If so, it should be a case of playing the sound through a static scene pre-built into the sound card, so that any sound played is affected by the entire scene. That is, a closed door would not need to fake a slightly quieter sound beyond, the door would actually 'block' the sound at the source, and based on what material the door was made out of, you would here the modulated result of the sound waves hitting that surface, and every surface before and after. Maybe I am exaggerating what this card can do, and it's not something that will distract me from the main Reloaded product simply because only one in two hundred will actually one of these hardware accelerated sound cards. Almost everything on the Reloaded development will be focusing on features everyone can enjoy, not just the precious few.
Signing Off
Looks like I got my Monday blog after all. I also got through another level of Dishonoured last night too, and I 'think' I am on the final level, at last. Just have to play a few more hours and then my 'research' will be complete.
I liked part with closed door and changed sound.
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Please, don't stop.
Where are you exactly in Dishonored now?
Would be cool to see doors and thin walls effecting a kind of high-pass filter so bass sounds come through and higher ones progressively quieter.
ReplyDeleteI've just escaped the flooded district and ready to meat out some butt whuppin! Reloaded V1 will use approximations hard coded into the scene, but I would like to think an enhancement users might want is a real 3D landscape for sound. My belief is that it will be what Blue Ray did for DVD video playback. Only when you see it do you understand how primitive you where before, and that all future 'immersive' game play will never be the same again.
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