Awesome, thank you. The AL audio is interesting. Its quieter. It seems to miss some sounds sometimes. Doesn't feel as consistent, but was that intended as it should be more positional audio?
There shouldn't be any sounds missed; the mixer is set up to play 4 times as many samples simultaneously without having to cull lower priority audio.
The quietness you're describing may be because the volume slider applies a logarithmic scale to the gain so you have more perceptible control over the full range, rather than going from quite loud to nothing at all, or you might be describing the roll-off factor of the inverse distance attenuation model, which is part of a more immersive spatial audio solution, and is supposed to be closer to real life sound propagation, essentially emulating what the expensive sound cards were designed to do back in the day... whereas with the main Miles software providers they're generally set to use a simpler linear model, which isn't physically realistic (and will be much higher volume mid-field), but is predictable and cheap to calculate. With Miles 2D, try spawning something like a Shrike or a grav cycle and walk away from it, listening closely to the steady decrease until *pop*, it's culled out, from quiet but audible to not playing at all. The linear falloff is fine, but it feels pretty unnatural if you're paying close attention to it, and it arguably doesn't work nearly as well for judging where something is around you.
The game does use derive the roll-off from min/max distance values provided by emitter objects, so it's possible many are tuned better for linear attenuation and get quieter a little too fast... back in the day there was some custom handling for hardware sound cards to scale it a little differently, but those haven't been applied here.
Biggest remaining problem with the OpenAL integration might be the fluttering that can occur when your turn with a thruster directly behind your head
There's a new build that's mostly just the hotfix for that memory leak and a few minor tweaks under the hood, like the AVX code nominally only being used if AVX support is detected. I do have something more interesting that I wanted to finish up and merge in before pushing another build, but a memory leak is worth fixing on its own.
Just wanted to let you know that since you put in the update that fixed IFF visual range myself and a few other players have been getting a lot of seemingly random game freezes during play.
It's odd because it's not a UE or an actual hard game freeze where you need to force close the program, but basically all in-game visuals freeze and don't respond to most inputs, but you can freely switch between 1st and 3rd person, and you can also fully access the game menu. So you are able to open the menu, leave the match, then rejoin. It's an odd one.
Would need more information to go on; unless you mean the rendering is frozen, which wouldn't show 1st/3rd switch, what you're describing is generally the behaviour of a server not sending you packets, or you being unable to process the packets you receive, which I could easily cause to happen on my own server intentionally, but might try for a thousand years and never reproduce naturally. There were no gameplay networking changes in the past month.
If it's not happening to others on the same server at the exact same time. i.e. not a network timeout or server load issue, what's different about your setup? Are you on a mobile network? Are you behind a VPN? Are you behind an ancient router? What operating system are you using? Are you using any scripts that might cause you to try to send packets to the server far more than 32 times per second? Do you have any idea how to make it happen again? Did you record a demo?
That could be it with sounds tapering differently with AL vs Miles. I'll try both again on the new patch. Thank you!
One other note, and I could be confused, but default path is Tribes~1 for patch. I remember the first preview it updated fine, and the second time IFF update did not work until I changed install folder to Tribes2\GameData. I have several installs on PC at moment from troubleshooting patched/unpatched so could be I just updated wrong folder for my shortcut to run from.
Last, au75yroldfart mentioned he had an error with the patch, where it was looking for KERNEL.DLL. He said he was going to make a post about it but haven't seen it yet. Not sure what his OS setup looks like, he's an old school nerd.
Yeah, I wrote the install path detection script for the old patch back in 2008/2009, but it basically defaults to C:\Dynamix\Tribes2\GameData\ and then goes through a handful of options to detect if it can find the actual install: it'll read 4 or 5 registry keys that the old installer would add, the path the patcher is in, a couple subdirectories (GameData, etc) where the installer is, then Program Files, and stops at the first Tribes2.exe it finds. I think on my main system it just stays on the default because there's an old registry key pointing there, even though there's no install there.
A missing kernel32 entry point would definitely be an old system, but I'd be curious which it's missing and just how old the OS is. 7 should be fully supported, Vista is theoretically supported, XP is... a long shot (would be a lot of work), and 98 is not going to be possible.
You're going to want to update to the hotfix version in the first post, it looks like you most likely ran out of address space due to the memory leak on sound file loading in the previous build (being a 32 bit program, there's only a few gigabytes to work with even if you've got tons of memory).
Krash - as Winged Warrior (Thanks mate!) mentioned I had an error on a spare version of Playt2 download so orig T2 is OK.
All upgrade installed fine, clicked Start T2 Online Icon under Fuser and got -
Started fault finding by checking all files downloaded ok against files in folder. Some dates seemed wrong so remd out all files in update list and reran install to ensure all were correct now in folder - checked ok EXCEPT Uninstall_T file.
Based on Error Message, I started to check if KERNEL.dll existed in my Win7 Pro Windows/System32 folder which it does as kernel.dll So I used Notepad++ to search the file for 'SetThreadDescription'. Every 'SetThread*' exists, but NOT 'Description'
Look forward to a fix thanks, Krash, cheers mate!
BTW, can you help with this recent problem that I cannot play on the T2 Server 45.76.226.133 or ANY 45.76.226.* server as it lets me select and when about half inch indicated on loading Map it just stalls and locks there on all my T2 .exe versions.
Whoops, you're right – SetThreadDescription wasn't added until Win10/Server2016. That should be loading dynamically for only the systems that have it... I'll fix that for the next build. Can't promise I've 100% crossed out every case like this for supporting older systems, but I'm certain there's nothing in it that can't run on there, it's just some API changes.
What's going on when you stall? Is the game frozen, or do you see chat (assuming the debrief screen came up) or hear activity from other players?
Comments
Awesome, thank you. The AL audio is interesting. Its quieter. It seems to miss some sounds sometimes. Doesn't feel as consistent, but was that intended as it should be more positional audio?
Does this effect servers?
No, servers don't play sounds.
There shouldn't be any sounds missed; the mixer is set up to play 4 times as many samples simultaneously without having to cull lower priority audio.
The quietness you're describing may be because the volume slider applies a logarithmic scale to the gain so you have more perceptible control over the full range, rather than going from quite loud to nothing at all, or you might be describing the roll-off factor of the inverse distance attenuation model, which is part of a more immersive spatial audio solution, and is supposed to be closer to real life sound propagation, essentially emulating what the expensive sound cards were designed to do back in the day... whereas with the main Miles software providers they're generally set to use a simpler linear model, which isn't physically realistic (and will be much higher volume mid-field), but is predictable and cheap to calculate. With Miles 2D, try spawning something like a Shrike or a grav cycle and walk away from it, listening closely to the steady decrease until *pop*, it's culled out, from quiet but audible to not playing at all. The linear falloff is fine, but it feels pretty unnatural if you're paying close attention to it, and it arguably doesn't work nearly as well for judging where something is around you.
The game does use derive the roll-off from min/max distance values provided by emitter objects, so it's possible many are tuned better for linear attenuation and get quieter a little too fast... back in the day there was some custom handling for hardware sound cards to scale it a little differently, but those haven't been applied here.
Biggest remaining problem with the OpenAL integration might be the fluttering that can occur when your turn with a thruster directly behind your head
Could have HRTF settings too at some point, maybe
There's a new build that's mostly just the hotfix for that memory leak and a few minor tweaks under the hood, like the AVX code nominally only being used if AVX support is detected. I do have something more interesting that I wanted to finish up and merge in before pushing another build, but a memory leak is worth fixing on its own.
Hey Krash, loving the new patch so far!
Just wanted to let you know that since you put in the update that fixed IFF visual range myself and a few other players have been getting a lot of seemingly random game freezes during play.
It's odd because it's not a UE or an actual hard game freeze where you need to force close the program, but basically all in-game visuals freeze and don't respond to most inputs, but you can freely switch between 1st and 3rd person, and you can also fully access the game menu. So you are able to open the menu, leave the match, then rejoin. It's an odd one.
Would need more information to go on; unless you mean the rendering is frozen, which wouldn't show 1st/3rd switch, what you're describing is generally the behaviour of a server not sending you packets, or you being unable to process the packets you receive, which I could easily cause to happen on my own server intentionally, but might try for a thousand years and never reproduce naturally. There were no gameplay networking changes in the past month.
If it's not happening to others on the same server at the exact same time. i.e. not a network timeout or server load issue, what's different about your setup? Are you on a mobile network? Are you behind a VPN? Are you behind an ancient router? What operating system are you using? Are you using any scripts that might cause you to try to send packets to the server far more than 32 times per second? Do you have any idea how to make it happen again? Did you record a demo?
That could be it with sounds tapering differently with AL vs Miles. I'll try both again on the new patch. Thank you!
One other note, and I could be confused, but default path is Tribes~1 for patch. I remember the first preview it updated fine, and the second time IFF update did not work until I changed install folder to Tribes2\GameData. I have several installs on PC at moment from troubleshooting patched/unpatched so could be I just updated wrong folder for my shortcut to run from.
Last, au75yroldfart mentioned he had an error with the patch, where it was looking for KERNEL.DLL. He said he was going to make a post about it but haven't seen it yet. Not sure what his OS setup looks like, he's an old school nerd.
Yeah, I wrote the install path detection script for the old patch back in 2008/2009, but it basically defaults to
C:\Dynamix\Tribes2\GameData\and then goes through a handful of options to detect if it can find the actual install: it'll read 4 or 5 registry keys that the old installer would add, the path the patcher is in, a couple subdirectories (GameData, etc) where the installer is, then Program Files, and stops at the first Tribes2.exe it finds. I think on my main system it just stays on the default because there's an old registry key pointing there, even though there's no install there.A missing kernel32 entry point would definitely be an old system, but I'd be curious which it's missing and just how old the OS is. 7 should be fully supported, Vista is theoretically supported, XP is... a long shot (would be a lot of work), and 98 is not going to be possible.
Error with the TribesNEXT_20250824_preview patch:
You're going to want to update to the hotfix version in the first post, it looks like you most likely ran out of address space due to the memory leak on sound file loading in the previous build (being a 32 bit program, there's only a few gigabytes to work with even if you've got tons of memory).
thanks, updated and worked fine.
The only thing that isn't working is screen clipping/capturing. I'm using Medal and haven't tried anything else yet.
Krash - as Winged Warrior (Thanks mate!) mentioned I had an error on a spare version of Playt2 download so orig T2 is OK.
All upgrade installed fine, clicked Start T2 Online Icon under Fuser and got -
Started fault finding by checking all files downloaded ok against files in folder. Some dates seemed wrong so remd out all files in update list and reran install to ensure all were correct now in folder - checked ok EXCEPT Uninstall_T file.
Based on Error Message, I started to check if KERNEL.dll existed in my Win7 Pro Windows/System32 folder which it does as kernel.dll So I used Notepad++ to search the file for 'SetThreadDescription'. Every 'SetThread*' exists, but NOT 'Description'
Look forward to a fix thanks, Krash, cheers mate!
BTW, can you help with this recent problem that I cannot play on the T2 Server 45.76.226.133 or ANY 45.76.226.* server as it lets me select and when about half inch indicated on loading Map it just stalls and locks there on all my T2 .exe versions.
Whoops, you're right – SetThreadDescription wasn't added until Win10/Server2016. That should be loading dynamically for only the systems that have it... I'll fix that for the next build. Can't promise I've 100% crossed out every case like this for supporting older systems, but I'm certain there's nothing in it that can't run on there, it's just some API changes.
What's going on when you stall? Is the game frozen, or do you see chat (assuming the debrief screen came up) or hear activity from other players?
I'm not familiar with Medal. Do you know how it selects what it's recording? Is it looking for a specific window name?
Recording software should be able to pick it up, I've used my GPU driver's software for captures quite a bit.
I think Medal looks for an *.exe and either didn't find T2.exe or recognize it as a running game *.exe
Nvidia recording works (my issue with that is it doesn't record audio, that's a me problem not yours)