Tribes 2 DirectSound improvement

When experiencing problems with audio, the usual solution is to select a single processor for Tribes 2 to run on.

This solution is commonly paired with IndirectSound 0.8 to enable 3D positional audio. Versions 0.9 and higher experience a game freezing deadlock.

While this works, it would be nice to let the process roam across cores. It would also be neat to optionally restore the EAX reverb settings.

dsoal seems to have solved this problem. dsoal, like IndirectSound, is a replacement for DirectSound DLLs.

Attached at the end of this post is the current version. Unpack this to your GameData/ directory and run the game.

Does this work for you? It would be great to know if it sounds great or like tinfoil being eaten by a screaming demon.

Audio settings

Miles audio works as usual but without the game deadlocks.

EAX and EAX 2 have environmental audio profiles, meaning different reverb underwater and indoors.

Example of EAX2 environment "Underwater": https://clips.twitch.tv/IcyStrongMinkAliens-lmJoFfwsgAjzcJ3x

Spinfusor shots with EAX2 have a reverb not present when the driver is set to Miles.

Environmental volumes probably need tweaking.

Linux users

Edit alsoft.ini so the drivers line reads: drivers="wasapi," (Linux doesn't get EAX, sorry!)

Failure to do so will result in empty audio drivers and a silent game

Links

http://vaporeon.io/hosted/dsoal-builds/dsoal-r444.7z

http://vaporeon.io/hosted/dsoal-builds/

https://github.com/kcat/dsoal

Extra details

I was tinkering with the audio update rate and disabling the AudioThread.

The audio update rate can be decreased far below the default of 126ms. I have tried it at 32ms and didn't notice much performance change beyond slightly more sounds playing.

The game runs an audio thread which seems to load buffers from disc in the background. Disabling the AudioThread::create calls and restarting the Audio system seems to have no performance impact either way.