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forgettable pyromaniac

A Small Idea I don't think would kill to implement.

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This idea is mostly for newer Source Ports, but I still think the idea holds.

Sound Subtitles.

Yes, a very simple thing, but I think it would go a long way.
For people who can't hear v. well, it'd be very useful, and for those who need the extra information, that would also be helpful.

This isn't like a "bro do this now" type thing, cuz I don't wanna be one of those people, but it's just an idea I think could really help in some cases.
 

Spoiler

If you need an example, look no further than minecraft:

1941653236_ScreenShot2021-02-15at13_46_12.png.15b25270d47f68af4c34b0305ea81495.png

I use it myself.


I don't think it would be... SUPER hard to do, right?

Yeah it would of course take some time, but it shouldn't be considered a huge task, right?

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This is one of those accessibility options that's useful for more people than one might presuppose. I love the subtitles in Overwatch personally.

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1 hour ago, PaquoCastor said:

This is one of those accessibility options that's useful for more people than one might presuppose. I love the subtitles in Overwatch personally.

I use them all the time, which is why I thought it would be useful.

At the very least, even if it never became official in any Source-Ports, a mod for this would be very useful indeed.

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I dont think this is actually that easy to implement because you have to real time monitor every sound producing entity in the area where it is relatively. So that means monsters growling, hurting, doors opening and so on.

 

If monsters infight, especially in bigger groups, you will get a barrage of visual messages. Imagine maps with large amounts of monsters.

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Basically, what you're asking for is referred to as closed captions in some games.

 

I think this would be a neat idea too, I always use closed captions in games if they're available, HL2 and mods especially.

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4 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

If monsters infight, especially in bigger groups, you will get a barrage of visual messages. Imagine maps with large amounts of monsters.

 

Isn't the traditional solution to only display up to a set number of subtitles at a time. Of course there's multiple solutions to what should be being displayed when there's cut-off.

 

I just remembered another game in which I use this feature: Sonic Robo Blast 2.

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6 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

I dont think this is actually that easy to implement because you have to real time monitor every sound producing entity in the area where it is relatively. So that means monsters growling, hurting, doors opening and so on.

 

If monsters infight, especially in bigger groups, you will get a barrage of visual messages. Imagine maps with large amounts of monsters.

A maximum of eight subtitles or so (as a default, and maybe customizable) would probably be best, along with a priority thing, maybe.
 

Spoiler

as an example, top to bottom (most important to least important)

Firing from Monsters
Firing from (other) Players (not including your own shots)
Monster Pain Sounds
Monster Search Sounds
Player "oomph" Sounds (Falling, Interacting)
Stepping Sounds ("Boss" Demons)


The reason why I said it shouldn't be like very hard is because the sounds and directions where they come from (i.e. left/right channel) are already in and stuff, all we would need (in theory) is a way to take the directional data, along with making a few Strings, and a way to show the data.

Of course, I'm heavily over-simplifying this, and I know it'll take a lotta work, and I don't discredit anyone's coding at all, I'm just saying that this would be really helpful. So please don't take it that way.

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I've asked GZDoom devs to add a base for this. The answer was No. As I understand, it's very complicated to provide sound information from the engine without exposing underlying implementation, which is very undesirable in case of it changing.

 

That said, sound subtitles are 100% doable in a mod. Actors that emit sounds would post their coordinates and some descriptive text to some subtitles system, and this system would display it on screen via libeye.

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5 hours ago, m8f said:

I've asked GZDoom devs to add a base for this. The answer was No. As I understand, it's very complicated to provide sound information from the engine without exposing underlying implementation, which is very undesirable in case of it changing.

 

That said, sound subtitles are 100% doable in a mod. Actors that emit sounds would post their coordinates and some descriptive text to some subtitles system, and this system would display it on screen via libeye.

 

Yea, seems fair. Like I said, that would work fine, just dunno who I would ask about that.

 

It's completely fair that they wouldn't add it, like I said, it was just an idea.

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Depends how in-depth you want to go with it, but IIRC GZDoom actually has a debug feature where it displays the sounds that are played when playback begins. Of course it's not proper captioning since it's using the sound's "logical name" instead.

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1 hour ago, Gez said:

Depends how in-depth you want to go with it, but IIRC GZDoom actually has a debug feature where it displays the sounds that are played when playback begins. Of course it's not proper captioning since it's using the sound's "logical name" instead.

I was mostly thinking just general direction (left and right), and which type of monster did it, as in <Monster/Player> <Does what> (i.e. Cyberdemon Steps, Imp Snarls)

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Subtitles are barely tolerable.  I use them often to watch foreign programs.

It is hard to pay any attention to action when you have to read subtitles all the time.

You are going to get killed while reading "monster growls" instead of turning to defend yourself.

 

Most every idea is going to run into the problem that sounds can be changed,

and none of them have a textual description.  There are massive number of existing wads

that do not have any subtitle support.  Knowing the sound name is of little use, as they were limited

length and generally over-abbreviated.

 

What would be better is "Visual Sound".

Due to wide screens being wider  than the normal Doom screen format, there are bars available

at the left and right that can be used to display Stereo Visual Sound, and not have to overlay

it on the screen.

 

Most applications that have Visual Sound allow a selection of the display transform.

The Visual Sound transform needs to have fast recognition, and a degree of inherent recognition

is preferrable.

 

1.  Frequency Graph.

Run each channel through a FastFFT and display the frequency intensity

in the Visual Sound bars.  This can handle any sound without having to

The user would have to learn to interpret the display, and associate each visual display

with what produced the sound.

Only the FFT and visual display is needed.  No support information is needed from wads.

Has no inherent recognition.

 

2. Icon

Each sound play would have an icon that is displayed in the Visual Display area

for the time the sound is playing.

The sound volume can be used to control the icon size, or its brightness (or both).

More important items like weapons would be placed at the top, monsters in the middle,

and other sounds at the bottom.

For monsters, the sprite frames are already available and can be displayed quickly.

For other sounds, would have to add a visual sound icon for the sound.

For most sound, we know what produced it, even if dehacked has changed the sound.

Some appropriate icon could be created for each, even for Heretic environment sounds.

This does require some support icons to be created, and some dehacked wads might want to

modifiy the icons used to something more appropriate.

This has high inherent recognition.

 

3. Abstract Patterns

There would be a line draw based pattern generator that displays visual sounds.

It would have several parameters, such as category, shape, danger-level, density, color, intensity.

From these parameters it would generate a pattern.  A particular sound would always generate

a similar pattern, with sound volume mapped to intensity.

Each sound would generate a pattern, using almost any sound data, such as a hash of the name.

Monsters could have their own category and specific shapes.

As it is abstract patterns, they must be learned and associated with the monster or action.

This is much simpler to implement as it only requires the generator, and does not need

any new information for dehacked wads.

Due to the categories and shapes, it has moderate inherent recognition.

Certain patterns are always monsters, and a relative danger ranking can be indicated in an

inherent recognizable way even when the monster has not been encountered before.

 

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An additional element is Spatial Mapping.

The placement on the sound indicator on the sound bars would correspond to spacial indication of the sound direction.

 

Sounds to the front can be display at the top of the sound bars, and sounds behind the player can be display at the bottom.

Left and right sound spatial location can use left/right relative intensities and/or left/right relative placement in the sound bar.

If vertical indication of spacial location is used, then some horizontal indication of spatial location will be expected, and it

would be confusing to not have it.


The code can cheat and just use the source location, so there is no need to reconstruct this.

The source of the sound is known, and additional information as to front-back can be passed as a parameter (which is used for quad sound too).

 

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We had a (wonky) form of this implemented at one point a few years back in EDGE, when we switched to using another cinematic rendering sub-system and different audio backend, using libASS/OALsoft/ffmpeg and subtitle files.
In gameplay, IIRC they’d be optionally parsed through a new COAL backend that could seek through (for cinematics it worked natively for rendered videos), though it never got very far. One day I’ll have to revisit that if I ever get enough personal time or interest back.

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I had implemented a similar idea a long time ago in a modified version of DelphiDoom. Instead of cc I used comic bubbles.

 

Spoiler

IMG00019.jpg

 

 

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On 2/15/2021 at 3:50 PM, forgettablepyromaniac said:

For people who can't hear v. well, it'd be very useful

would be cool to see i can hear very well but a lot of times im playing doom while studing seeing some videos or listening to music so i would love to see this get implemented in the future

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