Amnesia: The Dark Descent with 3D spatial sound 🎧 (OpenAL Soft HRTF audio)
16Use headphones only with any virtual surround features turned off. Best scary binaural audio at 0:12, 4:05, 15:02, 22:06, and 24:22.
Happy Halloween, everyone! The 31-day marathon ends with a bang as I cover what some consider to be the scariest game of all time, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Like its predecessor, the HPL Engine 2 uses OpenAL as its sound API. Strangely, though, the OpenAL32.dll that shipped with the game was actually a disguised DirectSound3D. It seems really odd that they made that mistake after getting it right in Penumbra. Unfortunately, it seems the developers neglected to include any kind of reverb (logfile reads "Room Size: -10000") so there's no benefit to using DSOAL over OpenAL Soft by itself.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent could be considered the greatest proponent for binaural audio in video games. As scary as Amnesia is with just plain stereo, the experience is intensified a hundred times over with OpenAL Soft's HRTF. I would go as far as saying the Cellar Archives with spatial audio is the single scariest moment in gaming. You throw the severed limbs and think you're safe as you turn that wheel, only to hear the unseen monster charge up right behind you as it finished its meal earlier than you anticipated.
It's just a masterpiece; truly one I've been saving for just the right occasion in this series. Except for the missing EFX, Amnesia is a huge step up in sound design from Penumbra. Whereas you'd only ever hear the dogs and various pipe leaks in Overture, each room in Amnesia is just littered with subtle ambience. Everything from the slugs crawling around to the ominous footsteps above your head in the laboratory drive home the feeling of your sanity slowly slipping away.
...Why then, was this wonderful sound engine thrown out for FMOD in Frictional Games' later title SOMA despite the developers being fully-aware that OpenAL Soft existed?
https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-4313-post-35877.html
HRTF grade:
A
Settings:
Windows Control Panel: Stereo
Driver: (Unsupported) OpenAL Soft on Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
(in game.cfg)
FOV = "83.58"
IRC_1037 HRTF tables placed in %APPDATA%/OpenAL/HRTF
(in alsoft.ini located in %APPDATA%)
channels=stereo
frequency=44100
stereo-mode=headphones
cf_level=0
sample-type=float32
periods=3
period_size=128
default-hrtf=irc_1037_44100
hrtf=true
resampler=linear
drivers="-dsound"
Links:
http://openal-soft.org/#download
https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/65094
(Includes pre-made HRTF .mhr files in HARD_MODE_INSTALLATION.zip)
http://repo.or.cz/dsound-openal.git
http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/salles/listen/
http://satsun.org/audio/
Credits:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0067/8492/files/amnesi10.png?17132802137483841046
(Use of this logo falls under fair use laws for non-profit usage.)
#3dsound #spatialaudio #binaural #3daudio #360audio #8daudio #hrtf #headphones #audiophile #gameaudio #indiegaming #mod #halloween #amnesia #frictionalgames
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