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afritz1 / OpenTESArena

Open-source re-implementation of The Elder Scrolls: Arena.
MIT License
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Level transition sound #106

Closed afritz1 closed 6 years ago

afritz1 commented 6 years ago

When the player transitions between interior levels, there's a sound that plays. It's almost like NHIT.VOC, but I don't think it's that, and I haven't found anything closer. Any ideas?

Carmina16 commented 6 years ago

Are you sure there is a sound? It looks like random static to me.

afritz1 commented 6 years ago

It seems to play pretty consistently. I've checked through every .VOC file in the game's data and none of them match up closely enough, so it is a possibility that it's some unintended sound effect. But again, the fact that it's so consistent tells me that it's intentional.

Allofich commented 6 years ago

I just tested it, and I think it may just be a glitch related to cutting off the footstep sound. It doesn't seem to play unless the footstep sound is playing when you transition the level, and I noticed that an in-progress footstep sound is no longer playing once the transition finishes.

Allofich commented 6 years ago

Actually I think the footstep sound maybe isn't being "cut off", the tail end of it is just obscured by the other sound. I tested a bunch of times in a row now and once I was able to get through during footstep playback and it played normally through the transition. Also I tried swinging my weapon while transitioning but nothing seems to happen, the swing sounds just plays normally, although it's a little hard to get the timing right.

Allofich commented 6 years ago

Just to be sure we're talking about the same thing, here is the sound I hear.

Sound.zip

afritz1 commented 6 years ago

Yeah, a bug with the footsteps being cleared is much more plausible. And yeah, that's the sound I was referring to: on the tail end of the footstep. Just a guess (from my limited knowledge of audio), but Arena probably has a separate array for each set of 8-bit PCM samples, and only some of them get cleared when moving between levels, like the footstep sound for example.

Another guess, that since some sounds like footsteps (DIRTL.VOC, DIRTR.VOC) only seem to appear in interior .INF files, they are the only ones that get cleared when moving between levels, while others (ARROWFR.VOC, BASH.VOC, ...) are untouched (presumably).

This seems to be a bug in the original as a result of not properly sharing/clearing data between levels, so I don't think we want to replicate this behavior. I guess there shouldn't be a level transition sound after all.