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Doom 3 Now Supports Surround Sound
nukem996 writes "DOOM 3 v1.1.1286 for Linux has just been released. ALSA has finally been implemented so Linux gamers can finally play Doom 3 with surround sound! Along with surround sound support this release fixes a number of bugs. You can read Timo's release notes here. As usual the release is up on the idsoftware ftp server and there is a torrent."
What about the GNU/Linux version? Does it have all the support/extras/&c as the MSW version?
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
There is one petition asking for World of Warcraft to work under Linux. Sign it and pass it on.
I'm using ALSA 1.05. I can set "s_driver alsa" and "s_NumberOfSpeakers 6" but I still get 2.0 audio.
I didn't want surround sound. I wanted the gamma to be increased so I could actually see things instead of shooting at siloeuettes.
Maybe this is all still part of the 'atmosphere' scam that they put us through. No thanks iD, I preferred Doom 2. Faster, funnier, and better to play. If I'd wanted to shoot at blacker areas of dark screen, I'd have turned down the brightness on my monitor. Dark areas aren't scary. They're just annoying.
May the Maths Be with you!
Doom 3 already supports surround sound doesn't it? Or is this one of those "now also in Linux" things? The title could be made a little more clear I think.
is there a changelog anywhere?
How is the game funny?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
This again brings up a major complaint of mine with Linux on the desktop. Lack of standards for companies to just use and get things done. Why didn't Doom 3 for Linux ship with this? Why does about every game I have bought in the past two years on Windows support surround sound just fine? The community needs to look at issues like this, and agree to come togther to solve them, instead of creating 5 ways to fix it.
For now, and the forseeable future, my OS plans are this:
Linux on the server
Windows on the gaming PC
OS X on the machine to do everything else
I'd love for Linux to replace Windows on my gaming box, and it is one reason I watch WineX carefully.
Why didn't Doom 3 for Linux ship with this? Why does about every game I have bought in the past two years on Windows support surround sound just fine?
Allow me to rewrite your question from an opposite perspective:
Why did id choose to write its sound code using an API that hasn't been actively developed by the community in years, and from which everyone is moving away? Why didn't they write code that works with what people are actually using?
People are working on sound for Linux. It's called ALSA. It's what pretty much everyone using a 2.6 kernel will be using. It does desktop audio. It does professional audio. [1] It emulates OSS for legacy compatibility, but if you want to actually take advantage of its features, you need to actually use it.
So, yes, why didn't Doom 3 on Linux ship with this? Because id didn't put in the extra effort, and because they wanted to support the old API for some reason. This isn't the fault of 'the community.' The API is already out there. ALSA didn't just suddenly gain support for surround sound. It's had it. The fact here is that id is just now including support for the current Linux sound architecture.
Would you blame Microsoft if Halflife 2 only used features from DirectX 6 at first, and then in a later patch they updated it to use DirectX 9?
[1] ALSA doesn't work too well on some cards unfortunately. The reason for this is that some companies refuse to release specifications in order for drivers to be written. This means that the developers (only a few people) have to reverse engineer the cards to write drivers. This is hardly the fault of 'the community' either, and really, they've done a remarkable job on some of them, considering what they've had to work with.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
It's not a matter of lack of standards at all. Linux has had support for 5.1 surround sound for years now, as well as a pretty good high-level API for gaming-oriented positional audio, too (OpenAL, used in many games including all Unreal2 engine games under Linux).
It's really just id Software who's been slacking off, writing an half-assed sound backend (or, rather, using their shitty broken in-house backend for the fourth fucking time now) and saying "OK, it's good enough for release".
Sadly, one can say id has only further sank the cause of gaming under Linux with their shoddy DOOM III port. Mis-informed people like you saw the original release and said "WTF? No 5.1 sound? Linux still doesn't support THAT? Linux isn't worth shit for for games!". Not that I'm blaming you, as it really does make it seem that way.
I wish game producers like id would think more about that the next time they release a Linux port. In the end, an incomplete port (even if they fix it later) only hurts the state of Linux gaming.
I just installed the new Linux version of Doom 3 over the first release and got to hear surround right away (after setting surround in the menu). One thing that bothers me - and this is occurs in the Windows version too - is that the rear surround channels are too quiet. There needs to be some sort of rear channel adjustment in the game if simply hardcoding the volume up conflicts with other people's configurations in which the volume is just fine.
No other game that uses surround has this problem. The UT2004 demo used to have a quiet sound problem on all channels on both Windows and Linux, but that got solved rather quickly.
I guess I should mention I have an SBLive! Value (4-channel version of the EMU10K1), but it shouldn't matter much, considering it has a pretty large user base.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Great. Now if only they'd 'support' surround sound for Doom 3 under Windows. Mine cuts out after 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. Neither iD nor Activision seem interested in acknowledging the problem, and I doubt they ever will, seeing as how they can't make any money off of the sound engine, thanks to Creative Labs. I'm tempted to install my copy under Linux, but I have an X800Pro. ATI+Linux+Doom 3 == ch-ch-choppy. At best.
This is the first time I have been moderated down incorrectly! Like blimey, what was trollish about that post?
This place really doesn't like contrary opinion does it?
OSS may be more mature, and an easier API to develop for, but that doesn't negate my point.
OSS is not free software anymore. There's an older version in the kernel, but if you want any current support, you have to pay for it. It can't be community developed.
The 'Linux community' has produced an audio framework capable of whatever the original poster wants. ALSA can do surround sound. ALSA is community developed, and presumably what will be used in the future.
The original poster wanted to know why Doom 3 didn't come with surround sound. Well, it's not because it's not possible on Linux. The framework is there. But id used OSS at first (perhaps for valid reasons), and apparently they couldn't do surround sound in OSS.
You can't blame 'The Community' if they produce a working system with the required features, and then the game developer decides to use something else without the features.
As for your troll mod, I think it was undeserved. My guess is that the mods are punishing you for calling ALSA the "newest whiizbang-thingy." After all, it has been around for three or four years now, and is quite clearly the direction that Linux audio is going in.
I've come for the woman, and your head.