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/vr/ - Retro Games

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3740884 No.3740884 [Reply] [Original]

Do you want nice EAX environmental effects in your old ish PC games (such as Unreal '97, the first game to use EAX effects)? Of course you do.

Some background: EAX was a proprietary audio API by Creative back in the early 90s and 2000s for making games have nice audio effects such as environmental based reverb and 3D stereo and such. Quite a lot of well known games during the period picked up support for the technology, most of the big ones in fact. It was originally tied to Creative soundcards only as the effects were done by the hardware, So you needed a Soundblaster or Audigy to benefit.

When Vista released, Microsoft fucked Creative over by removing some directx API they used to do EAX. In response Creative released a way to emulate the hardware effects in software. But Creative, being massive jews of course, artificially limited this program to people who still had Creative soundcards in their machine, even though the processing was all done with software now and the hardware could not be used.

Anyway, i went on a search for how to bring EAX to muh old PC games to play on my toaster laptop which definitely doesnt have Creative soundcard, and now im posting the archive i have compiled with the files and instructions inside you need to do it yourself without needing to research random forums threads and shit.

I would say it is worth it. Doom 3 in particular takes on a new atmosphere with the reverb effects, since most of the game occurs inside.

Here is the VT report for the archive, you can check file hashes yourself or just reupload to VT if you like. https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/2d64454b2b9248e8be2cd2eff18ecea594094fb332a0776d69ec5226449267eb/analysis/1484548515/

The archive: https://my.mixtape.moe/gygjfr.rar

>> No.3740894

>>3740884
I only have like 2 games that use EAX, but neither of them have given me any shit for not having a Soundblaster card.

Tron 2.0 works fine for me with it on, although I have the killer app mod installed.
The other one is Bioshock, which is also working just great.

>> No.3740918

>>3740894

Its not like the sound wont work at all if you dont have a soundblaster. It will just be basic software sound without EAX effects.

See how it modifies the feel of Doom 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmEencPw5d8 [i cant into embed]

Theres no reason games couldnt have always had nice reverb and 3D audio as standard, it was just a lot of history with Creative being MASSIVE litigious jews back in the day, and then everyone stopping caring about audio quality for years. Thats changing though, for eg the latest release of OpenALSoft can do both decent HRTF audio and EFX [a thing which can do everything Creatives EAX 5.0 could do and more] as standard and for free. So hopefully the audio situation in games should improve in the next few years.

>> No.3740920

>>3740918

Apparently i can into embed because its automatic.

>> No.3740935

>>3740884
Wish I had this before buying a creative soundcard lmao.

>> No.3740952

>>3740918
Interesting.

Tron 2.0 is definitely running full EAX on my system though.

If I run into anything else that uses EAX I'll try your stuff though.

>> No.3741032

>>3740952
What he mentioned only works for OpenAL games, not Directsound 3D + EAX which was a popular combination. For that you still need creative's alchemy.

>> No.3741041

>>3740884
You can still buy creative's software solution that lets you use alchemy and openal from their online store.
http://software.store.creative.com/p/software/sound-blaster-x-fi-mb3

>> No.3741168

>>3740884
A week before the game's release, it became known that an agreement to include EAX audio technology in Doom 3 reached by id Software and Creative Labs was heavily influenced by a software patent owned by the latter company. The patent dealt with a technique for rendering shadows called Carmack's Reverse, which was developed independently by both John Carmack and programmers at Creative Labs. id Software would have placed themselves under legal liability for using the technique in the finished game, so to defuse the issue, id Software agreed to license Creative Labs sound technologies in exchange for indemnification against lawsuits.

>> No.3741443

>>3740884
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/Realtek-3D-SoundBack.shtml

Just use Realtek's olde 3D Soundback. But EAX doesn't seem to work unless you have actual CREATIVE jews hardware. Other HRTF effects and stuff work just fine, at least in the "not retro" 2000s games I've tested it with.

>> No.3741447

>>3741168
>John Carmack and programmers at Creative Labs.

John Carmack is a jew pawn? Colored me a cuckold!

>> No.3741469

>>3741443

>didnt read the OP

>> No.3741497

>>3741469
to be fair OP didn't actually say what was in the archive, just what it does.

>> No.3741528

>>3741447
Carmack was prepared to use a two-pass algorithm that gave equivalent results at a speed hit, but negotiated the deal with Creative so that they were able to use the zfail method without having to actually pay any cash. It was tempting to take a stand and say our products were never going to use any advanced Creative/3dlabs products because of their position on patenting gaming software algorithms, but that would only have hurt the users.

>> No.3741540

It doesn't seem like you're using this supposed newer version of OpenAL installer.

http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/10-openal/

>> No.3743213

>>3741540

huh. Never seen that before. oh well.