I agree on most of the suggestions here, especially the ones regarding NGLE's performances and reverberation.
I would like to add another suggestion about sounds too:
-----------------------
There's no possibility to
really customize footstep sounds right now. You can replace the ones you're not using or the ones that are already used and enabled in-game... But it would be very cool to actually be able to at least add other sounds and customize those already existing.
For example, seperating
grass and
sand, because... why not having seperated sounds for both types of ground? Or,
"old wood" and "
old metal" that are using simply the
wood and
metal sounds. And there's no difference between them (at least I haven't heard any). And this "
concrete" that seems not even to exist at all, it makes no sound ingame.
The
stone is already assigned to the default foot sound and we can't make it additionnal.
If I want, for example, use a
carpet sound in one level that has no
wood for example, I'll replace the
wood by the
carpet... but then, I have to use different sound files, and even if that's what some people are doing, it's not really a convenient way to work for everyone. If you want to make, for example, a change to a sound that is used in several levels, you need to do it in each file each time. Waste of time.
The
ice sound actually isn't directly available, but in the code it's still present
since TR3. Line 283 (just after the mud). In the
sounds.txt file, it's actually a sound of the horseman, but if you add it in your level and apply
ice footsteps for some textures, it's actually these sounds that will play. If you don't use a horseman, (and even if you do as you can change the sound for it anyway), you can replace the line with this:
Code:
FOOTSTEPS_ICE: fs_ice1 fs_ice2 VOL30 P V PIT40 #g
For the
snow, it's a... different but also similar story. It acutally uses the line of the
marble footstep (line 293, just after the wood). Because it was this way in TR3. So in the little window, the Snow entry is completely useless. It's the same case as the sand and grass. Technically it's also the same case as wood and old wood. Or metal and old metal. You want a proof? You can test it by yourself, or have a look at the files that had leaked with the SDK in 2013 (there's the Sounds.tr3.txt file in it).
When you set a texture sound to Stone, it actually stops playing any footstep sound. Why? Because in the animations, it plays two things. For example, in an animation, when one foot hits the ground:
Code:
1 - Play Sound on land. Frame:5, SoundID:0
2 - Play effect. Frame:4, Effect:Play step sound on land
The first line plays the sound with ID 0: the first of the sounds.txt file: the
stone sound, as we know it.
The second line plays an "effect" (like in flipeffect): here it's about playing the sound of the texture Lara is walking on. For example,
sand. As a result, with these two lines, you'll here the stone
sound + the
sand sound. But if she's walking on a
stone texture, they decided not to play anything with the effect line, (because if it did, you would hear two
stone sounds when one foot hits the ground). That means only the Play Sound line will actually have a consequence: it will still play the
stone default sound step sound.
This is how it works in TRLE. Maybe you'll ask me now "
Then why, in the NGLE window, where it's written the name of the sample played, it's written foot01.wav... when the Stone is selected?". It's only plain text actually. If you change it in your sounds.txt file, or anywhere, it won't change anything in the program.
To sum up, even if there are 13 sounds showing up in the little window where you set them up, we're actually limited to a number of 8 footsteps sounds (exculding water):
-
Stone - ID
0
-
Mud - ID
288
-
Ice - ID
289
-
Gravel - ID
290
-
Sand (& grass) - ID
291
-
Wood (& old wood) - ID
292
-
Marble (& snow) - ID
293
-
Metal (& old metal) - ID
294
We could, only using the original list, have 6 more sounds, that means 13 total sounds:
-
Stone
-
Mud
-
Ice
-
Gravel
-
Sand
-
Grass
-
Wood
-
Old Wood
-
Marble
-
Snow
-
Metal
-
Old Metal
-
Concrete
And only with that we could have different types of ground than these names of course.
And imagine if we could add as many as we wanted...