This Really Confuses Me - Voices in games

[MrEco]

I'm playing through Resident Evil 6 right now. And I've noticed something in it that quite a few third person games seem to do nowadays. When an NPC is talking, if you change the camera away so you're not looking right at them, then their voice get's much more quiet as if they were talking to you from across the room. Even if they're right behind you.

Why do developer's do this? Is there some kind of technical reason? It just seems like a bad idea, cause most of the time I'm forced to either stop and stare at them while they talk (slowing down the pace of the gameplay to a complete stop) or end up missing out on whatever they're saying.

[Wispmage]

If you're playing on a PC, I've noticed that changing my sound set up from 5.1 Surround to Stereo seems to help with that issue. Not sure what to tell you if you're playing on a console though.

[ZeroAX]

I'm playing through Resident Evil 6 right now. And I've noticed something in it that quite a few third person games seem to do nowadays. When an NPC is talking, if you change the camera away so you're not looking right at them, then their voice get's much more quiet as if they were talking to you from across the room. Even if they're right behind you.

Why do developer's do this? Is there some kind of technical reason? It just seems like a bad idea, cause most of the time I'm forced to either stop and stare at them while they talk (slowing down the pace of the gameplay to a complete stop) or end up missing out on whatever they're saying.

It's probably what happens when people design things they no nothing about (aka the human ear). I'm guessing this is supposed to emulate you listening to what someone is saying VS you walking away from them. The stupid thing about this of course is that just because you've turned your back on someone, doesn't mean you can't hear them clearly.

....specially when you are standing one meter away from them.

[MrPopo]

It is not a technical limitation; the devs are fully in control of the sound levels. What's more likely happening is one of two things:

1. Your audio settings are not set up properly; maybe you selected surround when you only have stereo speakers
2. The devs are trying to simulate the way our ears work, similar to how they try to simulate the effect of vision focusing. Depending on how you orient your head you will be able to hear some things better or worse. And maybe they're also trying to throw in concentration; if I'm running about not looking at someone who's talking I don't hear them as well as if I were giving them eye contact. Now, these might not be calibrated properly, so that the "off screen" voice is too soft, but that's a bug, not a technical limitation.

[ZeroAX]

, but that's a bug, not a technical limitation.

I'd call it bad design. I mean if you are in the same room, you don't really miss so much of the volume of the voice of the person you are talking to.

[MrPopo]

, but that's a bug, not a technical limitation.

I'd call it bad design. I mean if you are in the same room, you don't really miss so much of the volume of the voice of the person you are talking to.

But you miss some; this can be empirically proven. The issue is that the game is reducing it too much because the numbers they're using are wrong; that's just a bug.

[ZeroAX]

, but that's a bug, not a technical limitation.

I'd call it bad design. I mean if you are in the same room, you don't really miss so much of the volume of the voice of the person you are talking to.

But you miss some; this can be empirically proven. The issue is that the game is reducing it too much because the numbers they're using are wrong; that's just a bug.

I think we are saying the same thing, but we just use different definitions. I would call the amount of "noise lost" a design choice, making it bad design. A bug would be something done wrong unintentionally.

So basically the designers probably after putting this feature in their game, didn't bother calibrating it correctly. Maybe it took more processing power than it's worth to calculate how much sound loss there would be, so they chose the easy method of if (soundSourceOnScreen == NO) muffleSound; with no choice of an appropriate sound loss, depending on your distance from the sound source, and the environment around you.

[J T]

I think the game designers are basically doing some bit of programming on the stereo panning to match up with the location of the person in a 3D space, so that the player knows where people are as he/she moves around. It gets botched often though.

It can be useful though if done correctly, or even just mostly correctly. I've noticed myself orienting to sounds when playing FPS games, so that I turned around to face the NPC based on audio, when I didn't know they were there visually.

[CRTGAMER]

I'm playing through Resident Evil 6 right now. And I've noticed something in it that quite a few third person games seem to do nowadays. When an NPC is talking, if you change the camera away so you're not looking right at them, then their voice get's much more quiet as if they were talking to you from across the room. Even if they're right behind you.

Why do developer's do this? Is there some kind of technical reason? It just seems like a bad idea, cause most of the time I'm forced to either stop and stare at them while they talk (slowing down the pace of the gameplay to a complete stop) or end up missing out on whatever they're saying.

I notice this too in FPS as well, Half Life for example. Barney just gets real overly quiet when I turn away even when not moving, the voice getting distant in just one speaker. Just the coding in the game trying to compromise to try to get a real affect in sopund location I guess. The more I spin around the quieter or louder the voices get until getting full volume is on both speakers when facing him.

In the case of the 3rd person games maybe the programmer is trying to simulate the look around mode, even though the on screen character does not physically move.

[Hobie-wan]

One other possibility, do you have any fake surround processing turned on in your sound setup? My Logitech speakers hooked to my PC have a 'Matrix' button that fakes it. I generally turn it on when working during the day since I'm turned around 120 degrees to my work PC so that any music I'm listening to isn't just in my left ear. If I forget to turn it off later when playing a game, some with actual surround sound will be all odd. Some things get muffled and I've had voices totally disappear on me.

Try turning off any processing trickery and see if it sounds better.