Miles Sound System and why Snover hates it \ VOGONS

Miles Sound System and why Snover hates it

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First post, by HunterZ

Posted on 2004-12-08, 03:17

HunterZ Offline

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Snover, that's your cue...

For the uninformed:
http://www.radgametools.com/miles.htm

Basically, Miles Sound System (MSS) is a package developed by Rad Game Tools that game developers can integrate into their games to let them do music and sound effects without having to worry as much about complicated stuff like EAX and DirectSound3D and whether or not a particular user's system supports certain sound-related features.

A quick scan of my hard drive yields the following list of games that use MSS:
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- Gothic
- Half-Life/Counter-Strike

I'm pretty sure that Blizzard was a huge factor in the rise to success of RAD Game Tools (whoa, they're not that far from me geographically - want me to bomb 'em for you Snover?). Blizzard has used MSS and other RAD tools like Bink and Smacker (packages that help developers add cutscenes/mini-movies/full-motion-video to their games) in most of their games.

Here's a somewhat outdated list on their site of companies and games that use MSS (scroll down past the testimonials):
http://www.radgametools.com/mssgames.htm

I personally don't have any issues with RAD's tools, so I'm curious to see what Snover's beef with them is. I do wish that developers would give the user more control over the way their games use MSS though - I remember that Fallout: Tactics allowed you to choose from like 10 different MSS drivers. Yet, these days games that use MSS typically only allow you to choose "hardware" or "software" and sometimes "EAX". Bleh.

Reply 1 of 10, by Snover

Posted on 2004-12-08, 05:01

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My hate for Miles Sound System starts with my first sound card, a MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum. The driver specific to the MediaVision in any game using MSS absolutely refused to work. Just didn't work. There wasn't a REASON for it to not work, it worked fine in Windows 3.11, it worked fine with other sound systems, it just would NOT work with the native MSS driver. (Or, with a later version of MSS, it worked but the audio would crackle or the system would lock up. *YES* the settings were correct, I scoured the fucking manual of both the game and the card to find a solution!) I always ended up needing to use their crappy "Sound Blaster Pro or 100% compatible" driver even though the Pro Audio Spectrum was a 16-bit card.

Now comes MSS for Windows. Man, does that thing blow. None of the 3D effects seem to offload to hardware, even when the hardware capability is available. It's ALL done in software and then just pipes to DirectSound (used to do it to WaveOut), which means excessively high CPU usage. Somehow, they also managed TOTALLY fuck it up so that it would skip and break every few seconds when playing BINK video on Audigy cards (FF8). (Okay, maybe this was the fault of Creative, but still -- wouldn't you TEST with one of the most popular cards before releasing your shit?! They later released a work-around version of the BINK driver.)

That, coupled with the studder fiasco of Half-Life 2 (which supposedly is related to the video texture loading, but I still have my doubts about the true culprit -- bugs seem to follow wherever Miles sets foot), makes me very hateful toward the thing.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 2 of 10, by HunterZ

Posted on 2004-12-08, 05:14

HunterZ Offline

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Hmm. Well I don't blame you for your opinion then, although I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the blame lies with the game developers for not using the full capabilities of MSS. Speaking as a software engineer (i.e. out of my hindquarters), I'd guess that the API/SDK is probably pretty decent, but that developers probably slap it into their game engines just to get sound working, without taking the time to learn how to make it do the really cool stuff.

I actually have a directory on my hard drive full of Bink, Smacker, and MSS DLLs, and when I install a new game I usually replace its version of these files with the newest version that will work with that game:

1 Volume in drive D is BNSSN1B
2 Volume Serial Number is 5026-A0F8
3
4 Directory of D:\raddlls
5
611/09/2004  08:51 PM    <DIR>          .
711/09/2004  08:51 PM    <DIR>          ..
812/20/2000  04:17 PM           211,456 a3dapi.dll.2.02
908/19/1999  11:40 AM           286,720 a3dapi.dll.2.22
1008/17/2001  10:36 PM           462,848 a3dapi.dll.3.02
1103/06/2000  02:12 AM           471,040 a3dapi.dll.3.12
1201/20/1999  03:31 AM           126,976 binkw32.dll.0.5a
1304/03/1999  05:21 PM           167,936 binkw32.dll.0.8e
1409/06/1999  08:21 AM           167,936 binkw32.dll.0.8i
1503/09/2000  07:01 PM           172,032 binkw32.dll.0.9g
1601/17/2003  04:51 PM           200,704 binkw32.dll.1.0f
1705/03/2000  01:08 PM           263,168 binkw32.dll.1.0i
1810/25/2000  12:26 PM           273,408 binkw32.dll.1.0p
1901/15/2001  12:41 PM           286,208 binkw32.dll.1.0q
2010/18/2000  05:41 PM           291,328 binkw32.dll.1.0v
2110/02/2001  10:32 AM           291,328 binkw32.dll.1.0w
2203/05/2001  12:37 AM           290,816 binkw32.dll.1.0x
2303/18/2002  09:14 PM           312,371 binkw32.dll.1.5a
2410/15/2002  05:15 PM           357,939 binkw32.dll.1.5g
2508/14/2002  05:54 PM           358,963 binkw32.dll.1.5j
2604/16/2003  06:19 PM           375,808 binkw32.dll.1.5v
2708/28/2004  02:36 AM           347,136 binkw32.dll.1.6b
2802/22/2001  12:58 PM            98,304 eax.dll.2.06
2905/21/2002  08:37 AM           131,072 eax.dll.3.00
3010/27/2003  12:56 PM           126,976 EAX.DLL.3.062
3108/28/2004  02:36 AM           188,416 eax.dll.4.01
3201/04/1999  10:55 AM           328,704 mss32.dll.5.0e
3303/29/2001  09:48 PM           352,256 mss32.dll.6.0d
3410/19/2002  02:19 AM           347,648 mss32.dll.6.0i
3510/23/2000  01:29 PM           349,184 Mss32.dll.6.0k
3603/27/2002  01:54 PM           351,744 mss32.dll.6.0m
3710/02/2001  10:32 AM           346,624 mss32.dll.6.1a
3810/16/2001  02:55 PM           348,160 mss32.dll.6.1c
3907/26/2002  07:34 PM           347,648 mss32.dll.6.1d
4003/17/2003  04:15 PM           370,688 Mss32.dll.6.5e
4111/26/2003  10:23 AM           372,736 Mss32.dll.6.5h
4203/27/2003  09:38 PM            71,168 smackw32.dll.2.2i
4303/27/2003  09:40 PM            95,232 smackw32.dll.3.1n
4401/28/1999  12:44 PM            95,232 smackw32.dll.3.1s
4512/05/1998  08:16 PM            96,256 smackw32.dll.3.2g
4601/29/1999  01:06 PM            96,256 smackw32.dll.3.2h
47              39 File(s)     10,230,425 bytes
48               2 Dir(s)  20,220,116,992 bytes free

Reply 3 of 10, by Snover

Posted on 2004-12-08, 05:18

Snover Offline

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That's a nice list.
The thing that really sucked about FF8 is that the Bink driver that came with it had the image vertically flipped, so when I tried to replace it with another version of binkw32.dll, the video was upside-down.
My first point about the MediaVision support still stands as being 100% Miles's fault.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 4 of 10, by HunterZ

Posted on 2004-12-08, 05:22

HunterZ Offline

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Heh. I have the same problem when I try to watch FF7's movies in Winamp. They're encoded as AVIs with some obsolete codec called "TrueMotion Duck" or something like that, and whatever codec is decoding it is doing it upside-down.

I've thought of ripping the videos from the PSX version and encoding them using a modern codec like XviD just to see how it compares, but I've never been that bored. I did rip and encode a video from the PSX version of Chrono Trigger though.

Reply 5 of 10, by Snover

Posted on 2004-12-08, 05:25

Snover Offline

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ah, DUCK. Angel Devoid used DUCK video, too.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 6 of 10, by eL_PuSHeR

Posted on 2004-12-08, 09:58

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Hello, gentlemen.

I have always had a lot of problems playing some BINK videos. Crappy codec if you ask me. I remember one strange issue: Bink would play properly if "AGP fast writes" was turned on in bios. What gives? Microsoft argued that it was a bug in direct-x 9.0b but now I am not that sure.

On the other hand, I have never had any troubles with MSS as far as audio is concerned. Anyway, i had a real SB16 (well, Vibra16c to be exact), which was, quite compatible, though. Now I have CMI8738 on-board audio and haven't had any big problems either. Direct-X reports my on-board audio has "3D hardware acceleration" capabilities, so it must not be that bad, as far as games support 3D hardware accelerated (DirectSound) audio.

Reply 7 of 10, by ribbon13

Posted on 2004-12-08, 15:18

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http://audio.rightmark.org/manifest.shtml

Some of you my find that interesting

The have the dreamy ESI Waveterminal 192x in their test results

As for EAX... Its propietary. Who wants to pay fees to Creative? Dev's should really be pushing for DTS real time encoding... that would rock. or Logic7... real time encoding of 7 discrete channels.... ahhh....

Doesn't DirectSound support EAX anyway?

Reply 8 of 10, by ribbon13

Posted on 2004-12-08, 15:34

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Hunter... since you apparently live near me, building you a set of speakers would be no problem, providing you provice all the supplies...

For mini monitors... I'd suggest the BR-1s

For a real stereo... or just to make your 4.1 into 6.1... the Lyra's are f-ing awesome.
http://speakerbuilder.net/web_files/Projects/ … ra/lyramain.htm

But will your roommates appreciate the grandeur of classic TMW full towers? at 87db efficiency wide dispersion with great off axis support, with a decent 50w amp your likely to over power anything else in the place even at low volumes. Unless someone there has pro-sound monitors with a roadie amp.

Also.. $100 plus $50 mail in rebate = $100 to me, because I've always had tons of issues with those god damn rebates.... heh. To each his own.

Also... miles sound sucks. It should be an open api to be installed once, at one location, with its one config program so that you can make the most use out of whatever hardware or lack thereof you have.

Reply 9 of 10, by HunterZ

Posted on 2004-12-09, 00:38

HunterZ Offline

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ribbion13: Where do you live? I live in Tacoma and work in Kent. Just curious.

I think I'll stick with the speakers I have for now - I live in an apartment and some of the neighbors wouldn't appreciate my taste in audio equipment 😉

The open API you're dreaming of may be OpenAL ( http://www.openal.org/ ). Unforunately, few game developers and few hardware companies besides nVidia and Creative have jumped on the OpenAL bandwagon.

Reply 10 of 10, by ribbon13

Posted on 2004-12-09, 13:08

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My cave dwelling syndication resides in a humble abode near Everett.

as for openal
I see its used in UT2K4

That should be all the prood it needs that its good. 😉

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