"Why Can't I Hear the Cav?"

Users who are viewing this thread

Hans 77

Knight at Arms
With the addition of Battle Mode and privately hosted servers, there has been a recent influx of new players and Warband old timers eager to try out the new stuff in Bannerlord.

As the newer members of the community continue to get acclimated with Bannerlord, I keep seeing the same question keep popping up in the chat, and it's always something along the lines of "Why can't I hear the cav?"

I wish I had a good answer for them other than "You can't hear it."
 
This problem has been around since the 2019 beta and before that I would say. It's funny that with so much feedback that was provided they still have this bug unaddressed and with a "Need more info" tag... You were thinking about it? that's it.... welcome to the Bannerlord experience™ ? :iamamoron:.
 
This is the studio who had to beg us to turn our sound off so they wouldnt get sued because they melted the sound system completely and yall expect something as nuanced as localized hoofbeats?
 
i think people mis-understand what is actually the problem with audio it isn't that you can't hear cavalry, the problem is that you can hear all of the cavalry, everywhere. You can actually hear everything everywhere from any distance. Which makes distinctions insanely difficult. If I hear 7 tiny horse hoof beats constantly from different angles it's hard to notice when one of them ramps up quickly behind you because your brain is drowning it out.
 
i think people mis-understand what is actually the problem with audio it isn't that you can't hear cavalry, the problem is that you can hear all of the cavalry, everywhere. You can actually hear everything everywhere from any distance. Which makes distinctions insanely difficult. If I hear 7 tiny horse hoof beats constantly from different angles it's hard to notice when one of them ramps up quickly behind you because your brain is drowning it out.
There are numerous clips of cav being silent
 
i think people mis-understand what is actually the problem with audio it isn't that you can't hear cavalry, the problem is that you can hear all of the cavalry, everywhere. You can actually hear everything everywhere from any distance. Which makes distinctions insanely difficult. If I hear 7 tiny horse hoof beats constantly from different angles it's hard to notice when one of them ramps up quickly behind you because your brain is drowning it out.
Ah yes, this massive horse fully armoured you can hear?
Or this one:
There are plenty of videos like these https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/silent-cav.445739/
 
It sounds to me they tried too much to take buildings or objects into account and how sound works when there is an object between you and the horse. It's a good thing to add, but when it doesn't work just having the noise get noticeably louder the closer the horse gets and not take the buildings into the picture would've worked.

The muffled sound is basically ruining it, because once they get in view it becomes pretty normal.
 
Ah yes, this massive horse fully armoured you can hear?
Or this one:
There are plenty of videos like these https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/silent-cav.445739/

I had to crank my volume near max to even be able to tell you had sound on but I can hear incoming cav fine in both clips. Your game sound is incredibly low AND you have music playing. I have noise cancelling multidirectional headphones cranked up in-game and only have problems with audio when I have it too low or too many layers of audio like music playing. It's like driving with earbuds in listening to music or earplugs in then complaining you didn't hear the guy coming who hit you. I looked through the thread you linked and I can say the same about your clips in there too.
 
Last edited:
It sounds to me they tried too much to take buildings or objects into account and how sound works when there is an object between you and the horse. It's a good thing to add, but when it doesn't work just having the noise get noticeably louder the closer the horse gets and not take the buildings into the picture would've worked.

The muffled sound is basically ruining it, because once they get in view it becomes pretty normal.
It's a few things:

1) the muffling from the environment is OTT
2) the sound only comes in when within a certain distance, it's not quiet when far away with a slow gradient as it gets closer
3) cav move far too fast and glide across the ground, so when you do start hearing them, you only have half a second to react
4) the game's sound doesn't differentiate very well between different sounds when there's a lot going on
 
I had to crank my volume near max to even be able to tell you had sound on but I can hear incoming cav fine in both clips. Your game sound is incredibly low AND you have music playing. I have noise cancelling multidirectional headphones cranked up in-game and only have problems with audio when I have it too low or too many layers of audio like music playing. It's like driving with earbuds in listening to music or earplugs in then complaining you didn't hear the guy coming who hit you. I looked through the thread you linked and I can say the same about your clips in there too.
Trying to audio ego your "noise cancelling multidirectional headphones" on a clip that anyone can easily amplify and determine that there is, in fact, no horse-steps, is certainly an interesting maneuver.

 
Trying to audio ego your "noise cancelling multidirectional headphones" on a clip that anyone can easily amplify and determine that there is, in fact, no horse-steps, is certainly an interesting maneuver.


In the clip you enhanced the cav came from inside the building on the right. From the 5 to the 6.5 sec mark in your audacity track you can hear the cavalry coming from inside until it kills the teammate at the entrance at around the 6.5 sec mark. Let's say the cav was in hearing distance inside the building for 1.5 secs before it came out and got his ally.
 
Farther amplified and bass increased to enlarge the steps. (Audio starts at the same time as the video above, but I cut off the end.)
  • ~4.5 is where the first cav track MAY begin, but if so, is quieter than the infantry track and lost audibly.
  • ~5.5 is where the first distinct cav trot sound MAY occur, but if so, sounds similar to infantry footsteps and is quieter than them.
  • ~6.25 is where the first clear cav footstep occurs, giving the player about 0.125 seconds to react.
MFsxTT0.png


EDIT: Now that I've listened to this far more times than I should, the cav sound does seem to play at 4.5. It runs through one audio track, then pauses, then the music kicks in and obscures what could potentially be more cav sounds.

(Although the cav sounds would have to be quiet because the music is not louder than other key sounds.)

This is still a problem because a charging horse should be louder than passive walking noises. And the passive walking noises and the cav sound quite similar, making it even harder to distinguish.
 
Last edited:
We are looking into improving these cav sounds and making them come through easier. There will be adjustments to the sound mixer in the future. One thing will already happen with 1.7.2, is an adjustment to how we use sound materials in scenes. This might not sound important but it will help quite a bit with being able to hear cav charging in

Some material sounds prioritised are over other sounds, this doesn't mean that the non priority sounds won't play, or that those ones will be louder. Instead you can imagine them being thicker (through bass and stuff I don't understand) and sort of overlay other sounds. Kind of like tapping a wine glass with a spoon, at a dinner table to get everyone's attention.
Echerion
  • Fixed some soil areas, playing stone sound
Xauna
  • Fixed some soil areas, playing stone sound

For many of our paths we have been using the "stone" material that is one of those prioritized sounds. (Same as wood and some others). Like you can see in the changelog I went over my current skirmish maps and adjusted the materials of every texture layer in there. Basically normalizing the sound scape. There will be more changes to this in the future like I said, but this is another step to make it better.
 
Last edited:
The fact that my audio clips need to be enhanced, analyzed and I cannot have a music bot playing on very low volume to hear cav already says enough right?

Also tyvm Nin3, hope it improves thing.
 
Back
Top Bottom