In New Vegas, there are two different 3D shooting sounds for many weapons: A normal shooting sound, and a distant shooting sound. As the distance between you and the shooter increases and the normal shooting sound starts to fade, the distant sound should start taking over while the normal sound continues fading away.

The distant sound has a bit of an echo, so the effect of using this different sound for shots from a large distance is nice.

The bug: The distant sound doesn't start playing until the normal shooting sound has stopped playing completely.

So as you get further away the normal shooting sound fades until the gun is almost silent. Then, when the sound is completely gone, the distant sound takes over. Obviously, this distant sound is louder than silence!

So what happens? You have someone shooting at you, and the further you get away, the less loud the sound gets. But then when you pass a certain distance, the shooting sound goes from nearly silent to relatively loud again.

I've been able to test this with the .357 Magnum Revolver and the Varmint Rifle so far. I've checked in the GECK: Not all weapons use a distant firing sound, but quite a bunch do.

My testing:



I intend to fix this by getting rid of the Distant sound completely, and just increasing the range of the normal weapon sound. Much like my http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14248 mod for FO3. It should be pretty easy. But before I end up doing something silly, I need to be sure that everyone else has this bug too, and not just me.



So, has anyone else experienced this? A good way to test this is at Primm, by killing all the escaped convicts outside except for one with a .357 revolver or a varmint rifle (Both having a maximum hearing distance of 2400), and let him shoot at you while you increase the distance between the two of you. Click on him with the console and type 'getdistance player' to see the distance between you and the NPC.

I've almost finished the 'fix', it would be nice to hear if someone else can see if they also get this issue though.

Once Gary Bash for NV is done, it'll be possible to merge this fix into the Bashed Patch.

I can't confirm confirm, but I have a strong suspicion that I have heard this.

EDIT: Would it not be suitable to bring the distant weapon in closer to the point where they blend?

From what I've been able the figure out, this is what is supposed to happen, but it doesn't. The two sounds just won't play at the same time. It's either the one, or the other. So the distant sound is not going to play until the normal gun sound has gone completely silent. The actual distance at which this happens doesn't really matter, you'll always get the increased sound level when it switches from normal to distant, or a sudden silence when it switches from distant to normal.

I've tried messing around with sound priorities but that didn't seem to make a difference either.

What I've done now is disable all the distant gun sound by reducing their maximum hearing distance below the maximum hearing distance of the normal gun sounds.

Not all guns have distant sounds, but I've increased the hearing distance of the normal sounds of those guns too, because it was rather low. Even lower than the FO3 defaults I think.

The maximum distance of the normal handgun sounds has been increased by around 2.75 times the vanilla distance. The average pistol sound can be heard up to 6000 distance units away rather than 2400, and the loudest weapons can be heard up to 7500 distance units. I'll make a screenshot of the different distances so people can see how far this is.

I'm going to test it a little to see if these distances are alright.

I can pretty much comfirm. You walk and suddently hear super loud gunfire and guys are fighting like 400 ft away from you.

... I think I've heard this bug before, can;t confirm right now though

In any case, thanks for the fix, although one hopes Beth/OE will fix the engine bug ...

edit: you guys who have confirmed this should make sure it goes into the support forum, just in case the devs don;t know about it

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/5192/gunfire01.jpg: With the Varmint rifle, and several other weapons like the .357 revolver. I'd say that a fight with an enemy at this distance should be quite common, so the issue is worth fixing.

Now, with the fix:

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/3481/gunfire02.jpg. The actual distance at where it goes mute is 6000, but the sound itself is not loud enough to hear far beyond 4900 with the default sound settings (and this is assuming you have no other noisy things happening around you). And of course, in this situation there was no sound bug because this is still the normal gunfire sound.

I think it's a realistic distance and it sounds good.


This fix is compatible with:

Any mods that alter guns in any way.
Any gun sound replacers (It can make them even better, because you don't have to worry about the vanilla distant gun shot sound sounding different from your replaced normal gunshot sound.)


The bug won't be fixed for mods adding weapons with custom shooting sounds, but it's likely that they will not have a distant gunshot sound effect as well so then it is not an issue. The only issue that could exist is that they set their maximum hearing distance for the normal gun sound not as high as this mod does, so there could be some inconsistencies in sound distances if these guns are added to random enemies.


The release should be soon!

I'm sorry, maybe this is a silly question, but will it work with the 'Louder Guns' adjustment put up at the nexus? (http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35098)

I really like the added oomph.

-HD

I had a look, and it changes the same files, so there's a conflict right now. But if http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11336 (FO3's Wrye Bash) is made for NV, it will be possible to merge the values of both mods into the Bashed Patch. This mod and louder guns both change values in the same windows, but they both change different sections of these windows. So when merged into the patch they should work together.

But as for Louder Guns as a standalone mod, I don't know. It increases the loudness of the distant sounds too, and I think this means that there is going to be an even bigger difference between the sounds at the point where the bug happens.

If the mods are merged into the Bashed Patch however, the distant sound files won't play so then everything is fine: You'll get the fixes and increased sound range from this mod, and the increased loudness from that mod.

Gotcha, thank you.

-HD