I find it very hard sometimes to hear what people are saying through the voice chat, the cause is explosions and gunfire or that their microphones are to low. It limits the effectiveness of the microphone while the user of the microhpone probably will not think it's a problem, and will then blame his team for not listening to him. I try have my volume set to max in the voice options in empires and on windows. Instead I will hear even more gunfire and explosions and still will not be able to hear what my teamates have to say. Currently, changing the main volume setting to higher, will raise the voice AND "normal" sounds. What needs to be done: Add a sound option for the game volume which includes vehicles, guns, ambient and so on. And then a sound option for the voice level of other players. Keep the main voice options for quickly changing both the "normal" sounds and voice level. Raider666
It's called 'Game Volume' in the options. Which is different from your ingame VOIP volume slider. Did you guys like.... Even bother looking?
Oh, that was my bad, it wasn't called "main volume", it's called game volume, thats right. But the game volume will still change the volume of everything in the game, including voice. Then there is the voice receive volume bar, it will only control the voice volume. So as before, there is two volume bars, one for game options which controls everything. If the voice bar is set to max, it results in the game volume bar to be the only way to higher or lower the volume. An alternative is to make the "game sounds" ( bullets, explosions, vehicles etc..) to lower automatically when someone is speaknig. Making it easier to focus on listening to what the speaker has to say. Raider666
Well the voice bar on the separate tab is independent from the game volume on the audio tab. I have this same problem, so I lover my sound almost all the way and max my audio, I can hear everything fine over combat audio. Dunno why yours would act any different..?
Yes, thats right, the voice bar is seperate from the game volume, but when it already is set to max, you have no other choice if you want higher volume, to higher the game volume. Resulting in even higher gun shot and explosions, it will not help much. At the other hand, I might be wrong though, but I am pretty sure I remember correctly that the volume bars act like this. Raider666
you are correct, the main 'game' volume also alters voice volume and there is pretty much no way to increase voice volume over game volume there are few voice_ commands for increasing it a little but its inconsistent and tiny difference one way thats really annoying is decreasing all ingame sound files manually but that takes loads of time to do
I have the volume for the computer at a good rate, and it can be set higher but that is not the problem. As before in the thread, the "game volume" will affect everything in the game, including voice. So turning game volume down will turn down voice aswell. Now the suggestion is still that a diffrent controller for ingame volume (explosions, bullets, vehicles etc..) and a seperate for voice volume would much appreciated. Raider666
voice_overdrive "value" - Set the value to a nice percentage. 50 will lower the audio half when someone is talking. 100 will mute the game completely. Personally I use somewhere around 30-40. It seems to reset every time I restart Empires, though, so making a config (autoexec) with the command is neat.
A bit in the past, I heard a lot of people complaining about this... Raider666 Try playing around with commands voice_maxgain, voice_avggain and voice_scale (if that one even exists, I think the voice_scale might actually be the same as the volume slider in settings) But you are probably not gonna notice much difference as it seems to do some effects only in some specific situations. But I have noticed some slight volume increase when I put the values a bit higher. I tryed many things, but I dont think there is any other workaround than those that were already mentioned. (never checked if there arent some more commands after the source ports tho) Hmm, that one never worked for me. EDIT: Works for me now. voice_overdrive 10 seems to be a lot (default was 2 for me) play around with voice_overdrivefadetime 0.4 as it seems to come a bit late
Thanks, I will check out both Neoony's and Fooshi's tips on how to deal with this problem. I'll report back if it works or if it don't. Raider666
Just posting in support of this, really. I didn't think it could be done, so I've learnt to live with it (and people mic spam so it isn't so bad to turn everything down at once), but sometimes it would be nice to hear people a bit better over the cacophony of the battlefield.
I have tried this method and it worked, the "backround" noises ingame silents meanwhile voice chat is clear and and at a good level. Now, I do not know how to create a config which will auto configurate the same values every time. Would you mind help me or share the one you have? Thanks for the help. Raider666
Inside your Empires folder (Steam\SteamApps\common\Empires\empires\cfg) there should be a file called "autoexec.cfg", or might just be called autoexec if file extensions are hidden. Open it with Notepad or word processing software of choice and add the commands there. Should look like this. Save it and Empires will automatically enter the values when starting. Play around with the values to fit your preference.
Can I do this to fix my mic volume? Because empires overrides my mic volume in game and distorts it when I speak loudly. Regardless of the settings I have in my audio and speaker control, and steam settings, empires ignores this and keeps my mic's transmit volume maxed.
It worked Fooshi! The settings will now be saved. Thanks for all the help. One other question though, what does the voice_overdrivefadetime do? Bigteef, I noticed how the voice settings, transit bar automatically sets to the maximum level when you close down and open the options in empires. Maybe there is some other setting it collides with? Forcing it to be set to max always. Raider666
I don't know why Empires refuses to save god damn configuration settings, but it's annoying wondering why the game looks like shit every time I launch it and realizing that I need to reset all my settings.
voice_overdrivefadetime sets the delay in seconds before the volume returns to normal after voice comm is used to make a smooth transition. If the value is set to 0, it'll go back to normal instantly. 0.2 adds a short fade in time which makes it sound a bit more pleasant, in my opinion.
no bigteef, it does not work for that...does it also override your windows mic settings? thats where you should set your levels...not in steam, not ingame
