Question about EAX (Enviromental Audio)

Nebrewiel

To people who own the game already - is EAX available in NWN:EE like it is available in normal NWN, or has it been hacked off with a chainsaw just like in BG:EE removing any life from the sound? (I'm using ALchemy to play with EAX on modern Windows)

Sylvus_Moonbow

It is available but I have been unable to select it as an option like 1.69 version.

Nebrewiel

Do you mean you have been unable to select it in 1.69 either? That is normal, need ALchemy to run it. Does anyone with ALchemy can check if EAX works in EE?

Sylvus_Moonbow

I meant that I am unable to select it in EE. It used to work in 1.69 for me on an old computer with a sound card.

Dark_Ansem

There is no technology in modern rigs to support EAX?

Nebrewiel

@Dark_Ansem there is, it's called ALchemy
@Sylvus_Moonbow ok if you can't select it using ALchemy means it's been cut off with a machete, to quote their last stream .. what a shame

svfn

there does not seem to be any EAX in BG:EE and BG2:EE. seems like EAX effects were all removed in the enchanced editions.

if you listen to a sample here for the difference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR5TDqz0xE

Sylvus_Moonbow

So I did some googling and it is not Beamdog that is willing removing EAX but that Microsoft removed the audio hardware layer since Vista. With no hardware layer, all EAX effects are lost on games installed to more modern OS.

From Creative OpenAL they say "EAX should be considered deprecated as a developer interface. New development should use OpenAL's EFX interface, which covers all the EAX functionality and is more tightly coupled with the overall OpenAL framework."

Nebrewiel

And that's exactly what we want, since OpenAl is already added to NWN:EE, we want the EAX effects to be remade as EFX, rather than removed completely.

svfn

Sylvus_Moonbow said:

So I did some googling and it is not Beamdog that is willing removing EAX but that Microsoft removed the audio hardware layer since Vista. With no hardware layer, all EAX effects are lost on games installed to more modern OS.

From Creative OpenAL they say "EAX should be considered deprecated as a developer interface. New development should use OpenAL's EFX interface, which covers all the EAX functionality and is more tightly coupled with the overall OpenAL framework."

many EAX/openAL games can still be played on Windows 10 with OpenAL, OpenAL Soft or ALchemy emulation. so it's a matter of the game supporting it, which can only be found on non-enchanced classic version of BG2.

the support/option was removed in Beamdog Enchanced Edition. there's simply no way to enable it and it sounds like the one without EAX even though you installed openAL for it.

i think they will do the same with NWN:EE and remove EAX completely since it's the easiest way. and not everyone has the sound card or driver to use it. but many older players who want it are not able to use it for the Beamdog versions.