On sprite smoothening and the change to sound effects

[GOON STREET HOOLIGAN]

There needs to be a way to get direct pixels, just like disabling anti aliasing in the previous build. For somebody who grew up with the game neither the smoothened look or the anti aliasing is attractive. Please add an option to get this back or I will cry.

2nd of all the new sound effects simply aren't sounding good currently. Many are too loud, too quiet or sound odd. For example may's dolphins are ear grating now. Can you please look into the new sounds, and give us an option to allow us to use the original sounds. Thankyou

[Yumetaro]

I fully agree with getting the pixels back, I dislike the smoothed look. Perhaps add another option in the graphics menu to enable or disable the filtering, alongside the AA.

Edit: Or perhaps, given the changelog listing stating it makes it as accurate as possible, disabling AA is currently broken.

[sat0ri]

Re upscaler/AA I've answered here https://steamcommunity.com/app/348550/discussions/1/3004424478064159016/

It's surprising to hear nagative feedback regarding improved SE bitrate. Would lowering the volume on some sounds fix that? If so, please provide a list of sound effects that we should investigate.

If you want to restore low bitrate sounds, you can try overwriting beta's Resource/se directory with the one from non-beta build.

[GOON STREET HOOLIGAN]

I believe all the sound effects are unmixed. The worst ones being bridget's, for example se 1,2,3 which are so bad it's incredible. Other examples is when May's dolphin hits an opponent, you can hear a sound effect that was so quiet in the original it was almost unhearable. The entire audio mix is incorrect and needs to be combed through.

[sat0ri]

Short version: we've researched SE/Voice, they're the same except for bitrate. RMS volume peaks are the same, "mastering" hasn't changed. Option for original sounds already exists: simply overwrite beta's Resource/se directory with the one from stable build.


Long version:

SE/voice comparison between versions:

GGAC+ PS2: https://soundcloud.com/user-607448692/ggac-ps2/s-K4svHEU5DIq

GGAC+R Steam Stable: https://soundcloud.com/user-607448692/ggac-r-steam-stable/s-gp2uSulGBmn

GGAC+R Steam Beta: https://soundcloud.com/user-607448692/ggac-r-steam-beta/s-iXMy6Cejfey

Original files can be downloaded there.

Looking at RMS volume peaks in Audacity, both Steam versions are almost identical in volume (except higher quality in beta of course). PS2 seems to apply limiter/compressor at the beginning of loud sound effects, so perceived volume of those is a little quieter. We will look into reproducing that behavior from PS2, but overall it'll be a pretty minor change.

Increased sound bitrate is a quantifiable improvement, while we cannot find conclusive evidence that peak levels have changed noticeably, or overall "mastering" has downgraded.

[GOON STREET HOOLIGAN]

Thank you for looking at it, but I think there clearly is some inherent change in the "comfort" for the hearer of some of the sounds with the quality upgrade. Notably bridget's air dust had become grating with the upgrade in quality.

It's my mistake that I thought it was a problem with mixing and not the simple difference in sound effects themselves. Sorry