Retail is not a 3D audio engine. Every gameplay buffer is created with
m_3D = 0 and the DirectSound 3D listener the client sets up is dead code;
spatialization is two CPU scalars per voice, frozen at emission. This
slice ports that math and demotes OpenAL to a voice bank.
RetailSoundMixer (new, Core) carries the byte-decoded curve from
SoundManager::GetAttenuation @0x00550020: g = dist < 5 ? vol : 25*vol/d2,
clamped to 1 BEFORE the single master multiply, db = ceil(20*log10 g),
with a hard -50 dB floor at which retail does not start the voice at all
(audible radius ~94.2 m at unity). Pan is PlaySoundInternal @0x00550170's
(int)(-15*sin(delta-bearing)) in whole decibels, truncating toward zero,
forced to dead centre when (int)distance < 5, with no front/back and no
elevation cue. Every AL source is now source-relative with rolloff 0 and
the global distance model is None: AL's InverseDistanceClamped was
first-power (2/d), quieter than retail up close and far louder at range
with no cutoff whatsoever. That was the largest audible divergence in the
subsystem (AP-28, retired here).
RetailVoicePool (new, Core) ports the allocator at 0x0054FEC0: ring scan
for a free or finished slot, then evict the first slot whose DAT priority
is strictly lower, else drop. Eviction compared GAIN before, so a loud
unimportant sound could silence a quiet important one. It lives in Core
because the engine's play path talks to native AL handles and could not
be tested; the pool now has 12 conformance tests.
The listener keeps using the camera position, which the decode shows is
retail-faithful (SmartBox::set_viewer @0x00452D36 hands the same collided
camera Position to SoundManager) — only the heading extraction changes,
since retail reads one compass bearing and never a forward/up basis. An
earlier draft of the plan called this a defect; corrected in the plan so
it is not fixed backwards.
Opus review found and this commit fixes: a linear pan-to-azimuth mapping
that saturated to full separation at 30 degrees (OpenAL Soft's own
speaker angle) where retail gives 15 dB — now inverts the constant-power
pan law, so full deflection reaches 0.776 of the arc and both channels
stay live; the stale FUN_00550ad0 / gain-eviction class header, which
contradicted the register row this commit writes; missing discriminating
tests for clamp order and pan truncation; dead PlayingGain state whose
comment invented a retail symbol; and a third in-tree copy of
Position::heading, now delegating to MoveToMath.PositionHeading.
MasterVolume folds into the mixer's one multiply instead of AL listener
gain, so the cutoff, radius and dB quantisation move with the slider.
Register: AP-28 retired; AP-173 (pan law), AP-174 (volume taxonomy),
TS-64 (two unimplemented sound prefs), TS-65 (volume-squared quirk,
applied on the ambient path only) filed. Research note corrected twice
where its summary contradicted its own decode (30 m dB, floor vs trunc).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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