Restore bgm and sfx volume settings

[Satanniel]

So as it turns off someone thought that removing useful features is a good idea. Some games (like Persona 3 which I currently play) have screwed up volumes (effects are too loud to hear music well or vice versa) which makes this feature coming in handy. Ergo it should be restored, (maybe in ratio form so you don't get loud sound unaffected because of turning both volumes down?).

[Bigpet]

the justifications are presented here: https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/pull/6685 and here: http://forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=8724

[Satanniel]

Yeah, I've seen them (I even copy-pasted title and forgot to edit it) and they don't make any sense. "only confuses users" -I know that people are generally stupid, but there are lot of other options that may confuse them. Is it time to remove every option? Not always work - hence proposed ratio thing.

[unknownbrackets]

There's no way to apply volume only to sound effects. Ratios or anything else won't change this simple fact.

-[Unknown]

[Satanniel]

Yet it somehow worked for most of things.

[unknownbrackets]

As long as this is requesting adding back options that will never work and will again generate more confusion than benefit, I say we close it. If there's some other plan that's actually useful, that's the only way it's worth staying open.

-[Unknown]

[hrydgard]

I'm going to think about this one, but if we add it back we need to have wording that makes it clear that it will quite often not do the expected thing (as many games use ATRAC to play sound effects or speech, or SFX ADPCM to play music). As a game-specific setting it kind of makes sense.

[vsub]

How about a button named "Change BGM & SFX Volume" and when you click on it,a window appear and that window to contains "Not Always work" or something like that for title and below the bgm and the sfx sliders.

I also liked that function(not that I used it often but when I actually needed it,it always worked)

[unknownbrackets]

I think if we do add this back, it would have to be along these lines:

"ATRAC3/ATRAC3+ volume (usually BGM)" "MP3 volume (usually BGM)" "SAS mixer volume (often SFX)" "MPEG/MP4 volume (most movies)"

I realize this is not user friendly and everyone wants "BGM volume." But that's just not a thing. And pretending it is a thing is the problem here. The above are things we can actually implement.

Note of course that all of the above could be zeroed out, and audio could still play. The game is well within its rights to decode audio itself. I think LittleBigPlanet's movie is an example of this; it would not be affected by any movie setting.

And of course a game can play separate ATRAC3+ audio along with a silent movie... I'm pretty sure at least one game does do exactly that, in fact.

-[Unknown]

[Kolrath]

I just wanted to voice my support for adding this back in.

I don't believe I was using PPSSPP back during the time the feature was present or during the time of the polling, but I would have loved to have this feature.

I really can't see it being removed with the reasoning that it was confusing for users. I can only say I truly understand about 20% of the options available to me in Settings, but I can generally figure out how to apply their use to various situations or know enough to avoid messing with them. Having volume adjustments that may or may not adjust the things I'm hoping to adjust wouldn't be that confusing to me. Granted, the old naming could lead to confusion, but what unknownbrackets suggests above makes a lot of sense.

I honestly think that games made by Idea Factory alone should be reason enough to add this feature back. Even if it only has a miniscule chance of helping. In Idea Factory games, at least the NTSC-U releases, the music volume is so astronomically high and the speech volume is so ridiculously low that it heavily impacts the ability to enjoy and play these dialog heavy games.

You either make the music tolerable and the speech inaudible or the speech audible and the music insufferable. Every Idea Factory game I've tested has been the equivalent of trying to listen to my grandmother talking in the middle of a trifecta MegaDeath, Slipknot, Rammstein concert.

I would wholeheartedly appreciate this setting being re-added. Even if its wonky and only applies in some situations. Some chance of adjustment beats no chance of adjustment any day.

[unknownbrackets]

Hmm, I'm not sure about those games specifically - but I'll say that it's very common that voices are hard to distinguish technically from music (e.g. both ATRAC3+, and neither one set with loop.)

It seems like something games would do differently (e.g. set loop only on BGM, or use a different type of file)... theoretically. In reality, it seems like many (not all) games just have an "audio engine" and the "audio engine" always plays "sound files" just one way. So they're impossible to tell apart.

This is really the heart of the problem. In a lot of the scenarios where it would really nice if it did work, it doesn't actually work.

But maybe it can work for these Idea Factory games... I think Aedis Eclipse might be the only one I have, maybe I'll check later how it plays voices/music.

FWIW, we often remove settings that aren't useful anymore. It'd probably be less than 20% otherwise. We really do try to make each of them make some sense.

-[Unknown]

[ghost]

This still worth a feature request?

[NABN00B]

I think if we do add this back, it would have to be along these lines:

"ATRAC3/ATRAC3+ volume (usually BGM)" "MP3 volume (usually BGM)" "SAS mixer volume (often SFX)" "MPEG/MP4 volume (most movies)"

Just to throw in a random use case, maybe this could be used to disable the copyrighted music in Vice City Stories for YouTubers / content creators (the missions Cleaning House, The Bum Deal and Purple Haze play radio music unless ingame sfx is disabled). Currently we have a bindable mute toggle key which is a decent workaround.