OpenAL (Open Audio Library) is free software cross-platform audio API.

OpenAL enables a more realistic 3D audio environment (including support for 5.1 and 7.1 surrond) and is required if you want to use the integrated "Voice chat" (VoIP) feature.

It is available for various Operating Systems, like Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS...

OpenAL in OpenArena

OpenArena supports OpenAL, if it is installed in your system. If it is not installed, OpenArena will use its standard "SDL" audio driver.

You can enable or disable OpenAL from Setup -> System -> Sound menù. Please notice that you will be able to select this option even if you do not have OpenAL installed (obviously OpenAL will not work in that case, and SDL will be used instead).

• To check if you have it enabled, go to the "Setup -> System -> Sound" menù, or use the command console and write "/s_useopenal", then hit "enter": if it is set to "1", it is enabled; if it is set to "0", it is disabled. If you change this value, you may need to quit OpenArena and launch it again, to make the change effective (unsure if a /snd_restart command may be enough, but probably yes).
• To check if you have it installed, when you are sure it is enabled, open OA's command console and scroll it (PagUp/PagDn) looking for OpenAL related errors (you can also close the game and open stderr.txt file with a text editor - see also console log -). For example, with Microsoft Windows the error should look like Failed to load library: "OpenAL32.dll". Under Linux, the message could talk about "libopenal.so.0". If it is correcly installed, you should not find such error.

You can use the /s_alDriver command to view/set the name of the OAL library (under Windows, it should be OpenAL32.dll).

Notes and tips

• Probably, many old mods may not include the OpenAL option in the menu. In this case, you can still control it from the console (\s_useopenal <0 or 1>).
• OpenArena allows to export demos to .avi movies. If OpenAL sound system is enabled, the video will not contain audio. If you want your video to include audio, you have to disable OpenAL, if you were using it. If you already had /s_useopenal 0, you are okay... if you had it set to 1, instead, you have to set it to 0, then completely close OpenArena, launch the game again and then export your video, complete with sound (alternatively, probably just using /snd_restart command may be enough to make the change effective) . After you finished, if you want, you can enable OpenAL again. See Manual/Demos#Export to a video file for more info.
• You need to (temporarily) disable OpenAL, in order to use /s_list command to see a list of all the sounds the game has currently loaded, or has tried to load, to be used in the current map. Sounds with 0 size are probably missing files. If you just set /s_useopenal 0, you may require to perform a /snd_restart to make the change effective.
• OpenArena inherited OpenAL support from ioquake3. But it looks like there is an issue with it: sound is blocked by VIS optimization. Which means, when the game stops rendering a certain part of the map due to you not being able to see that geometriy from your current position and angle of view, you also stop hearing sounds coming from that part of the map, so you may, for example, hear an ambient sound abruptely start or stop (instead of fading in or out) as you move a little or turn around.^[1] If that's a problem for you, you may have to disable OpenAL.

OpenAL and volume controls

See also: Music

At least with OpenArena 0.8.8 under Microsoft Windows, volume controls behaviour differ if you are using OpenAL or not ("not using OpenAL" for sound may also be referred to "using SDL sound").

"Effects volume" and "Music volume" are two slider controls in SETUP -> SYSTEM -> SOUND menu, and correspond to /s_volume <number.dec between 0 and 1> and /s_musicvolume <number.dec between 0 and 1>, respectively.
As you can guess, 0.0 means no sound, 1.0 means full volume, and 0.5 means half volume. S_volume default value is 0.8. S_musicvolume default value is 0.25.

If you are using OpenAL, "effects volume" and "music volume" are completely independent (you can set effects volume to 0 and still hear the music, if music volume is not 0); if you are NOT using OpenAL, instead, music volume is also affected by effects volume (if you set effects volume to 0, you cannot hear music even if music volume is set to the maxmimum; in other words, in this case "effects volume" acts as a "master volume").

Installation

To install OpenAL in your computer, check if a download is available for your Operating System here (Internet Archive) -for example, for Microsoft Windows you can use this direct link (Internet Archive) to download the installer-, and then execute that file (or extract and execute its content). There could be other methods to get and install it, depending on your Operating System. In Debian/Ubuntu (Linux) you can do this with the command: sudo apt-get install libopenal0, else apt-get install libopenal0a.

See also

• Voice chat
• Troubleshooting#Error message "error while loading shared libraries: libopenal.so.0 ..."
• OpenGL

External links

• OpenAL.org website
  • Download section: SDK & Windows installer
• OpenAL from Creative Labs (Internet Archive)
  • OpenAL download for various OS from Creative Labs (Internet Archive).
• OpenAL article on Wikipedia
• OpenAL Soft, an LGPL implementation of OpenAL.
  • Previous OpenAL Soft website (Internet Archive)
• DevMaster.net OpenAL Lessons (also: Internet Archive from previous version of the site) (Note: these tutorials are from some year ago, so they could suggest to use some functions now deprecated)