Any possibility on adding surround sound to the Vendetta Linux client? I'm so used to playing UT2k3 (which can do full surround sound with a custom-compiled OpenAL library) that when I hear a laser behind me go off in front of me it totally messes up my sense of direction.

OpenAL seems particularly adept at surround sound on Linux. Just to give you a lead :)

The only thing you would hear would be your own weapons, right? I mean, in space no-one (else) can hear your fire

("Ah, but the question is: Can they hear you yoddle?")

So no, wouldnt make much sense, unless your ship has a positional-fire detector, which sounds of!

/G

The devs don't want to mess with the sound (not even to upgrade the OSS to ALSA, which would add surround support w/o DirectAL). Also, they don't really like the cross-platform libs. There's no GLUT for the game, no QT for the installer, OpenGL isn't the standard on all three systems, etc.

the sound does suck, i have to play with my 2.4 kernel if i want sound bcoz i can't be arsed recompiling with OSS API emulation and setting it all up.
OSS is defunct, nobody should continue using.

If you don't have ALSA<->OSS emulation, you should. OSS is defunct, but almost ALL programs use it. Those that understand alsa are in the small minority. For a working ALSA setup, there is no config needed to make OSS emulation work, just compile and load the module. Boom, you have OSS support.

that's cool, but then i have to persuade my Gentoo system to actually compile the ALSA drivers/tools in the first place.
The kernel-space stuff is fine, but nothing works without the user-space stuff, and portage won't compile it.

On another note, i would also like to have an ARTS output, or mebe an OSS emulator with an ARTS output so i can listen to Iron Maiden instead of ambient*.ogg
I find it improves my play.
Or could i just put symlinks in the music directory to my files and write a script or something to play them?
/me didn't think of that, goes to investigate...

You need to inject alsa-driver. Only compile alsa-util and all that stuff user-space. If it doesn't compile, inject it and move on.

kk thx i will try it later when i get on my Gentoo box

Random... do this :)

emerge alsa-utils alsa-oss

Watch the compile for on screen instructions.
Reboot.
Should work fine with just that :)
You can also emerge alsamixergui afterword so you can unmute your card :)

Actually, do this:

1. compile kernel with all ALSA modules or built-in

2. emerge alsa-lib alsa-utils alsa-oss alsa-tools alsamixergui

3. rc-update add alsasound boot

4. /sbin/reboot