Marvel Realm has reached 2.0, marking the suite’s first major release.
This update introduces Steam Audio as a new spatial audio option, alongside a major overhaul to explosions and gunfire. We have also made substantial improvements to performance, text editing, navigation, TTS voices, game settings, and several systems shared across the suite.
Introducing Steam Audio
Marvel Realm now includes Steam Audio as a second spatial audio engine.
You can select it under Settings > Sound settings > Spatial audio engine. FMOD remains the default and continues to be available.
Steam Audio is designed primarily for headphones and models sound propagation through the game world in much greater detail. Sounds above, below, and behind you are easier to distinguish. Walls can muffle sounds behind them, audio can travel around corners and through doorways, and reflections are calculated from the actual geometry of the environment.
The first time you enter a map with Steam Audio enabled, Marvel Realm calculates how sound travels through it in the background. Large maps can take up to a minute, but gameplay continues while this happens and the result is saved for future visits. If Steam Audio cannot start, Marvel Realm will tell you and fall back to FMOD automatically.
Steam Audio also includes Performance, Balanced, and High quality modes. You can select an HRTF for headphone spatialization or add your own SOFA HRTF file.
Steam Audio requires more processing power than FMOD, so FMOD remains a good option for systems where performance is more important than the additional acoustic detail.
Explosions Have Been Reworked
Explosions now behave much more like sound travelling through a real environment.
A distant explosion no longer reaches you instantly. The sound arrives after the appropriate delay, with distance changing its character from a sharp crack toward a deeper rumble.
Walls affect it as well. They absorb more of the sharp part of the blast while allowing more low-frequency energy through, and explosions can now be heard from much farther across a map.
Rockets also remain audible until the sound of their explosion reaches you rather than disappearing as soon as they detonate.
Close explosions can make a controller rumble and can temporarily affect your hearing. A new Explosion hearing effects setting gives you three choices:
- Full lowers other game sounds during explosions and can muffle them for up to two seconds after a close blast.
- Reduced briefly lowers surrounding game sounds without the longer muffling effect.
- Off disables the effect.
Menus, speech, and music are never affected.
Gunfire from other characters has received similar treatment. Shots now originate from the shooter’s actual position at any distance and fade naturally as they move farther away. Rapid gunfire also handles echoes more cleanly, while your own weapon sounds are less likely to distort when several loud layers play together.
More Control Over Character Voices
A new TTS options menu lets you control which installed Windows voices games may use for their characters.
Each available SAPI voice is listed with its language and can be enabled or disabled individually. Turning a voice off takes effect immediately, while enabling one makes it available the next time a game loads.
These settings apply only to character voices used by games. The voice Marvel Realm uses to read menus and messages remains under Speech settings.
Better Text Editing and Faster Navigation
Text fields now behave more like the rest of the Marvel Realm interface.
Moving onto a field no longer immediately puts you into editing mode. Marvel Realm first reads its current value, allowing the arrow keys to continue navigating the menu. Press Enter when you want to edit, then Enter again to save or Escape to cancel. Multi-line fields use Control+Enter to save.
While editing, you can now use familiar commands including Control+A, Control+X, Control+Z, Control+Y, Control+Backspace, and Control+Delete.
Chat, private messages, and Search remain ready for typing immediately where that behavior makes sense.
Long lists have also gained type-to-find navigation. Start typing the beginning of an item’s name to jump directly to it, or press the same letter repeatedly to move through matching items. This works across game lists, Settings, Community, follower lists, Learn game sounds, store items, and several other menus.
Menu speech also stops when you move to or activate another item, preventing slower speech from building up as you navigate.
More Performance Control, and Faster Game Worlds
Each game now has its own Performance page under Game settings.
The FPS limit has moved there alongside:
- World detail distance, which controls how accurately distant parts of the world continue to update.
- Audio detail distance, which controls how much detail is retained for distant sounds.
Both settings are stored separately for each game and apply as soon as you change them.
We have also rewritten some of the heaviest engine processing to reduce its cost. Distant characters and vehicles that have nothing important to do can update less frequently, helping busy scenes run more smoothly.
When a run ends, the game world now becomes quiet before your score and results are shown rather than continuing to play behind them.
Reliability and Fixes
Marvel Realm can now report certain unexpected crashes the next time it starts when automatic crash reporting is enabled.
If the engine core is missing or does not match the client version, the suite now identifies the problem at startup and asks you to download it again instead of failing later.
Sound settings that require an audio-system restart now apply immediately when changed from a game’s main menu. During active gameplay, the restart still waits until you leave the game.
We have also fixed several gameplay issues, including bullets travelling beyond their maximum range, incorrectly aimed shots, explosive rounds producing ricochet sounds, characters occasionally sinking or falling through the world, movement after landing or climbing, and slowly falling objects stopping just above the ground.
The Marvel Realm documentation has also been rewritten to cover Steam Audio, explosions, TTS options, text editing, Performance settings, updates, and an expanded troubleshooting section.
Marvel Realm 2.0 is available now. Update the suite, explore the new audio and performance options, and take a look through the updated documentation.
As always, we’d love to hear what you think. You can use our feedback page or social media channels to share feedback, suggestions, or bug reports.
Thank you for playing Marvel Realm, and welcome to 2.0!