Ambient Sound question (attn: WalterN and/or Endocore)

[Max-Violence]

OK, I've finally delved into the whole ambient sound thang. I've gotten everythin' to work, except one small detail.

This map takes place outdoors and at night. So, I've put a bunch of torches (RaiderSkullLamp and RaiderSkullWallLamp) around the map. I've got it so that the fire's .wav plays when the character/screen focus is near a certain torch (for testing purposes). Well, that works great.

Here's my problem:

I have a BUNCH of torches all around the map. So, I made another zone with the same name as the first one's, checked SoundZone, and it don't work. So I double-checked everything and re-imported the sounds' text file. No dice.

Please tell me I don't have to have a unique zone and its corresponding entires in the sound text file for EVERY SINGLE TORCH IN THE ENTIRE FREAKIN' MAP!!!

If I do, I'll cry. A lot.

Please tell me there's a "batch" way to add the exact same ambient sound to multiple zones.

If you don't, I'll cry. A lot.

[Jimmyjay86]

I tried multiple zones with the same name for the Quartz map. It was set up so that when your player and a certain NPC were in it at the same time, he would start attacking. Unfortunately it only worked for one zone - I could never get it to work for all of the zones. I assume it is probably the same thing for the sound zones which sucks big time.

[OnTheBounce]

I don't know if this will help or not, but...

Have you tried fiddling w/the following entries?

• name_position = {Integer3(0,0,0)} (where in the map the ambient is)
• name_minDist = {5} (dist before volume starts to fall off)
• name_maxDist = {25} (dist from ambient that sound cuts off)

What I'm suggesting is that you have one, huge zone that all of your fires are in. Then, go and sit down w/a piece of scratch paper and - get this! - a...what's it called again?...oh, yes!...a pencil! (That is, if they still make them.) Get the X, Y, Z* coordinates and make an entry for each one location. While this will indubitably require some effort, it will be easier than making an entry for each of 549 zones.

Please let me know if this works. That is, if you decide to do it.

Oh, I just had another idea. You could always rely on good ol' copy-n-paste changing as little as possible if you have to go this "the bloody hard way". What I'm meaning here is that you could always name your zones "Fire01", "Fire02", etc. Then, make up the entry for the first zone, copy it once it's done, paste it and modify it to be "Fire02" using the tried and true "Replace" (Ctrl + H) method.

OTB

* Not to be confused with the Rush instrumental "YYZ".

[Max-Violence]

Actually, I was thinking of making one big-ass fire zone, and then using fire_overridezone = {} to "cut out" peices of the map where there aren't any torches.

Or, I can just nix the whole idea, and just put fire sound zones in the couple of places that have a lot of torches close to each other.

Dunno...

But right now, I have to type-up my birthday list The old folks are starting to nag me

[OnTheBounce]

Actually, I was thinking of making one big-ass fire zone, and then using fire_overridezone = {} to "cut out" peices of the map where there aren't any torches.

Not a bad idea. Let me know how it goes, please.

The old folks are starting to nag me

*ahem* I haven't nagged you yet.

I've been having fun w/ambient sound and music m'self. You can really get some good effects by carefully picking the random sounds you use, especially if you mix-n-match various files from the different types. I can't recall any place in the core campaign that the "Flies" sounds were used, but they definitely have their uses...

OTB

[Max-Violence]

definitely have their uses...

Such as near the bodies of dead actors?

Or, you could set up a trigger that goes off when a PC opens a Fridge that contains a "stinky meat platter" and plays one of the Flies .wav's.

As far as my problem goes, I decided to just make the fire sound zones in areas with lots of torches close to each other. Much less work. And, if you think about it, a single torch isn't gomma make a lot of noise.

Of course, the part I don't like about the whole Ambient Sound thing is that the sound plays when the screen is on the zone, not when a PC is in it. Poopy.

But having ambient sound in the map is pretty damn cool, provided it's done correctly.

[OnTheBounce]

Such as near the bodies of dead actors?

Yeah, that would be one. Or you can just mix 'em in with other noises in area where there's been plenty o' fightin' and killin'. :twisted:

Or, you could set up a trigger that goes off when a PC opens a Fridge that contains a "stinky meat platter" and plays one of the Flies .wav's.

That's an idea.

Of course, the part I don't like about the whole Ambient Sound thing is that the sound plays when the screen is on the zone, not when a PC is in it.

I don't know. I guess it has its ups and downs, just like anything else. What I do like about this feature is that you can assign a sound zone to some place that you want to have appear menacing and/or mysterious and when the player scrolls over to that part of the screen he/she hears those ambient sounds you've assigned to the area rather than having to wait until they've actua[/quote]

Yeah, that would be one. Or you can just mix 'em in with other noises in area where there's been plenty o' fightin' and killin'. :twisted:

Or, you could set up a trigger that goes off when a PC opens a Fridge that contains a "stinky meat platter" and plays one of the Flies .wav's.

That's an idea.

Of course, the part I don't like about the whole Ambient Sound thing is that the sound plays when the screen is on the zone, not when a PC is in it.

I don't know. I guess it has its ups and downs, just like anything else. What I do like about this feature is that you can assign a sound zone to some place that you want to have appear menacing and/or mysterious and when the player scrolls over to that part of the screen he/she hears those ambient sounds you've assigned to the area rather than having to wait until they've actually got "wam bodies on the ground" in that area to start getting creeped out.

OTB

[endocore]

Sorry I didn't visit the forum earlier since it looks like you've already made a decision, MV, and it looks like you've already explored all the ways to do what you originally wanted to do. In this case, I think the only ways the original idea would have worked would be to:

1) Make as many individual "flame" sound zones as there are torches in the map

2) Make the entire map into a gigantic "flame" sound zone and then add as many flame_overrideZones as necessary.

Sound zones are great and can really add to the immersive gameplay experience of a map, as everyone else has already mentioned. I did notice some odd behavior in sound zone operations in making my "Quagmire" map, though. There seems to be some sort of problem when more than two zones that are in some way sound zones overlap, and there seems to be a problem with contiguous zones actually having a tiny space in between them. For example, in the cannibal tribe's caves in Quagmire I had to have several sound zones for the dripping water sound that you hear inside the caves (due to their large and irregular shape), and there are a couple of spots inside the caves on the borders between the override zones that prevent the "river" sounds from playing inside the cave where the "river" sounds will briefly come on for a moment as the zone borders are crossed (even though the zones are contiguous).

It also seemed to me that the "volume" and "volumeVar" modifiers don't really work. Maybe I just didn't spend enough time playing around with them, but I tried using some different values for these modifiers in some of the sound zones and all the sounds always seemed to play at exactly the same volume.

Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but just for everybody's information I think I also ran into a problem between the interaction of the "looping" modifier with a zone that plays multiple sounds. Namely, if you set looping=true, then the first sound will play and loop indefinitely, and the remaining sounds will never get a chance to play. In my "river" sound zones in "Quagmire," for example, I wanted a continuous sound effect from a selection of several sounds, so if you look at my sound file for that map you'll see that I had to do it this way:

water_looping = {false}
water_minTime = {0}
water_maxTime = {0}

Setting minTime and maxTime to zero allowed for a seamless continuation of the random variety of sounds that were to play in the "river" sound zone.

None of that is really relevant to Max-Violence's original question, but hopefully it might in a general way help anyone else who wants to use some sound zones to spruce up their maps.


Endocore

[Max-Violence]

Aside from not being able to "batch" the sound zones, my only problem is that I can't seem to get override zones to work properly.

I've a building that is surrounded by torches on all four sides. I have the 'fire' soundzone surrounding the building and then some (I have the borders of the zone around the edges of the light entity's influence). I set the zone to a hight of 5 (the roof is accessable), and I made another soundzone inside the building called fire_quiet. fire_quiet's hieght is 2 (to encompass the inside of the room and a little of the ladder leading up to the roof).

The problem is that if the normal fire soundzone is "activated" first, the other zone never kicks in.

So, I fiddled around to make the fire_quiet zone away from the normal one, and I found that setting fire_quiet's volume to 50 did indeed work (was noticably softer than the other one, I'm guessing volumes default to 100), but when the 2nd soundzone was inside the first, the 1st 9and bigger) zone took over.

It'd be nice if we could make zones that aren't rectangles...

In theory, I could make 4 normal volume soundzones and place 'em around the building (and then make thier entries in the text file). That should work.

2 am... I do it tomorrow

[endocore]

Are you sure you had all the little formatting things right in the sound text file? If I'm understanding you properly, I did exactly what you were trying to do and it worked fine for me.

Did you just want silence (i.e. "not flamesounds") inside the building, or did you want a different sound inside the building (you made reference to "setting the volume" of the excluded area). An override zone that contains no sounds shouldn't be specified in the beginning of the sound text file, only in the appropriate overrideZone modifier (although it must also be checked "soundzone" in the level editor), while on the other hand if you have an active sound zone within another sound zone that should have worked fine for you (take a look at the "bee" sound zone that's contained withing the "woods" sound zone in my "Quagmire" map) as long as you also specified it in the overrideZone modifier for the larger zone.


Endocore


P.S. Anybody else having trouble posting to the forum? I just had a lengthy post to the "Map reviews" topic vanish into thin air for some reason (I was prompted to log in after hitting "submit" even though I was already logged in) and I'm too tired to try to rewrite the whole thing.

[Flamescreen]

It still has some bugs and occasionally they shut of to fix I think. If you don't want to get logged out automatically, check that box that says remember my login info, or something to that effect.

[Max-Violence]

This is what I want with my fire and stuff:

I want the fire noises to be normally-audible when outside the building, and quieter when inside the building. Unfortunately, the building is more of a room (as in not very big).

So, I've 2 zones: fire and fire_quiet. Both of which are defined in the sound text file's header.

I think I'm just gonna make a zone for each side of the room. That should do it.