Map Ambient Sounds

[Zero Angel]

What is the best way to add ambient sounds to a map?

My original idea was to use some 'cricket' sounds, and have them play all around the player at random and preferably not-too-frequent intervals.

The first thing I tried was creating a special 'grass' ODF that played cricket sounds as its ambientSound

Code: Select all

[GameObjectClass]
geometryName = "mograss01.xsi"
classLabel = "i76building"
collisionRadius = 1.0
scrapCost = 0
scrapValue = 0
maxHealth = 1000
maxAmmo = 0
unitName = "i76building"
heatSignature = 0.1
imageSignature = 1.0
radarSignature = 0.2
explosionName = "xplnxpl"
canDetect = 0
canInteract = 0
canSnipe = 0
powerCost = 0

lightingType = 1

[BuildingClass]
soundAmbient = "vsenvcrickets.wav"

However the grass pieces output no sound. (UPDATE: They do actually, the no sound was due to duplicate assets)

My second and likely better idea is to use a weaponMine that fires a 'null' ordnance with the cricket sound as it's shotSound. However, I would like the weaponMine to be visible in the editor, but invisible outside of the editor -- as well as being ignored by the AI. How would I accomplish that? Or is there a better way to do things?

[Ded10c]

FE used soundmines placed underground, BZ2 used soundcubes. Examples of both are in the respective paks.

[MrTwosheds]

Flare mines can be set up to fire off sounds every now and then, they are a high priority sound. As for being invisible, I sometimes prefer to disguise them as props, crickets sound good as grass or tree's. Rocks can be just set to use ambient sound for wind, they only play on a low priority then (usually better for ambient stuff)
Using spawn points to spawn limited life objects gives you the ability to define 2 different silence periods between firings, so the effect seems more random. eg flare mine fires a 3 seconds sound once every 10 secs with a lifespan of 24 sec's and a respawn time of 1 min. For even more random like firing you can spawn a spawn point that spawns something else. Spawn points are visible only in the editor. And of course you can give them other sounds too.
Wind blows, stops, crickets sing 3 times, dog barks once, silence for 30 seconds then repeats every minute for 3 minutes, then silence for 2 minutes...
Weapon mines are best for proximity triggered sounds really, for ambient sounds they tend to be very predictable.

[Zero Angel]

Interesting ideas MTS. I never though of using spawn points like this -- it should break the uniformity that soundAmbient on permanent map objects tends to produce. Underground sound mines seems a good idea too.

[MrTwosheds]

Sound ambient is actually best for a lot of sound types, nothing more unrealistic than a bunch of crickets breaking into song mid battle, and being louder than it. Sound ambient is fairly low in priority, so bz2 will not bother with it if there's a lot of other sounds going off, so its a matter of choosing an object type for a certain type of sound. Spawning a limited life "building" with lower priority sound for your crickets would be better than a high priority flare mine, but if you wanted an alarm sound you would want it to be a high priority.

[TheJamsh]

One great way to do it, is to use an i76building like you did, and just use a basic cube for the mesh, or whatever you want really. I created a few editor-specific meshes a while ago, basically it was just a 3D model of a speaker. You'd place the object on the map, then save it.

Now here's the fun part, you re-open the ODF file of the sound building, and replace the gemoetry with geometryName = NULL. Now when you load up the map in-game, the editor sprites/models are gone. If you need to grab/move them again or want to see where they are, re-add them back in

There are btw, a few additional flags for ambient sounds. One of them being soundAmbientDist = ### (max = 250 i believe). It's a good way to specify a cut-off distance for the ambient sound.

If you have the UEP - DM: River and CTF: Torlan use ambient sounds in a few places. Really adds an extra lease of life to a map!

[General BlackDragon]

Just tested it under [BuildingClass], didn't work.

Stop making up odf variables.

[Red Devil]

BZ2\Data\audio\soundcube\bane_crack.odf

[BuildingClass]
SoundAmbient = "benv09.wav"
SoundAmbientDist = 0.7

[General BlackDragon]

Nope, tried using value 50.0 and 0.25, no effect or change from either.

[TheJamsh]

0.7 makes me wonder if it's a multiplier... In Gameprefs, there is a maximum distance for audio (250.0f), which is capped at 225.0f or something (I'm guessing the 'f' means Float?)

I definitely used it in the UEP somewhere. Try opening one of those maps in the editor, finding the (invisible) sound cubes, and then digging them out of the PAK file.

[Ded10c]

Test it using values under 1.0 and see what happens.

[General BlackDragon]

I tried 0.25 to no avail.

And yes, 250.0f is the max, and f means float.