Localized Sound Limit

[Soaponarope]

Is there a limit to the number of localized sounds that can be playing, or a limit to how many can be activated at once?

I have a puzzle that uses sounds to help indicate when something is turned on or off.

Once the player enters the area all the sounds should turn on since everything starts on.

Then I used switches to toggle each component individually so they can be turned off, then back on again.

All the mechanics work correctly but the problem is, the sounds don't all seem to go on at once.

Then when a switch is used to toggle the mechanics off, it actually toggles the sound on, messing up the whole sound aspect of the puzzle.

[beowuuf]

Off the phone now! Not sure mechanically how that works, but can you cheat? Can you simply play a looping ambient sound with your required noises, and change that independently of the mechanism

[Gambit37]

I've had very mixed success with localised ambient sounds, I've come to the conclusion it's buggy. There's also no way of controlling how loud or soft a given sound is, other than setting the volume using sound editing software.

You should also be aware that dungeon architecture affects sounds. Doors and walls block it (obviously), so you might need to check that you haven't got a sound behind something that it shouldn't be behind.

Also, be very careful when placing the sounds. They all have a radius of how far away they can be heard, but when localised sounds' radii start overlapping each other, very strange things happen and they seem to cause cut-outs and other weird effects.

Basically, it's broken for doing anything complex. Just use them for simple positional effects, like a fountain trickling and you should be OK.

[Soaponarope]

Well I am using this for my wind tunnel puzzle, and because I have no ability to make wind graphics to indicate when a tunnel is active, I used shooter holes and the looping wind sounds I borrowed from one of GG's example mods.

There are many different tunnels that intersect and the power of the tunnels can be increased so that they go from off, to being able to move objects and small flyers, to being able to push you around. The sounds increase and help indicate this.

An ambient sound is not desired as it won't help when your running around to each tunnel and many are on.

The sound does seem to get buggy, and it must be the radius as some sounds are placed about 3 blocks apart.

Also it would be nice if placing localized sounds in walls didn't cause errors, as often this is the best place for them I find.

Another thing, I recently just got some error that erased my entire txt. file when I saved it. It didn't give specifics as to what the error was, but the last thing I did was to add new sounds. Thankfully I had backup, so only lost a day's work, but it's disturbing it just erased everything.

After I backed it all up again, I tried to re-add the sounds, and now they work just fine. I'm not sure what caused it.

[beowuuf]

I think the problem is that placing a sound in a wall means the engine will get confused about how it is being heard?

There does seem to be rare bugs in the editor where it doesn't like something and corrupts the file (in your case erase it). Perhaps in the future this will be fixed, for now it sounds like you have the right idea - back up your work often!

[Gambit37]

OK, it sounds like you're doing a cool puzzle

I'm not really sure I can help without seeing your code. I'd need to see exactly how you're handling the sounds to offer any further input.

As for the editor trashing your files: yes, it's buggy and does this from time to time. The problem is that the editor doesn't simply modify your original text file, it writes it back out IN FULL every time you save your changes. If something goes wrong, it won't write out the whole file and can either create a partial file or a completely empty one. It's not a very good approach really.

Anyway, the editor does create a .BAK backup file each time, could you not have used that to get your work back?

Oh, one other note about sounds: If you're using WAVS that contain an embedded sustaining loop, RTC will honour that, so even if you don't specify in the editor that the sound is to loop, it will still loop when played in the dungeon! This is either a cool feature, or an annoyance depending on your point of view, and it can also cause problems with sound layering and volume problems. Personally, I remove any sustaining loops from sound effects before using them in RTC.

[Soaponarope]

*slaps head* Your right... I thought those .bak files were backups of when it was compiled since they weren't in txt. format. Well, now I know.

My sounds are specified to loop anyway, I guess the problem with this is just too much sound at once.

All my code is good, the only issue is one trigger which is set to activate 8 looping sounds at once upon entering the area. The trigger is set as a party opby, stepped upon, disable self, activate. The eight sounds are spread over a 16x7 area.

If they just all activated, everything would work fine, but it only activates a few of them.

As it is now, the puzzle works, just with the sounds timed incorrectly it's better to just remove them; but then the puzzle requires alot of trial and error, dying and reloading instead of thinking it all through before hand like I want.

[Lord_BoNes]

I'll jump in here and say "I fully agree that the sound mechanics are BUGGY".... I've managed to tame them for my random weather effects... EG: it's raining outside, you run into a cave passage and the rain sound gets fainter.

It took ME quite a bit to figure out, and not to toot my own horn here but I've been known around here for doing some pretty cool things.

[Gambit37]

I faked my rushing river using several copies of the same sound effect, but with lowered volumes. I then use triggers to switch on/off the correct volume sound depending how near/far away the player is from the river.

How did you solve yours?

[Lord_BoNes]

Ambient looping sound effects, 3 copies of each (for each of the 6 weather stages) that switch on and off depending on the weather (raining, thunder, etc.) To do the passage effect I made it check a counter at each loop, that counter is effectively the "volume control".