Re: Sounds (various ideas - long)

[Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho>]

[Tero Haatanen]

|   I think that sounds don't need any special archetypes, but just
|   build-in support in objects like faces are now.

[Raphael Quinet]

|   This would be a problem for ambient sounds, because you need to
|   know at least two things:
|   - the type of sound that should be played: "wind", "water
|     dripping", "owls"...
|   - how often the sound should be played (ambient sounds are repeated
|     at random, but some of the should be played more often)
|   These parameters have to be stored somewhere on the map. Thats why
|   I suggest adding some (invisible) objects to the map, that are
|   only playing sounds.

No, an extra attribute "sound" is needed. I think it should be made
somewhat like treasure, so that it can be "programmed".

lib/sound:
sound jessy
   hit     file=swoosh.au  vol=40              pri=2;\
           file=bang.au    vol=80              pri=1
   move    file=clank.au   vol=30              pri=9
   random  file=swear.au   vol=50  chance=.01  pri=3
   random  file=flutter.au vol=50  chance=.1   pri=3
end

sound owls
   random  file=hoohoo.au  vol=40  chance=.002 pri=3
end

sound river
   random  file=water.au   vol=30  chance=1    pri=10
end

Now the map designer can add "sound owls" to some of his trees. Note
that "river" has chance 1, meaning a continous sound, since the random
test never fails.

It might be nice to be able to change some of the sound parameters in
the individual objects, but I don't think we need further bloat in the
object structure...

|   The easiest way to have background music would be to play a (long) .au
|   file at a low level and mix it with other sound effects, because MIDI is
|   not available on all systems.  But the music files would of course take
|   a few Mb...

Also consider using ProTracker-modules -- good music for very few
bytes. I think tracker-players are more common than MIDI-players.
Especially without special hardware... DOn't know how they mix with
rplay or NAS.

|   Yes, but these proposals will only become interesting once someone starts
|   implementing them.  <grin>

Yep, can't help there :-)


Kjetil T.