Trying To Get an Acoustic Space Working (Screenshots)

[LordXayd]

My goal is to draw an acoustic box whereby when you enter, you hear an ambient looping sound. A sound that cannot be heard outside the box. I found a functioning example in the RepCON HQ solar system room.

 

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b396/Devastation74/AcousticSpace_zpsec5f215a.png

 

The box around the room is the acoustic space. BUT, the Sun in the center is emitting the sound. It sounds like astral whalesong to give you that vast universe feel.

 

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b396/Devastation74/AcousticSpace2_zpsf3cbecea.png

 

• The INTObservatory is the Acoustic Space box drawn around the solar system room.
• The AMBRepconHQLP appears to be a standard ambient sound, although it is only used in this acoustic space.
• The AMBRepconHQsunLP is the overwhelming whalesong sound you hear upon crossing the acoustic space's threshold. It can only be heard once you step inside the box. This application of localized sound is what I'm trying to reproduce.

As you can see, the Sun is just a static object in the center of the room with a sound attached, but somehow it relates to the acoustic space. There's no references anywhere I can see that connect the two, although it could be that an acoustic space can simply trap all sound within, thereby not requiring a direct connection. That's logical, but apparently not all there is to it.

 

My Issue:

 

I have a casino ambience I'm attempting to isolate to a single room in a large cell. After drawing an Acoustic Space and placing a sound looped static inside it, the sound loop is not confined to the Acoustic Space. It is heard throughout the entire cell at full volume. I don't have any other looping sounds in the room, but I'll bet those would be heard if I had them. So it seems that it's not only not confining sound, it's broadcasting it.

 

• For my acoustic space, I have tried applying the sound to the acoustic space's loop instead. In that case, I can't hear the sound.
• I've also tried applying my cell's general ambience loop to the acoustic space while assigning the casino loop to my designated static inside the box. Again, it just broadcasts the sound.

There is an audio marker that surrounds the RepconHQ cell, which is something I don't have in my cell. I don't know if that's my problem. Or if it is, how it relates. I usually learn by reverse engineering, but there's some detail here that's not logical.

[TrickyVein]

What made you think that the acoustic space/volume/primitive and the reference for the sun were related in the first place?

 

As far as I can tell, the acoustic space is defined as a region with some number of sounds which can be used for an entire cell, interior, or primitive/region.

 

Any static object can make use of a sound which is user defined; these also are a certain format, 2D (I think?) and .wavs though I'm not sure - away from my home machine atm.

 

You don't need to place an object which is associated with its own collection of sounds inside of an acoustic space in order for them to play in-game. Lots of objects play sounds.

 

It sounds like (haha, no pun intended) that you are applying a looping casino interior sound to a static object which is then 'emitting' the sound in the world rather than playing in the background as if it were part of an acoustic space. So the sound isn't set up like other ambient sounds and doesn't have any attenuation/radius - so it's the same volume everywhere.

 

Why not create a new acoustic space using the casino sounds you want and then draw a primitive with that acoustic space for the part of the room in which you want it to play?

[LordXayd]

/ I thought they were related because crossing the acoustic space threshold makes the static object's sound audible.

 

/ I realize I dont need to place an acoustic space for a sound to be heard. In fact, my original plan was to draw an acoustic space with a sound loop applied to it directly, but I can't hear my sound when I do that. Tried several adjustments to the sound.

 

/ You were right about the sound's config. No settings change made any difference until I checked 2D radius. Then it behaves like a normally localized sound. If were cautious, I could place a few sound emitters in the right place and get it "kinda right" with lots of testing. But I would rather step across a threshold and instantly hear it at max volume, having done it the right way.

 

 

I'm trying to follow your advice for drawing the primitive. After having researched it, a primitive appears to be one of several cubic or spherical drawing icons along the top right of the GECK. Bethesda's guide says to "pick the appropriate one", though it doesnt say which in its example. I chose Cubic Activator and drew a space, then assigned a sound loop to it. But it loops the sound like a normal static, even if I don't walk into. It certainly isn't a perimeter for sounds.

 

But this is not exactly what you said to do. Can you give me more information? Thanks.

[TrickyVein]

Huh. You'd think it would be - what exactly did you apply to the primitive? The acoustic space or the sound itself? You should be able to define a primitive as an acoustic space and then select the " that you've created which contains the casino sound that you want.

 

Additionally, the audio marker can be used to control background music, and I believe looping interior sounds or ambient sets like what you would hear out in the wastes (buzzing flies, wind, birds, etc). But it only allows you to define a radius for the marker.

[LordXayd]

I assigned the sound loop directly to the drawn cubic activator, which I believe is the primitive itself. Without a definition for the word "primitive", I'm making an assumption that all the drawable spheres and cubes are primitives.

 

However, I think I'm proceeding on the wrong premise. I just copied in the Acoustic Space (AS) and Sun static from the Repcon cell into my cell. It worked as expected. As soon as I stepped across the AS threshold, the Sun's sound dropped from 100% to 0 instantly. Moving back and forth across the threshold confirms it.

 

I then moved the AS up by 3000 units (now nowhere the room or Sun) and retested. The AS apparently had nothing to do with it because the audio perimeter worked the same. The AS must have been some sort of visual marker to remind the dev where the sound ended. So the looping sound I want is apparently nothing but slider and radio button settings in the WAV's base ID.

 

So far, all my testing produces the typical gradual reduction in volume as move away from the sound object. And it seems that copying the Sun's audio settings does not provide me a sound dropoff perimeter. Makes no sense at all. But at least now I know better what I'm dealing with.

Edited August 2, 2013 by LordXayd

[DaemonGrin]

Why not just make a trigger box around the room and enable the sound onTriggerEnter and disable OnTriggerLeave? If I'm understanding you don't want to hear the sound unless in the room. It won't matter if the sound goes outside the room while you are in the trigger box cause once you leave it wont be playing anymore. Just a thought.

[LordXayd]

Thanks Daemon,

 

I was able to solve it by measuring the width, depth and height of the room in units and specifying the sound's min/max attenuation to be spherical centerpoint of that room. Setting the min to 995 and the max to 1000 gave me the dropoff perimeter I was looking for. Unfortunately, it's a bubble of sound, not a cube. So I've got a few edges inside the room where the sound drops off. But it's pretty darned close.

 

This is no doubt why the solar system room is a perfect cube with a circular catwalk along the center plane of the room. It's basically built so you can't go where the sound isnt. Darn the developer though that put that Acoustic Space around the room. Sent me on completely the wrong reverse engineering path.

 

And thanks to Tricky for pointing me towards the wav ID settings, which turned out to be where the magic was.

Edited August 2, 2013 by LordXayd

[TrickyVein]

Sound is confusing to me, still. It seems there are many ways to skin the cat.