3D Sounds

This is a short tutorial that shows how to put in a simple 3D Sound Emitter into your Age.

The subject of sounds is a very long and complex subject for Ages as we have many different types of sounds, sound effects, music, etc, etc. There are many things to consider when you want to put sounds in. For example many sounds do not have an "echo" to them, yet by using the EAX features of the plugin, if you need the sound to have an echo (because what is making the sound is in a place where it would echo) you can enable this (but it is important to remember, not everyone may have a sound card that can use EAX.

I'll be making tutorials that cover other types of sounds, triggered sounds, etc later on. For now, this one will simply cover how to put in a simple 3D sound emitter.

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Make The Emitter

You'll need a marker of some sort that represents you sound emitter (where the sound comes from). You can use either a "Dummy" or you can draw a small cube (I use cubes for this one. I use the Dummies only for avatar seek points and spawn points).

If you make a small cube, remember to not only add it to your PageInfo, but you need to add an Ignore component too so the game does not render it.

Here is a pic of my sound emitter next to a button, I've circled the emitter in purple:

Placement of the emitter is important too, as you will more than likely have a distance at which when the avatar camera is that far away or further, the sound can't be heard.

Once you have your emitter in place, call up the component manager and click on New > Audio > Sound 3D

Attach it to your emitter.

Now go over to the Utils Tab (the little hammer) and click on the Component Utils button.

As you can see, there are a LOT of settings you can mess with for you emitter. Right now we're going to concern ourselves with the areas I have circled in Red.

In the Base Sound Parameters box, click on the button under sound name. When you do this, a box will pop up that's a directory tree. Go to your "sfx" folder in your Uru game. Change the file type to ".ogg" and find the name of the sound you want to use. You also have 2 boxes you can check here if you want: Auto Start and Loop. Auto Start means the sound will start playing the moment the avatar links into the Age. If you sound is something that's not suppose to happen until the avatar does something, do not check this box. Loop means just that. A check in this box will have the sound play over and over once it's triggered.

In the box labeled "Volume" you have a slider that goes from -48db to 0db. -48db is the quietest you can make the sound, and 0db is maximum volume for the sound.

In the box labeled Catagory, you have a drop down box. Click on it to select your sound type. This is very important, as Uru has several different in game controls for adjusting volume. In my case, the sound I have is a Sound Effect, so I've picked "Sound FX"

In the Sound 3D box, we're just going to worry about Sound Falloff Distance.

These are the 2 distances in which your sound volume will be at maximum and where people will stop hearing it. "Begin" is the distance that is closest to your emitter. "Inaudible" is the distance that the sound can no longer be heard. Both values are in "Feet"

It is important to note that the values here will be measured to the default game camera. If the player is in 3rd person mode, the sound will not be as loud as when they are in first person mode. It's important to keep this in mind. If you set the "inaudible" distance to 12 feet, and the game camera is 20 feet away while in 3rd person mode, then the player will NOT hear the sound, even though the avatar may be standing right on top of the emitter.

That's all you need to do to put in a simple 3D Sound emitter.

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