Sound/Music

robschultze

How would I make a sound effect or music track play over the course of multiple scenes? I have tried a few different ways, and I have a feeling that the answer lies in the attributes which I have not fully grasped yet.

Your thoughts?

JGary321

I haven't messed around with sounds yet, so I don't know. You could just restart the sound track for each scene though I would reckon.

Toby

I just create an actor off stage with an audio behaviour in it. Seems to play throughout the game until I choose to destroy it. Make sure your audio is in .ogg vorbis format. There does not seem to be any volume controls inside gamesalad to adjust the volume so you need to do all the volume adjustments in an audio editor like Audacity. The reccommended rate for audio is 22hz. I'm not sure why .ogg is the only supported format because I get much better compression and smaller files using mp3, I'm sure there must be a good reason why?

harrio

what's cookin,

hey toby, that is a good method for continuos music throughout scenes. if it works for you rob, we should request that it be commented on in the wiki music section.

also, i'm no expert, but i think they support ogg because the other formats are proprietary and would require some sort of licensing by gamesalad to include it. so my guess is they are taking the frugal route at this time. but i'm sure the head chef can correct me if i'm wrong.

butterbean

If I choose ogg.vorbis format, does that automatically save the rate to 22khz or do I have to go in and also choose that?

I'm using a program on the MAC called Max and I'm having a hard time finding where to select 22khz as the audio output, but I did find ogg.vorbis

Toby

Butter it's usually a preference on the export dialogue. look for something along the lines of Project Rate and it should give you a range of choices 44hz 22hz. You can use 44hz instead of 22hz but you cant really tell the difference when it plays through the iPhone speakers. The lesser quality 22hz is better for a smaller file obviously.

But don't limit yourself to just .ogg you can now use AAC and M4A for your audio too. I imagine the project rate will be the same 22hz for best filesize and sound quality.

And you can control the in game audio now too with the volume attribute..

I use Audacity to do my edits, it's free and available here.... http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/mac

butterbean

Thanks Toby! Your latest game Elirium is awesome by the way

butterbean

So I went under the MAX program under preferences and encoder settings and here's what I have :

Quality: and it lists a number from -1 to 10 that you can change

and Bitrate: And it lists numbers from 48-320 so you can scroll and change either the quality or the bitrate

I have quality set at 2.20, but not sure if that is allowed, or if I should lower it?

PPenguin

Toby's method doesn't seem to work for me. I've created an actor with the "play sound" behavior, and when I add it to a scene, it plays, but only for that scene.. If I add it to the next scene, it plays there also, but the music resets.
I've also tried leaving the actor "off stage" completely, but then it doesn't play the music at all.

Toby

Hey Actswarts, you need to check 'preserve current scene' in the change scene behaviour to ensure the audio will continue to play when the next scene is called.