ambient looping sounds not working for clients. soundscapes?

[poseyjmac]

im asking specifically those who are entering their hl2dm maps into the contest. we can't make custom soundscape.txt's so how do are we supposed to have looping sounds that play everywhere?

ambient_generics that have 'play everywhere' DO NOT work for clients who join the server. they work for the server, but not clients. they have to be stopped and started again for each client, which results in some terrible skipping sounds. they are not an option for ambience. so im wondering what are we supposed to do?

i have a machine next to me with another steam account that i can test stuff on. so far no one in any forum has been able to figure this out. a soundscape would be perfect, but, can't make custom ones + there is no list of default ones to use. only ones i know of are in lockdown, but my map doesn't suit shower sounds, and other stuff like that.

[Izuno]

great question. sticky until this is solved.

[Bic-B@ll]

make a brush over the entire map and make it a trigger_once with no target and make the sound play from that, then make a multithreaded multimanager target it self every x seconds (x being the lenght of the sound)

[poseyjmac]

a logic_timer would do the same thing. i tried it down to a hundreth of a second, but still you would hear a click. not acceptable. i don't think the input/output delay timer is going to be as accurate as it needs to be.

[poseyjmac]

alright. i figured out a way which involves 1 logic_auto, 2 logic_timers, 3 ambient_generics of the same sound. its pretty complicated though. all it does play a sound, then before it ends, the same sound(but different entity), starts playing. thus there is no clicking sound. sounds simple enough, but you really need all the entities i mentioned to get it working. the logic_auto is needed to create the initial gap between the 2 sound timers. the 3rd ambient_generic of the same sound is for the beginning when the first timer is still counting down.

i can make a small vmf if more than 1 person is interested.

[poseyjmac]

scratch that! merely changing the volume will make even looping sounds kick in for clients. just make a logic_timer to change the volume from x to x.01, every few seconds. and it works perfectly!

also, some of these looping sounds will NOT stop if you disable or even kill them. you have to set the volume to 0.

edit: well now its working for clients without any logic entity. i don't get it. maybe in the last update they fixed it. *confused*

[Izuno]

ok this seems like a ridiculous solution. this never was a problem in HL1 engine maps. why is this a problem in source?

i don't think you should have to go to all that trouble to play sounds on clients.

Zaphod any input on this?

[poseyjmac]

for some reason its working without any of the above for clients. maybe it was because of the update that happened around then, but i have a machine right here i can test it on

[Raeth]

also, some of these looping sounds will NOT stop if you disable or even kill them. you have to set the volume to 0.

As far as I know, adding a slight delay to the StopSound trigger will allow you to turn off looping sounds.

[Bluestrike]

Use the enties from the scripts from hl2, they work I think.

Or make youre own and give instructions how to add it to the soundscapes_manifest.txt

Or just add a soundscapes_manifest.txt to the download and ***** other custom maps what did the same

Valve should have a entity what does that automaticly imho, or have it enabeled traight from the map.

As for the contest, I made my own and gave instructions, the valve guys probely know how to add it and if not, screw me, its not like my map is that good anyway

[ReNo]

I bitched at them on the VERC forums about making the same mistake with soundscapes as they made with materials.txt in HL1, but they didn't seem to pay any attention. I just think they shoulda made the game search for soundscapes in .txt or something - doesn't sound too tricky a job to me.