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Thread: Event rain

  1. #1

    Event rain

    The idea: to create an ambience, you cast an event rain around the player (2d or 3d - depends on your implementation of game world).

    When a drop of the "event rain" event hits something, it creates a short-lived decorative object. For example, on the lava it will be a bubble or gurgling sound, on the grass it would be a cicade chirip or a butterfly flying away, on a tree it would be a leaves rustling or a bird warble... And so on.

    The thing is, you have one, centralized and easily controlled, source of all your ambient events. You can easily control the resource consumption, since all the events happen only around the player, and you are the one who controls this zone's radius!

    Plus, this could create a great, non-repetitive, dynamic ambience without the need to create a huge, complex "athmospheric" MP3s.

    What do you think about this idea of mine?

  2. #2

    Event rain

    The idea itself is pretty good. And it might even be fun to make. You'll be needing a database with sounds, that much is sure. I wonder though, is your output one mp3 with all kinds of sounds mixed together, or are you offering a complete environment with variable inputs, so I can add that to my engine?

  3. #3

    Event rain

    I wonder though, is your output one mp3 with all kinds of sounds mixed together,
    Why premix? Any decent engine could mix sounds (and you need something to fill up that 32-sound limit of OpenAL, right?). The idea was that the ambience is generated on the fly, from a bunch of short sound and visual effects scattered around randomly.

    or are you offering a complete environment with variable inputs, so I can add that to my engine?
    It's just a general idea, to implement by yourself (it's more effective that way).

    And no, I didn't mean "sounds only". The "decorative object" is more general thing, including such things as particle fountains (could be seen over lava in Quake2), smoke puffs (for dirt/desert), etc. I think, implementing a library of these should be very simple -- much simpler than trying to put these details into your levels manually, on a fixed basis.

    Also, the sound library, IMO, is better stored as a set of WAVs, not MP3s -- because the sounds would be short (generally), and there would be a whole lot of them.

  4. #4
    Legendary Member NecroDOME's Avatar
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    Event rain

    sounds almost like a particle engine...
    NecroSOFT - End of line -

  5. #5

    Event rain

    It sounds like:
    AudioEngine.GetSoundByIndex(Random(TotalSounds)).P lay;

    Did you already patended it?

  6. #6

    Event rain

    I don't understand the "idea"...

    What is so special in this?
    <a href="http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/Valgard/?utm_source=gge&amp;utm_medium=badge_game"><img border="0" alt="GGE" title="GGE" src="http://static.greatgamesexperiment.com/badge/game/valgard/gge400x56.png"></a>

  7. #7
    Legendary Member cairnswm's Avatar
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    Event rain

    The more I think of this the more I like it as a game design tool to control where ambient events occur and the resources you choose to allocate to ambient events.

    The area around the player could of course just be defined as the current visible screen instead of a radius.
    William Cairns
    My Games: http://www.cairnsgames.co.za (Currently very inactive)
    MyOnline Games: http://TheGameDeveloper.co.za (Currently very inactive)

  8. #8
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    Event rain

    I'm sort of on the same side of this concept as Dirk...

    Can you perhaps draw us a picture?
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
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  9. #9
    PGD Community Manager AthenaOfDelphi's Avatar
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    Event rain

    The idea is (as I understand it) to try and remove the need for say lengthy atmospheric soundtracks and other such stuff, by having the system piece together the effect from small inconsequential elements.

    As NecroDome points out, it is kind of like a particle engine, but more.

    Lets say you want rain... you have this engine and you tell it to spawn rain particles... when that particle hits an object, it becomes something else... lets say it hits water... the particle becomes a ripple type effect and a sound. When it hits grass, it becomes something else (maybe as Chebmaster suggested, a butterfly that flys up out of the grass and off) and a different sound.

    So instead of recording an atmospheric sound track that probably loops your program makes one on the fly based on these particles... where they are, what they hit and the events linked to them when that happens. Since this is likely to be random, the effect would be a continuously changing ambience.

    Basically, an ambience engine... a particle engine on steroids with the ability to add atmosphere as well as particle effects.

    Thats my take on it and I quite like the sound of it.
    :: AthenaOfDelphi :: My Blog :: My Software ::

  10. #10
    Legendary Member NecroDOME's Avatar
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    Event rain

    well, the cars in grand theft auto where particles. It was just a particle engine... a particle isn't a billboard, its a bunch of thing that do something the same, like rain is falling down and cars are driving. However it's a more advanced particle engine.
    NecroSOFT - End of line -

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