Soundscapes Part 4 - The Manifest

[Tutorial]

category
General Half-Life 2/Sound

description
The essential soundscape manifest explained.

keywords
sounds, sound, ambient, soundscape, soundscapes, env_soundscape, scape.

After having read the last three tutorials You will be pretty familiar with the soundscape format.

Now previously you have been putting all your soundscapes in the soundscapes.txt document.

The reason for this is the engin is already defined to look in a doccy with that name, but as you can imagin it is gunna get pretty cluttered in there.

Never fear there is a way to organise your custom soundscapes so you dnt have a billion in one file. How you ask?

Using the soundscapes_manifest.txt document.

Start of by creating a blank "soundscapes_manifest" document and placing it in your scripts folder, in exactly the same way you have done previosuly with the "soundscapes.txt" docy.

Now open up the manifest in notepad.

My soundscapes namifest looks like this:

Code: Select all

soundscapes_manifest
{
   "file"      "scripts/soundscapes.txt"
        "file"          "scripts/tutorialmap_soundscapes.txt"
}

Now let me explain the code.

Code: Select all

soundscapes_manifest

This is simply the name of the manifest, you dnt need it but i like to have it there anyway.

Code: Select all

"file"      "scripts/soundscapes.txt"

"file" is defining that a txt document should be looked at.

"scripts/soundscapes.txt" And this is simply the name of the txt document.

And thats all there is to the manifest document, its as easy as that to use. This means that instead of putting all you soundscapes in the soundscapes.txt doccument you can put it in somthing like this "tutorialmap_soundscapes.txt" so you can split up your soundscapes into maps. Just make sure you define your custom files name in the manifest.

In short, the manifest is just a way to organise the clutter.

I have tested the manifest in hl2dm and hl2, unfortunatly for some reason hl2 does not read the manifest , and at this point in times its impossible to get custom soundscapes working in sp. So for the mean time you will have to make do with the pre defined ones hl2 use's. Me and Blink have shot a mail of to valve so fingers crossed they will fix it.

I hvnt tested it for cs:s but in theory it should work, wouldnt mind if some one who had cs:s could confirm.

Sigs

[slayera]

Tested and works in CS:S. Remember to use winbspzip.exe or bsp2zip.exe to write in your scripts folder or you files will be overwritten using the same file names. I have tested and comfirm this works.

Edited:

Got some new info. I played dust tonight and I only got my soundscape to play, I could not have picked worse ones to use, looping alarm and trainbell. I had my manifest, golf and sstest files and it played from both. Strange, I had the hardest time getting it work in my map, and dust takes off just fine with them, no errors or nothing. So I suggest when you switch from mapping to playing you clean out your scripts folder of any custom soundscape files, especially if you modified the manifest. By default the CS:S manifest includes the original maps.

[slayera]

Just wanted to add another tip that could be usefull to some. You can create and use several soundccapes, so long as you declare them in the manifest. You can set up different ones, like soundscape_city.txt, -water, -inside, -outside. Inside the soundscape entity you can key in from any or all soundscape_xxx.txt files. That way you have running stock of custom sounds ready to go. Just include the files you used from and add to your BSP. Could save time instead of creating custom ones for each map.

[Sauce]

I'm having a bit of a problem here, you see I have done what you said in all 4 of your tutorials and I'm using both the playlooping and the playrandom function for my soundscape, but when I load my map, only the first sound plays, and it only plays once... Here is my code

Code: Select all

"soundscapes.galleon"
{
   "dsp"   "1"
   "playlooping"
   {
      "volume"   "0.5"
      "pitch"      "100"
      "wave"      "ambient/levels/canals/windmill_wind_loop1.wav"   
      "wave"      "ambient/water/water_flow_loop1.wav"
   }   

   "playrandom"
   {
      "time"      "0.1,1.5"
      "volume"   "0.5,1.0"
      "pitch"      "50,250"
      "rndwave"
      {
         "wave"   "ambient/water/wave1.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/water/wave2.wav"
         "Wave"   "ambient/water/wave3.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/water/wave4.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/water/wave5.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/water/wave6.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/materials/creak5.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/materials/wood_creak1.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/materials/wood_creak2.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/materials/wood_creak3.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/materials/wood_creak4.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/materials/wood_creak5.wav"
         "wave"   "ambient/materials/wood_creak6.wav"
         "wave"   "npc/strider/creak1.wav"
         "wave"   "npc/strider/creak2.wav"
         "wave"   "npc/strider/creak3.wav"
         "wave"   "npc/strider/creak4.wav"
      }
   }
}

[Castor]

I read something about having cue points in your wave file.

[Blink]

Yes, if the sound isn't actually a looping file it won't continue to play.

[slayera]

I think goldwave is the freeware app that you can use to set cue points. Soundforge is another program, but it cost $.

[Sauce]

Yes, if the sound isn't actually a looping file it won't continue to play.

Well this explains why it doesnt loop, but what about all the play random ones?

[Cyberblast]

Thanks alot, I followed the tutorial and it worked, after I named the soundscape file after the map soundscapes_mapname.txt (without de_ or cs_ prefix) my only question is how do I include the soundscape with the map?
Oh and as soon as I make the soundscape manifest it won't play any soundscapes at all but the custom one(s) I put in the scripts folder. But I will stick to the big pile of soundscapes in one file as workaround.

Grtz Disekt

[aleksandr]

Ok, in one of your tutorial parts you mentioned "I will talk about positions later" and you never did. I know how to define a certain position and how to make it choose a random position but here is a question:

How do I make it choose a random position out of 2 choces? For example either position 1 or 2?
Do I just write "position" "1,2"?


P.S. This is Aleksandr btw, my first post here.

[Wolv34ine]

How can you get these to ship with your map in one map file?

[Ripper_hugme]

Use Pakrat, mate.

[Cycleswithin]

This concerns me (from the tutorial)...

I have tested the manifest in hl2dm and hl2, unfortunatly for some reason hl2 does not read the manifest , and at this point in times its impossible to get custom soundscapes working in sp. So for the mean time you will have to make do with the pre defined ones hl2 use's. Me and Blink have shot a mail of to valve so fingers crossed they will fix it.

Is this still the case?

If so, I would just have to make do with the pre-defined manifest files right? Would it still be possible to replace sounds that are pre-defined?

[ikhoma]

This concerns me (from the tutorial)...

I have tested the manifest in hl2dm and hl2, unfortunatly for some reason hl2 does not read the manifest , and at this point in times its impossible to get custom soundscapes working in sp. So for the mean time you will have to make do with the pre defined ones hl2 use's. Me and Blink have shot a mail of to valve so fingers crossed they will fix it.

Is this still the case?

If so, I would just have to make do with the pre-defined manifest files right? Would it still be possible to replace sounds that are pre-defined?

Bumping this.. i need an answere..

[kkirspel]

This concerns me (from the tutorial)...

I have tested the manifest in hl2dm and hl2, unfortunatly for some reason hl2 does not read the manifest , and at this point in times its impossible to get custom soundscapes working in sp. So for the mean time you will have to make do with the pre defined ones hl2 use's. Me and Blink have shot a mail of to valve so fingers crossed they will fix it.

Is this still the case?

If so, I would just have to make do with the pre-defined manifest files right? Would it still be possible to replace sounds that are pre-defined?

Bumping this.. i need an answere..

Likewise. Though, I thought I got this to work about a year back.
Now it just says "Failed to load sound (insert file name), file probably missing from disk/repository"
(also, I'm not too sure how effective bumping a tut is...)