FBP
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Posts: 18
Posts: 18 
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Post by FBP on Mar 2, 2015 12:05:37 GMT
Hello! First post, and thus I'd like to start by thanking you for Master Audio, a great addition and help for game audio in Unity.
I was wondering if it's possible to control send volume and fx routing through custom events, or if that is planned for the future. I guess one could do everything with snapshots, though, so maybe I still need to get used to working this way with the Unity Mixer?
Also, is it possible to define the fade curve in MA at all? It seems to roll off pretty steeply, which isn't always the best solution. Maybe a dropdown menu akin to the audio source one?
One last question: Will the process of routing MA busses to the Unity Mixer get some kind of batch/utility tool in the future? Right now, we're working on smaller games, but I'm afraid that handling thousands of sounds by hand will become a very tedious process.
Thank you and rock on!
Filippo
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Post by DarkTonic Dev on Mar 2, 2015 16:46:10 GMT
1) Control volume and routing - maybe later. Not right now. Indeed, snapshots can do everything.
2) Curves - doubtful. If you see some sort of UI control that ships with Unity 5 that controls volume like this, let me know so we can use it. Otherwise I'm afraid I don't know how to do it.
3) I don't think you'd ever have a very large number of buses. Lots of Sound Groups yes. Groups can be already be bulk assigned to buses.
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FBP
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Posts: 18
Posts: 18
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Post by FBP on Mar 2, 2015 16:53:45 GMT
Thanks for your reply!
1) yes I figured! 2) I will - so far no dice 3) You might end up with quite a few buses in a busy/complex game, I think -it depends how much control you want in the mixer (but it might become far too cluttered if you have too many channels, I guess) I didn't know you can batch assign groups to buses already, that's great!
Since I have you here already, I have two other questions..
- I am creating ambience for a larger level in a 2.5d platformer. I have, say, a "strong wind ambience" soundgroup that I want to use in two spefiic places in the level. Can I just duplicate the audio source underneath the soundgroup or is there a better way to do it? Creating an identical soundgroup seems overkill, but maybe that's the right way?
- Is adding buses to the Unity 5 mixer problematic in terms of performance? Say, if you actually routed 100 MA buses to the unity 5 mixer.
Thanks again,
Filippo
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Post by DarkTonic Dev on Mar 2, 2015 17:27:19 GMT
To bulk edit Groups, click on the "Bulk Group Changes" checkbox. Then select as many Groups as you like (checkbox next to each), then assign a bus to one of them.
There's never a need for duplicate Variations. What you do instead is increase the Weight field in the Variation from the default of 1 to whatever the maximum number of voices playing that Audio Clip should be. The Weight field is used for both random probability with multiple Variations and also to control the number of voices (which is 1 by default). This question gets asked about twice a month, so if you can think of a better label than "Weight / instances" let me know.
The number of buses shouldn't matter, it scales well. It won't be noticeably different performance than not using Master Audio and assigning 200 Audio Sources to the Unity audio mixer.
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FBP
New Member
Posts: 18
Posts: 18
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Post by FBP on Mar 2, 2015 18:13:47 GMT
Ah I see- yes, I would call it "polyphony" but that is already assigned to another parameter in MA.
However, raising the "Weight/Instances" slider gives me more of the same audiosources, but can I then manually place them in the game? Say I have two waterfalls which are very distant from each other and I want to use the same sound, maybe with just some pitch tweaking. I would need to position that sound manually in the map next to the waterfalls.
I hope I'm not asking stupid questions :X
Best and thanks again,
Filippo
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Post by DarkTonic Dev on Mar 2, 2015 22:03:53 GMT
The Audio Sources are located within SoundGroupVariation game objects under the Master Audio game object. You don't "place" Audio Sources by moving those game objects. Even if you do, they will be moved back to local position 0,0,0 when you hit play.
Instead, when you tell Master Audio to play a Sound Group, you also optionally tell it to use the position of that script's Game Object to play the sound from. Most of the time you can use the EventSounds script for all this ("Start" event for ambient sounds). You could put it on 2 different game objects and specify a certain pitch to use for each.
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FBP
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Posts: 18
Posts: 18
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Post by FBP on Mar 3, 2015 8:56:05 GMT
I see, yes it makes sense this way, although that means that I need to be able to apply the actual game object prefab and or save the scene and submit it to version control myself.
In the past, I've mostly worked within an "Audio"prefab which contained all the other audio related things, thus creating a map of ambience sound sources that would fit the game world. This prefab was all mine and no conflicts would arise. But I'll talk to the devs and let them know that I'll be adding EventSound scripts from now on as well!
Thanks again for your help,
Fbp
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Post by DarkTonic Dev on Mar 3, 2015 17:12:19 GMT
You should make a prefab of each Master Audio game object you have, so you can "apply changes". You can also make another "Ambience" prefab containing all your EventSounds scripts and whatever else. Also, you can use Copy Component / Paste Component Values from the Inspectors if you find it useful to temporarily put an Audio Source into the Scene to get the 3d settings right. Then you could paste the Audio Source values onto the Variation containing the clip you want to play. That's one way to do it.
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FBP
New Member
Posts: 18
Posts: 18
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Post by FBP on Mar 24, 2015 12:08:55 GMT
Thanks for your tips, sorry for taking longer to reply!
You wrote:
"Also, you can use Copy Component / Paste Component Values from the Inspectors if you find it useful to temporarily put an Audio Source into the Scene to get the 3d settings right. Then you could paste the Audio Source values onto the Variation containing the clip you want to play."
But wouldn't the variation snap to 0 in playmode? In fact, I am trying to set up ambiences with dynamic groups, and I am using event Start sounds for it. The sounds start, but they lose their position (all of them get spawned at 0 0 0 ).
Thanks for your continuous support,
FBP
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Post by DarkTonic Dev on Mar 24, 2015 16:17:37 GMT
You can copy component, hit stop, then paste component  It's a trick I learned. Correct that positions all get reset to 0,0,0 at play. There is no reason to set the position manually anyway. You simply tell Master Audio which game object to play the sound "at" and it will set the position of the Variation when the sound is played. This is true if you are using "Follow Caller" (the default) or "Caller position" on Event Sounds. |
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