WalterN's ambient sound tutorial

[Max-Violence]

Adding Ambient Sound to Your Fallout Tactics Map

By WalterN

First of all you will need to be familiar with the editor, if you don't know how to make a zone or import a file, you need to put this down and pick up the editor readme file.

Next, you will need to unzip the ambient sound file. The file that you need is Fallout Tactics/core/sound_0.bos. ALthough the file extension is .bos, it is an ordinary zip file, and you can unpack it with winzip. The .mp3 and .WAV files are the ones we want, they should end up in this folder -- Fallout Tactics/core/sound/Ambient.

Now you will need an mp3 and/or wav player so that you can hear the sounds. Pick out some that you want to include in your map. For this example, I am building a cave style map, and I think it would be nice to include some squeaky bat noises in the background. So I played the ambient sound files in winamp and picked out these three -- AM_Bat01.mp3, AM_Bat02.mp3, and
AM_Bat03.mp3. Each file is slightly different recording of bat squeaks, the three of them together will make up the ambient sound set for our underground cave.

Now we are going to make a text file, similar to the AmbientExample.txt. Then we will use the editor to import our new text file into our level. Finally, we will use the editor to create a sound zone in our map.

The file AmbientExample.txt can be found in Fallout Tactics/core/editor. This file is an example of how to use ambient sounds, however the example is a bit hard to understand, so I will add a little more explanation. First, create a New Text Document, and open it up in Notepad. Create a paragraph that looks like this ...

ambientSoundTable =
{
bats,
}

this paragraph tells the game that we are planning to use a sound set called "bats".

Our second paragraph will look like this...

bats_numOfFiles = {3}
bats_file_0 = {sound/ambient/AM_Bats01.mp3}
bats_file_1 = {sound/ambient/AM_Bats02.mp3}
bats_file_2 = {sound/ambient/AM_Bats03.mp3}
bats_looping = {false}
bats_minTime = {15}
bats_maxTime = {30}
bats_zone = {bunker_sound}
bats_volumeVar = {0.5}


As you can see, each line begins with "bats_" this is the name of our sound set, it is used in a way that is similar to the way that the editor uses tag names. I will clue you in to the meaning of each line.

bats_numOfFiles = {3}

Three shall be the number of files in the set, and the number of files in the set shall be three.

bats_file_0 = {sound/ambient/AM_Bats01.mp3}
bats_file_1 = {sound/ambient/AM_Bats02.mp3}
bats_file_2 = {sound/ambient/AM_Bats03.mp3}

Our sound set has a first file, second file, and third file. These are their names, and the order in which they will play.

bats_looping = {false}

Looping means that a file plays over and over again, like a broken record. I don't like those, so let's not make our bats loopy.

bats_minTime = {15}

There should be at least 15 seonds between each sound.

bats_maxTime = {30}

There will not be more than 30 seconds between each sound.

bats_zone = {bats_sound}

bats_sound is to be the name of the sound zone that you will create in your map. The bat squeaks will only be heard inside this zone.

Now the text file is done. Start up your level editor and import the text file into your map. Create a sound zone named bats_sound. Your done, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[OnTheBounce]

Good work, Max. (Oh, and WalterN for writing it. :mrgreen: )

OTB