Ugh...syncing--emitters and sound

Discussions about Chaos mapping for the UT series.
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unrealshredder
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Ugh...syncing--emitters and sound

Post by unrealshredder »

How to??? I'm not having any luck with the sound array in the emitter OR using a scripted trigger.
MidgetMan
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Post by MidgetMan »

All i do is copy triggers and stuff off of offical maps, and then paste em into my map and edit them to suit my needs.
unrealshredder
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Post by unrealshredder »

Lol, I want to learn this stuff tho.
MidgetMan
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Post by MidgetMan »

Well then, you simply do what i did and when you look into its properties you should be able to find where it is, you should also be able to find what they put in it and what it does :P
LoQtUS
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Post by LoQtUS »

The emitter has a section in the propertys rollout that handels sound. Once this is set up properly the emitter will take care of both the visual, and audio emissions. Hence you really only need to set up one actor for your effect. Keep in mind that you may have to rebuild the map to start the effects working in the editor, You will have to make sure that the perspective prewiew window is set to actuve and set to run any effects.
The Dark Side of Chaos.
unrealshredder
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Post by unrealshredder »

Thank you, you were actually of some help unlike my friend here (I do actually know this guy). Anyway, yeah I did populate the sound array in the emitter before...I definitely knew that I didn't need to mess with the general set of sound variables that you find in most actors. I know emitters to an extent but I had never tried sound with them before. It seemed straightforward enough...however...and I'm about to look into this--I didn't rebuild a single time since I started working with this emitter. I definitely had realtime preview on and could see the effect but up until now had made absolutely no headway on the sound. I actually had no idea that emitters required or might require a full (?) rebuild.
MidgetMan
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Post by MidgetMan »

Im never helpful :cry:
I see your point on trying to learn the hard way, so you know how to do it later on and knowing EXACTLY what it does, copying wouldnt do that, well it shows that your a better mapper than me and youve only started :wink:
unrealshredder
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Post by unrealshredder »

Hmm yeah it wasn't a rebuilding issue it was more me being a moron and forgetting to enter probability values for the individual sounds...d'oh!!! I had, however, entered a prob. value for a sound to play but not each sound lol. Ok 'nother question...I am going to attempt this myself of course but maybe you could point me in the right direction for triggering damage to any player that is hit by the...okay, not an original idea but--lightning. I'm actually about to open the editor right now and take a look at this...now all I know is that I would eventually have to specify a damage type for anyone who gets too "close" to it. Now hold on a sec...that would be the easy part...well, if I got that far I could specify damage like or similar to the lightning gun? I also noticed a "trigger volume" class...but I thought I heard that was obsolete or something. Bah enough rambling I'm going to take a look...
Shadowstar
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Post by Shadowstar »

You can make emitters do just about any kind of sound you want, from having the emitter generate a constant sound, to producing a sound each time a particle is spawned, to producing sounds when a particle hits a surface, you just have to know what it is you want it to do, then set it up to do it. Experiment with an active emitter to get an idea what does what.

If you want to have a lightning bolt hit a player and do damage, there's two parts. The first part is the damage. There's a few ways you can do this, it depends on what kind of effect you want to create. The cleanest, surest way to kill a player in an instant is by using a triggered ai script with the "kill instigator" command. If you don't want to kill the player, just injure them, set the volume to damage the player (you should know how to do this). You can use this method to kill them too, if you set the damage high enough, but its not as clean and sometimes doesn't work if your volume is too small.

The second part deals with the effect and how you want to do it. If you want to kill the player when they step on a particular spot, use a trigger tied to the kill instigator ai script. Create your emitter where you want the lightning bolt to come from, and have one end of the bolt be at the trigger, with the other being at the emitter itself (I think this is on the beginning of the bolt by default). This will cause a lightning bolt to instantly kill the player that steps on that spot. If you don't want to kill them, there might be a "hurt instigator" command in the ai script (don't remember). If not, just use a damage volume. Also, if you want the effect to cover a wider area, use a damage volume. I believe we still have the ChaosEffectVolume in the code, so if you load Chaos first, you should be able to place it. This volume makes using effects like lightning bolts work great when using volumes. Set up the volume as you would any damage volume. Set it to trigger the emitter. If you're going for the instant death thing instead of damage over time, set the kill instigator's tag to the same as the emitter, so they both get triggered.

The ChaosEffectVolume will automatically spawn its emitter at the point where the player enters it. So you have to be creative here. You still want to have an emitter where you want the source of your beam to be, but just don't have it produce anything. Instead, create a new lightning bolt emitter (configured to look the way you want it) and add it to the myLevel package. Have this emitter beam's endpoint set to the actor name of the emitter you want to be the start of the beam. Then, go into the ChaosEffectVolume and tell it to spawn the emitter you added to the myLevel package when a player enters (It's in the volume properties somewhere). What this will do is spawn the emitter wherever the player enters the volume, and draw the beam between that position and the position of your dummy emitter. Although the beam is actually coming from the player, since beams are instantaneous, it looks like the lightning bolt is coming out of the spot where you have your dummy emitter and hitting the player. Experiment with this concept a bit to get the hang of it.

If you do it right, it will look pretty good. This is how I made the lightning walls in Arena2.
unrealshredder
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Post by unrealshredder »

Thank you for your reply Shadowstar. I definitely got the hang of the sounds a while ago, like I said I had just made a very careless error in forgetting to enter probabilty values for each sound to play. I am familiar with volumes too, but up until now I had only seen the ChaosEffectVolume listed in the editor and I have yet to try it. This is only the second map that I've ever taken seriously at least, and I plan on releasing it and I want it to be well, epic (no pun intended, I just caught that 3 min later) I'm still a bit overwhelmed by all the resources I have, not even including the internet. I have that Unreal Tech book, and like a lot of people I have the ECE, but I initially got pretty obsessed with it and watched a lot of the VTMs in one sitting. That proved useless because even taking notes, it was too much to take in. And my prior experience with Forge for the Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity games was also useless due to the evolution of 3D shooters. Anyway, I seriously admire all of the Chaos maps. Thanks for your help.
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