Construct2's horrible audio controller

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  • So, after making sort of a game, I was going to add some sound. Using the free version I dont have any other choice but to be greedy with using events. But the horrible way you are forced to control audio I am lost.

    Is there any plugin, behaviour or any other hope that in a future update there will be a better function to control audio?

    I am almost forced to buy Construct, but I do not want to since I am just using Construct 2 on this game. I cant pay 79$ for making a little webgame for my friends.

    I am hoping for either another license version which hold more events thats cheaper or a plugin or something that makes it easier to control audio.

    I have really high hopes..

    Other than that, great tool!

  • 79$ is hardly expensive for tools like this. Specially with tools like this.

    Remember that the free version is meant to make you want more, but showing you the power under the hood.

    If you desperately want to keep your effort but not paying for the tool, try to limit it inside the limitations imposed by C2, working around the limitations. Who knows? You might win a free license in HB compo going on.

  • Hi,

    I don't understand what's the problem in the audio usage.

    I've used it on my own without problems and also without reading the manual because it's use for me has been very easy and untuitive.

    If you ask for an help maybe your problem could be resolved.

    However, the free edition doesn't have any particular limit on audio...

  • 79$ is hardly expensive for tools like this. Specially with tools like this.

    Remember that the free version is meant to make you want more, but showing you the power under the hood.

    If you desperately want to keep your effort but not paying for the tool, try to limit it inside the limitations imposed by C2, working around the limitations. Who knows? You might win a free license in HB compo going on.

    Yea, i agree

    79$ is dirt cheap compared to other game dev tools and considering this is still in beta and yet better than every other 2d tool i've tried i doubt you'll get more bang for your buck anywhere else

  • 79$ is dirt cheap compared to other game dev tools and considering this is still in beta and yet better than every other 2d tool i've tried i doubt you'll get more bang for your buck anywhere else

    heh...what he said.

  • MakkaOleba, could you explain exactly what you find to be a problem with the Audio object and why it's a problem in the free edition? Often you just need to add 'play' actions to existing events, so it doesn't even increase your event count.

  • ... Using the free version I dont have any other choice but to be greedy with using events ...

    MakkaOleba

    I don't understand why you "dont have any other choice but to be greedy with using events". Some pretty cool games have been made within the limitations of the free version.

    Please explain.

  • I did not mean to offend anyone, I love the software and I would use it to learn others how the process of making games actually work. And I would definitivly buy it if I was going to use it more than this time, because its really cheap if you are going to use it regulary.

    The problem I am having with the audio is how you manage your audio. I know it is easy to import sounds, it even converts it for you, and that is wonderful. But when you for example have two different playable characters, and the different characters have different sound, you need to define which sound each character should have. This you do in the character selection screen. My solution so far is to use global variables to define character properties. When there is 8-9 different sounds per character that becomes alot of events. I originally wanted to make it choose between 2-3 sounds to play when hit but could not do this, but thats for my other point.

    The tag system, its ridiculously hard to have control over. For example, if I would want a mute button in the game I would need to mute by tags. And if I want to unmute I need to do the reverse, 3 events right there, and you can only mute the last sound played or by tag definition. But coming to that later. The tag system is just hard to manage.

    I know I might be overdoing it with my game, where I have 3 different characters, random power-ups, 1 special per character and each one have 8-9 different sounds. And since I only have some graphics to fix and fix the audio on each character, I felt frustrated when I wrote the topic. Hence my semi-raged babbling of non-coherent critisism about this great software.

    I have tweaked, cheated and chopped away in every way I can to minimize the number of events I have without destroying the game. And I am fully aware that the free version is to make me want to buy the full version.

    About the playing between different sounds when the player gets hit by something. When you have three characters, each have two sounds, and each have to play them randomly when hit. I have thought long and hard on how I can do this in C2. I tried setting a global variable, randomly change it every tick or every X seconds. But then I had to change the names of the sound, and that does not work when you have three characters. I could name the sounds like this:

    Player 1: 1 and 2

    Player 2: 3 and 4

    Player 3: 5 and 6

    And when player 2 is selected only sound 3 and sound 4 would play.

    But that does not work in the long run when I need to knit in more sounds. And furthermore, it did not work when I tried it. I could also make a long detour with two or three variables and two or three events to make it work, but then again what about all the other sounds.

    Then the tag system. It works, sometimes. When I tried to make a mute button I had to make it mute every tag I had defined. But it still wouldnt mute it. Setting the volume to -100dB worked somehow but still just on the last sound played, not on the sounds that where tagged. And to figure out which sounds belong to which tags you either have to memorize it or write it down or check each sound.

    It would be much better to be able to put sounds in different groups and sub-groups. It would also be better to change the "set to muted" to "toggle mute". Making it a toggle function can save so much work.

    If I had the knowledge I would make a plugin myself, but I am only fimiliar with Javascript minus the script. (only Java).

    I have many ideas on what can be improved, but still it may be to much work for the developers and it may not even be possible since I do not know the limitations of HTML5.

    But I hope this brings some light on my idiotic rambling from before.

    I would definitivly buy the software if I was going to use it more.

    PS. Variables are not events by any means, sorry but they arent.

  • Playing random sounds: have you tried 'Play sound by name'? E.g. play sound:

    "player" & floor(random(5))

    will play one of player0, player1, player2, player3 or player4 randomly. No need for extra events.

    About the tag system: what would you propose instead? Previously Classic had a 'channels' system where you play a sound on say channel 5, then you could modify channel 5's parameters. However, some people found that confusing or limiting as well since you can only play one sound on one channel so there's no grouping. With the tag system if you play all gunfire sounds with the tag "gun", you can manipulate all the currently playing gun sounds at once using the tag "gun", whereas using the channel system it's extremely difficult to do that. So do you have any ideas what would be better than the tag system or how it could be improved?

    As for muting, which browser are you using? Different browsers have different levels of audio implementation at the moment, for example Firefox until very recently (FF11) didn't support looping. So maybe try different browsers and see if it works better. There's not much we can do about that, the browsers have audio limitations, and you'll run in to them in HTML5 regardless of what tool you're using. We've done our best to work around some of the browser limitations but unfortunately there's still some trial and error involved.

  • Well with the "tag" we can mute same tag sound however if we need to be more dynamic it does not work, Maybe adding families or some similar concept to Sounds could help.

    For example we could still tag the same Gun sounds but we could also sounds grouped in a maybe more intuitive way..

    I'm not sure it's just something I tough off while reading this Post

    one other thing would be to have a easy mute option on the sound object directly

    Update:

    I have been thinking and maybe the Sound family could be something like:

    Sound family1 creates array[x] where x is number of sounds in family

    Then it should be possible to do selection of play family1 (all sounds) or family[1] (sound number1 of sounds array)

    this would at least make it less confusing i suppose..

  • Playing random sounds: have you tried 'Play sound by name'? E.g. play sound:

    "player" & floor(random(5))

    will play one of player0, player1, player2, player3 or player4 randomly. No need for extra events.

    Wow, I did not think about that, thank you!

    About the tag system: what would you propose instead? Previously Classic had a 'channels' system where you play a sound on say channel 5, then you could modify channel 5's parameters. However, some people found that confusing or limiting as well since you can only play one sound on one channel so there's no grouping. With the tag system if you play all gunfire sounds with the tag "gun", you can manipulate all the currently playing gun sounds at once using the tag "gun", whereas using the channel system it's extremely difficult to do that. So do you have any ideas what would be better than the tag system or how it could be improved?

    No good ideas momentarily, but I think having a similar system to the layer system could help alot. That way you could have one layer for SFX and one for Background music, and possibly have tags inside each layer. something along having a main-tag or the possibility to have more than one "tag" on each sound. The ideal in my mind would be able to have groups of sounds and something similar to tags inside each group. But since I do know as much as you do on the subjects of what is do-able, and what is accepted where in what license I really do not have any more ideas on the subject.

    As for muting, which browser are you using? Different browsers have different levels of audio implementation at the moment, for example Firefox until very recently (FF11) didn't support looping. So maybe try different browsers and see if it works better. There's not much we can do about that, the browsers have audio limitations, and you'll run in to them in HTML5 regardless of what tool you're using. We've done our best to work around some of the browser limitations but unfortunately there's still some trial and error involved.

    I have tried Firefox, chrome, opera and IE8. I tried setting the sound to -40 dB which worked on the last sound played, after it played the sound. Even with tags. Muting would only mute without any tags set, and just the last sound. But the thing I find most frustrating is "toggle mute", where in the lack of an actual "toggle mute". And a "mute all sound" instead of this and that tag function is a function I think should be added.

    Thank you so much Ashley for you response, and I apolegize for my idiotic rant from before, I appreciate your work on this software!

  • MakkaOleba - how about a multi-tagging system? If you could use spaces to separate tags then you could tag sounds like "background sfx1", "background sfx2", "main gun1", "main gun2". Then you can manipulate all background sounds by the tag "background" or still one individual one by "sfx1".

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  • MakkaOleba - how about a multi-tagging system? If you could use spaces to separate tags then you could tag sounds like "background sfx1", "background sfx2", "main gun1", "main gun2". Then you can manipulate all background sounds by the tag "background" or still one individual one by "sfx1".

    That could work, I've tried your tips about random sounds and it works like a charm:) Still working on a good solution on muting.

  • MakkaOleba Have you tried looking at the example section in the arcade. I have a sound example in there. I also included a cpax file for any one to dig into.

    http://www.scirra.com/arcade/addicting-example-games/941/music-and-sound-example

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