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[Daniel]

Hi everybody,

I would like to play sounds while the user adjusts the volume controls as to supply feedback on the current volume. It works great with PlayMusic and PlaySound for the music and SFX respectively but what do I do with the speech volume? Is the Talk method the only way of playing sound via the speech channel? If so, how would I call the Talk method from my "Options" window when the window is displayed in system exclusive mode? The Talk method doesn't seem to work in this mode.

Any ideas?

[Igorrr]

I am not 100% sure of this, but as far as I know all the different channels have the same attributes and behaviours only that they are attached to different objects.
With that you could use another SFX channel for the talk slider playback (when you move the slider), but still apply the values of the slider to the talk channel. Even if you could use the talk channel directly, I don't think that it would make any difference.

[Mnemonic]

I am not 100% sure of this, but as far as I know all the different channels have the same attributes and behaviours only that they are attached to different objects.

Not exactly. The speech channels are controlled independently, at least their volume is.

The solution is to embed an entity into your window (using the entity-container control) and then simply call its Talk() method with an empty text.

[Igorrr]

I am just wondering... if I set the talk channel volume to let's say 80 and the SFX volume also. Wouldn't an audio file that I am playing through either channels have the same volume?
That is why I though in the worst case you could just do that workaround with the sliders.

[Mnemonic]

I am just wondering... if I set the talk channel volume to let's say 80 and the SFX volume also. Wouldn't an audio file that I am playing through either channels have the same volume?
That is why I though in the worst case you could just do that workaround with the sliders.

Yes, you are right, I didn't understand you correctly at first (reading too fast ) sorry.

[Daniel]

Mmmm, Mnemonic presented the right way to do it while Igorrr presented the quick (and why-the-hell-didn't-I-think-of-that) way to do it. Tough choice... Well, I'll decide something now that I have two options instead of none .

Thank you both!

[Mnemonic]

My solution has one advantage: you can also interactively set the global volume and hear speech and sound effects simultaneously.

[Daniel]

Mmmm, I forgot about the global volume... If I include a global volume slider I should really play music, sfx and speech all together while moving it.

Btw (and way off topic), is there only one channel for sfx? I mean, in a scene where there is, say, a machine that makes constant noise (on top of the scene's background music), can I still play footsteps or some other sfx if the character opens/closes a door or something?

[Mnemonic]

Btw (and way off topic), is there only one channel for sfx? I mean, in a scene where there is, say, a machine that makes constant noise (on top of the scene's background music), can I still play footsteps or some other sfx if the character opens/closes a door or something?

Yes you can. There's no hardcoded limit on total sound channels playing simultaneously, you're only limited to one channel per object (actor/entity/game/item), not counting sounds played by animations.

[Daniel]

There's no hardcoded limit on total sound channels playing simultaneously, you're only limited to one channel per object (actor/entity/game/item), not counting sounds played by animations.

Nice. VERY nice, in fact! In AGS there is a total of 6 channels, and that's including the speech, music and sfx channels. One of WME's greatest advantages over AGS, in my opinion, is that almost nothing is limited in WME. In AGS almost *everything* has a limit.

[Igorrr]

Hooray for WME 

(also a reason why I decided to use WME instead of AGS!)

[Daniel]

The solution is to embed an entity into your window (using the entity-container control) and then simply call its Talk() method with an empty text.

I embedded one of my existing entities into my "Options" menu and tried the Talk method while moving the slider. Everything worked just great. Now since I didn't want the entity to be seen on the window, I set it to VISIBLE = FALSE. Well, it had indeed become invisible but, unfortunately, it had also become inaudible...

Do I have to create a transparent entity specifically for this purpose so that I'll be able to leave it with VISIBLE = TRUE and still it won't be seen on the window?

[Igorrr]

Well maybe just add it as a nice image to the window. Make it false as soon as the window closes and true when it opens.
Don't know how to solve this one.

[Mnemonic]

Do I have to create a transparent entity specifically for this purpose so that I'll be able to leave it with VISIBLE = TRUE and still it won't be seen on the window?

Yes, exactly. The entity has to be ".Active" to play sounds, so make the entity invisible (you don't have to assign it any sprite).

[Daniel]

Ok, I finished and it looks great now. It was also a good opportunity to learn how to use the entity containers, a feature I didn't touch till now. Pretty cool feature, now that I've actually seen it working. It opens a hell of a lot of cool possibilities.

Btw, is the Visible = Active thing by design? It seemed pretty weird. I mean, it's the same attribute but it is sometimes called Visible and sometimes Active. As a matter of fact, these two names have two very different meanings. The Active attribute states whether the entity is able to do things or not (like talking, for example), while the Visible attribute simply states whether the entity is visible or not. It is perfectly legitimate for an invisible entity to be able to talk (well, in the game-world, I mean... ).