Proposals/Sound/Footstep Sounds

Currently the "Footstep Sound System" supports only one sound per texture and the assignment is very inconvenient. It would be better if you could create "material groups"(e.g.wood,stone,dirt,gravel etc.) and assign several sounds to every group (four stone sounds to the stone group) via a ufo. Now you can assign multiple textures to these material groups in the same or a new ufo. Here's a example how it could look like:

// Material Group Wood 
wood {
  footsteps/wood1
  footsteps/wood2
  footsteps/wood3
  footsteps/wood4
}

// Material Group Stone 
stone {
  footsteps/stone1
  footsteps/stone2
  footsteps/stone3
  footsteps/stone4
}

// Wood Textures
wood {
  tex_buildings/floor001
  tex_ctp1/wood_b_10
  tex_misc/wood_palet
  ...
}

// Stone Textures
stone {
  tex_buildings/concrete001
  tex_buildings/concrete005
  tex_buildings/concrete007
  tex_buildings/floor_se01
  ...
}

To reduce the amount of work a function in radiant to assign textures to material groups would be also useful.

Questions

• Should we select the same sound from the group for every surfaces the texture is applied to? I mean, should the first step have the same sound as the second? Or should they be randomly picked? Or should we select the particular sounds on level start? --Mattn 12:04, 1 October 2012 (SAST)

Answer: Just randomly picked.

• What categories exactly are you thinking of? Concrete, dirt, glass, grass, gravel, leaves, metal, sand, snow, soft, stone, tiles, wood. Anything else? Or not that detailed at all? --ShipIt 07:30, 3 January 2013 (SAST)

• What about using the tex_NAME NAME-part as category? Ok, yes, we would have to reorder the textures on time. But this is a sed script and we are done. Using the NAME as category would allow us to add new textures with sound support without editing any ufo script file (which imo is the best) --Mattn 09:19, 3 January 2013 (SAST)
  • I'm a little hesitant about this. The folder system is the principle method of organization for finding and using textures in Radiant. Yes, the current organization is a mess, but where it's used properly -- alien base, misc (for signs), nature, streets -- it is a big help. Putting the alien base floor in with all the other tiles would be both annoying and encourage new mappers to mis-use them (ie - use alien textures for non-alien surfaces). --H-hour 11:58, 3 January 2013 (CET)

I agree. --ShipIt 08:43, 4 January 2013 (SAST)

• • If we go with the footstep sounds as proposed, what happens to the "bouncefraction" property? Do we keep this next to the sounds, e.g. every material group has a bouncefraction number assigned? --ShipIt 08:43, 4 January 2013 (SAST)