Overview
Audio Regions control what sounds play when a player's screen is centered on a particular area. These sounds are tied to terrain types, with unique sounds for fields, forests, hills, mountains, and oceans.
When generating a new map these regions are created automatically, but you can control the application of these zones by applying them manually or removing them entirely if you wish.
This guide covers what audio regions are, how they function, and how to work with them to create areas of ambient audio effects on your map.
How Audio Regions Work
Audio regions work by calling an audio file whenever the player's screen is centered over a particular audio region type. This allows map creators to control the ambient sound as the player moves around the map, with crashing ocean waves and seagulls near the shore, insects and wild birds in the forest, or whistling wind and hawk cries in the mountains.
Borders Between Audio Regions
If a player's screen covers the border of two or more audio regions, the audio region at the exact center of the screen will be played, with the others fading to the background. Keep this effect in mind when planning the layout of the audio regions on your map.
River Audio Overrides Audio Regions
The rushing water sound effects of a river run on a separate audio spline and will override any ambient sounds from audio regions.
This effect occurs whenever the river is shown on the player's screen, so if a specific ambient audio effect is desired, it must be located far enough from a river that it does not get overridden.
Testing Audio Regions
When working within the editor, the editor only plays real-time audio feedback for rivers, made available by turning off the Mute Audio toggle under Tools.
The sound effects for Audio Regions will not play in the editor, even with this toggle turned on.
To test your audio regions to see how they are playing, you must build and play your scenario in-game by selecting Build and Launch from the Build menu.
This will build and launch your map to test the functionality of your Audio Regions in game.
The Audio Tools
The main audio tools are located in the Object Browser under Terrain.
Clicking on Audio Region in the Scenario Tree opens the Painter tool, which contains all audio regions currently available on your map as brush options.
Using this tool, you can paint audio regions onto your map using the brushes provided.
While audio regions are automatically added to the Scenario Tree upon map creation, if any are missing or get deleted you can manually add them to the Audio Region options by dragging them from the Object Browser.
Audio files are found in the Object Browser under: Templates > Art > Scenarios > Presets > Audio
Painting Audio Regions
To paint an audio region onto your map, perform the following steps:
- Select Audio Region in the ScenarioTree to access the Painter tool.
- Using the Painter tool, adjust the settings to customize your brush. There are two brushes available that you can key independently, the top to your Left Mouse Button, and the bottom to your Right Mouse Button.
Audio Region sets the type of audio region your brush will paint. Audio regions
Shape controls the shape of your brush, either a circle or a square.
Size controls the size of your brush.
- Once you have set your brush parameters you are ready to paint the selected audio region onto your map.
