I Hate Mountains Forums

Keldorn

Member

Registered: 2010-07-19

A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

Hello there,
Well making my own campaign for the last few months. (noprecinct.com is its homepage) . Yesterday I had to deal with the klaxon alarm issue that arisen just trying to have the 'music director' handle checkpoint/intro music. I was just starting to experiment with sound and found this bug and it infuriated me to no end  but I couldn't settle on having this sound glitch in my campaign.

So I came up with this,  Basically what has to be done is another 'hack' fix here. What is does is overrides the klaxon sound information for the sound emitter and mutes it. 

Put this each of your   "yourcampaign_level_sounds.txt"  file

"floodgate_klaxon"
{
    "channel"        "CHAN_STATIC"
    "volume"        "0" //muted
    "pitch"            "0"

    "soundlevel"    "SNDLVL_NONE"

    "wave"            "ambient/alarms/klaxon1.wav"
}

That will tell the sound emitter that that klaxon1.wav file has a volume of ZERO and will not be heard no longer. Try that out and see if it solves your klaxon alarm issue.

Now only hoping VALVe actually fixes the sound system in l4d1 before the next ice age. :-)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

I will sure try this tonight, the 1.2 version is terribly late but should come out this week or next week...
I'll let you know how it goes.

Keldorn

Member

Registered: 2010-07-19

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

I think it should work. Testing my own campaign in the .vpk I'm not hearing alarms sounds when burning zombies. Nor I am hearing other sound glitches.

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

I haven't tried in the VPK format yet, but so far it seems to work.
I'll update here as soon as we have a build.

CosmicD

Member

Registered: 2010-05-23

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

I don't exactly what changes it, I noticed whenever a new bsp is compiled it changes but I also noticed when you do snd_Rebuildaudiocache alot it could change for you as well...

Maybe the only thing mod makers can do is recompile the bsp so much that a non intrusive random sound will be selected.

The hack you present aint bad but it could potentially be a bit destructive if you override an important sound.

Last edited by CosmicD (2010-07-21 09:05:42)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

In my particular case, it seems to work.
I don't know anything about the issue and how it manifests itself, so other people might continue to hear random sounds, but this is as far as is goes.

Keldorn

Member

Registered: 2010-07-19

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

I don't exactly what changes it, I noticed whenever a new bsp is compiled it changes but I also noticed when you do snd_Rebuildaudiocache alot it could change for you as well...

Maybe the only thing mod makers can do is recompile the bsp so much that a non intrusive random sound will be selected.

The hack you present aint bad but it could potentially be a bit destructive if you override an important sound.

While true, I have heard other sounds playing when burning zombies.
(Take this for example)

But I think what causes it when you have an incomplete level_sounds, I didn't hear the alarm sound until I had a full level_sounds.txt copied from the official level sound txt file in the scripts folder.

I only hear the klaxon1.wav file now, and muting it solves the issue of hearing it.  My only concern about it now is the possible spike in entities this sound is creating when burning zombies. I am not sure but the game playing klaxon1.wav for each zombie death might temporarily create a sound entity near the zombie. Imagine burning 30 zombies rushing in, that could create 30 entities dynamically. Too many entities you get ed_alloc: no free edicts which crashes the game. Which might be a problem on large maps already near the limit.. Nothing we can do about that though. This is where VALVe needs to get fixing this thing.

Also about messing up important sounds, well sounds invoked by the mapper will still work. You can still use the klaxon1.wav in your map since the ambient_generic 's  sound level takes precedence over it being muted.

Last edited by Keldorn (2010-07-22 03:22:14)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

For us it worked.
Fixed: [generic] The random alarm/klaxon sound playing when setting infected on fire should have disappeared (reported by Keldorn)

CosmicD

Member

Registered: 2010-05-23

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

oh lol now i understand, you do that only in the addon level_Sounds.txt.

I sometimes try to coach it to choose another random sound by adding and deleting bogus events from the soundscript, that sometimes seems to work too. It's especially bad when looped sounds (like flies or an alarm bell) are chosen.

EDIT: Anyway, so you first need to make a vpk to test what sound it's gonna use (because I experience that it's sometimes a different sound. Then find that in the hammer soundbrowser and give it a volume of 0 in your mapname_level_sounds.txt

I'm gonna do that for the official release of our campaign too

Last edited by CosmicD (2010-08-03 07:18:57)

Keldorn

Member

Registered: 2010-07-19

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

I would wait until they release the DLC, before setting this fix in stone and releasing IHM 1.2. This sound could change to something else, perhaps something worse. Once they release the new DLC. Or if were lucky and valve is going to surprise this update might have a fix for this and also finnaly custom hints. *hopes*

oh lol now i understand, you do that only in the addon level_Sounds.txt.

I sometimes try to coach it to choose another random sound by adding and deleting bogus events from the soundscript, that sometimes seems to work too. It's especially bad when looped sounds (like flies or an alarm bell) are chosen.

EDIT: Anyway, so you first need to make a vpk to test what sound it's gonna use (because I experience that it's sometimes a different sound. Then find that in the hammer soundbrowser and give it a volume of 0 in your mapname_level_sounds.txt

I'm gonna do that for the official release of our campaign too

Only noise I'm hearing sometimes is this  noise that sounds like air moving threw a pipe, hence the "pipe noise" I call it.

Which you can here at the beginning of this video but when killing zombies, the game places this noise near their bodies.

It seems to be caused by another custom campaign interfering with mine, called Suicide Blitz. So I have to disable Suicide Blitz in Add-Ons->Extras. If you ever figure what that noise is and witness it yourself. Post here I'd like to mute that sound.  I tried going threw the ton of sounds in the game and couldn't find it, and in console  "soundinfo"  doesn't show it. Neither does it show the klaxon sound being played in the sound emitter, but not like that alarm one was hard to find anywho.

Last edited by Keldorn (2010-08-09 03:57:09)

CosmicD

Member

Registered: 2010-05-23

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

lol, they have so many chances to update l4d , I wonder why they would fix this when the dlc is coming ?

It's my pessimistic valve view, enforced more by the fact that they are constantly updating l4d2 but not fixing essential l4d1 bugs.

I know Chet told in the mailing list that updating something related to the addons/vpk is tricky because it might break compatibility by all other vpk's.

But even if they would tell us to recompile vpk's from all campaigns in order for them to work that would be better than leaving these bugs in.

I would also hope that there's a few things we can do to control the director during a finale. Ours is going to be a rolling finale and although it's relatively easy to setup a grid of triggers and zombie spawns, but it would be cool to be able to control the director to spawn zombies ahead or ... have 3 tanks in a finale etc...

Keldorn

Member

Registered: 2010-07-19

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

lol, they have so many chances to update l4d , I wonder why they would fix this when the dlc is coming ?

It's my pessimistic valve view, enforced more by the fact that they are constantly updating l4d2 but not fixing essential l4d1 bugs.

I know Chet told in the mailing list that updating something related to the addons/vpk is tricky because it might break compatibility by all other vpk's.

But even if they would tell us to recompile vpk's from all campaigns in order for them to work that would be better than leaving these bugs in.

I would also hope that there's a few things we can do to control the director during a finale. Ours is going to be a rolling finale and although it's relatively easy to setup a grid of triggers and zombie spawns, but it would be cool to be able to control the director to spawn zombies ahead or ... have 3 tanks in a finale etc...

Well a programmer can do anything in software. Their only limitation is their own skill and lazyness. I guess this boils down to how many these skilled programmers Valve has and if they have time work on l4d.

Though it would be immensely nice if this dlc does have custom hints and more director control.

With the tank thing are sure you cant do that with the new crash course command that pauses the finale? Then spawn a tank after x seconds right as you know the 'real' tank is going to spawn.

Last edited by Keldorn (2010-08-09 23:15:15)

CosmicD

Member

Registered: 2010-05-23

Re: A possible fix for the flaming zombies klaxon alarm

yeah that might be a good idea. Although it would be cool that you could tell the director to do 3 finale loops instead of 2 without having to use a point.servercommand for it and cheat.. (that would be quite bad anyway)