Quake3World

AFAIK, this variable can be used to turn off ambient sounds, but how can I define a sound as ambient? I have an ambient sound in my current (WIP) map, it adds a lot to the atmosphere, but will probably be annoying and might also damage the sound trace from other players. Do I need to something to the .wav externally or should I not use a target_speaker for this?

Edit: Trying this on DM1 and DM2 doesn't seem to have any kind of effect on all the ambient sounds in those levels.

Doesnt s_ambient just disables all target_speakers? Sounds logical since all game related sounds will be triggered by either the player or are hardcoded sounds for interactive objects (doors, teleporters, etc.).

What do you mean by disabling them? Seems it doesn't do that...

Ok I looked deeper into this (without actually having a q3 copy available). First looked into the q3 source and realized that s_ambient seems not to be implemented in baseQ3.
So I tried my luck with OSP, where I was sure s_ambient is available.
And I came up with this:

OSP-Docs wrote:s_ambient <0|1> (default = 1)
0 - Disables looping ambient sounds of the current map
1 - Enables looping ambient sounds of the current map
---> Note: If this value is changed while connected, you will automatically
vid_restart to enable this option.

As it seems, s_ambient just disables all target_speakers which constantly play (respectively has spawnflag 1 (?) set).

So are you using baseQ3 while testing s_ambient? Then it shouldn't work, since it's not implemented. In mods like CPMA, OSP or even QuakeLive it should work.

Why-do-they-have-features-that-does-not-work?! Did they create the function - for modders to unlock??

Dunno, are you sure the cvar even exists in baseq3? Maybe you'll set it in your config and hence it will be recognized in the console later on.
Maybe I can make some tests tomorrow evening.

Hipshot wrote:Why-do-they-have-features-that-does-not-work?! Did they create the function - for modders to unlock??

A programmer was probably working on it, then got called to do something more urgent, then forgot and never got back to it.

Hipshot wrote:Why-do-they-have-features-that-does-not-work?!

s_ambient is not a core feature of Q3, it seems it was added by mods (OSP) later on. The Q3 source (http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=7547) has no reference to that console command unfortunately.

is the sound one that you could put as 'music' on worldspawn, or does it need the volume around the level controlled by target_speakers?

maz0r wrote:Dunno, are you sure the cvar even exists in baseq3? Maybe you'll set it in your config and hence it will be recognized in the console later on.
Maybe I can make some tests tomorrow evening.

Uh, yea I did. Damn, stupid CPMA or OSP or vanilla. This has happened before too. But how could you really know, It's not like I'm gonna check the CFG every time I wanna type something I usually don't.

4days wrote:is the sound one that you could put as 'music' on worldspawn, or does it need the volume around the level controlled by target_speakers?

Well, then I can't have the music, but it's a good idea, might do that. And, also, it might sound strange to have it everywhere since it's a bit area specific.