DED query - particle generators and attaching sounds

BAM

I made some particle fx for the DOOM plasma and BFG weapons years ago and I want to update these by adding some sounds whenever particles are initially spawned, as well as when they touch or bounce. My concern is that due to the large number of particles spawned from the generators, that assigning sounds to these will most likely be a performance issue and probably not sound very nice With that in mind, i'm hoping to discover if there are any methods or tricks would be available to limit on the number of sounds generated.

I see from the wiki that there is a "hit sound" value, which I can use to assign the necessary external sound file, but I was wondering the following:

1 - is it possible to define a degree of randomness/probability of whether or not the sound will play

2 - can a group of sounds be assigned, then one chosen at random, to give some variety?

Thanks in advance.

BAM

NiuHaka

I've been curious about this myself. I've been worried about using custom sounds for just about anything that repeats or has the possibility of playing hundreds of the same sound at once. Like subtle footstep sounds that wouldn't sound so subtle if there was a hundred monsters waking up at the same time. Particles hitting the ground is one thing i've been wanting to do too. I'm wondering if there is a limit to the number of sounds that can be played at once. I'd check myself but i'll be away from my personal computer for a while.

Vermil

Doomsday supports up to 256 sound channels; though ones sound card may not support that many (though Dday can handle if the user set's Dday's sound channels to higher than ones soundcard supports).

A sound can use more than one channel at once (back in the days of Vanilla Doom, it was literally one sound a channel), so there isn't really anyway to tell how many channels a bunch of sounds will use, other than testing it in practice (and I don't know if different sound cards will use a different number of channels to each other when given the same bunch of sounds).

If a users sound channels are overrun, Dday will attempt to prioritize certain sounds. This is controlled by the priority field in a sound def and I believe, also distance from the player.

If you don't need very fine timing for your particle sounds, consider attaching two generators to a state, one that spawns the visual FX and a second one that spawns, say, a single invisible particle the sound is attached to; that way you'll only end up with your sound playing once while still potentially throwing dozens and hundreds of particles around.

To belatedly answer the original OP's questions. I'm afraid it's no to both.

gary

Not to be off topic, but while we are talking about updating stuff, I think most custom wads can have updated textures and they can get rid of that overused Demon spitter icon of sin final boss and come up with something new? I don't like that final boss. Kind of boring. Way way too many wads use it. Odd that I have never seen anyone else on this forum complain about it.