Play and Repeat a sound from a specific point.

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ID:1433793
 
Nov 30 2013, 4:39 am (Edited on Sep 10 2015, 5:54 am)
Resolved
The sound datum's offset var can now be used to specify a start time (in seconds), or to change the sound's position when using the SOUND_UPDATE flag.
Applies to:DM Language
Status: Resolved (515.1590)
This issue has been resolved.
Basically 3 variables: sound.start, sound.end, and sound.loop.

sound.start: When playing the sound, the sound starts here, and continues to loop from here. specified in bytes.

sound.end: When playing the sound, the sound ends here, and if looping, continues back from sound.start.

sound.loop: When looping a sound, the sound begins from here, allowing for the intro to be included in the sound initially. The sound will loop from sound.start when the sound reaches sound.end.

sound.start would be initialized to 1, while sound.end could be initialized to 0 (which which be considered the final byte in the sound).

sound.loop would default to sound.start if not explicitly defined.

This feature would be rather useful for projects using background music with an intro that's not supposed to play upon loop.
Dec 7 2013, 8:52 am
+
Dec 7 2013, 10:01 am
+++++
Jul 19 2014, 4:54 am
I'm gonna bump this again.
Jul 20 2014, 6:17 am
This would be really nice, but I'm not entirely sure it's doable, because of licensing issues. BYOND uses a very specific version of FMOD, and it's not possible to change that because the newer FMOD licenses aren't compatible with BYOND's licensing/code setup.

tl;dr if Tom/Lummox want to change anything related to audio, there's a huge amount of work that has to go into it.
Jul 26 2014, 3:46 pm
This sort of thing comes up every now and then, but as far as I know it hasn't ever been added. Being able to loop sounds from specific points at a software level without having to cut the sound file up into smaller pieces beforehand is something FMOD is supposed to support.
Jul 29 2014, 9:36 am
You can @cloudmagic, but will take some web knowledge and some javascript.
Jul 29 2014, 6:45 pm (Edited on Jul 29 2014, 6:50 pm)
html5 makes this a cinch, by the way.

var sound = new Audio('file.ogg');

function play(snd,pos){
    snd.currentTime=pos;
    snd.play()
    };

play(sound,100);

Now if only we weren't relegated to compatibility mode I.E. ...
Jul 30 2014, 7:07 am
Since the html5 client sounds like it'll be in beta soon (provided plans don't change too much), you won't need to be.
Jul 30 2014, 7:17 am
I already got some ideas for this client :p
Jul 30 2014, 2:42 pm
Having the html5 client doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to utilise html5 at runtime. I don't see anything indicating that you can.
Jul 30 2014, 2:44 pm
Not using the executable client, no, but from what I've gathered the game developer can alter the page around their game all they want, meaning you'll be able to utilize anything you can show in the client's browser alongside the game.
Jul 30 2014, 2:44 pm
Post #12. Using javascript will allow you to interact with the html.
Sep 10 2015, 5:55 am
With BYOND moving into 509, would this be possible without browser controls or the webclient anytime soon?
Sep 10 2015, 6:21 am
This is a sampler trick that's used a lot in many sounds. A sound has an introduction to it, a looped section and an outro for smooth transitioning.

While this would be a very nice built-in feature, the best work around is to break the sample up into these individual parts. You can easily do this through most DAW setups.

The best bet is to just use different sounds in conjunction to give the best effect.
Jan 18 2019, 1:53 pm
I forgot about this Feature Request, but it's still a feature I would like to see someday.
Feb 14 2019, 6:33 am
I've been doing some work on optimising resource file sizes for a game with large numbers of players (and regular updates) and while migrating some of the sound resources back to a sampler format for file size reduction I thought of this same thing.

A lot of regularly used files might play something basic several times start to finish which is redundant encoding if we could just tell BYOND to play the sound x times.

As for the 'play from position' part, FMODEx already supports a sample accurate seek and extract/play granularity so the audio system is capable of it. (Unless I'm hideously mistaken on what sound engine BYOND is running). So you might not be able to 'play/loop from timestamp' but if you calculate the sample number when you write the sound play code you can make it play from there or play a sample range snippet.

At the least adding extra functions to the 'repeat=x' argument might give us the loop ability. Since positive numbers 1 (loop forever) and 2 (play back and forward) are already in use, it could be added as negative numbers for 'loop x times' ie 'repeat=-3' would play the sound file 3 times end to end before stopping.

A work around for someone wanting to 'start a song and play it for a long time/forever without the intro looping or it being a hideously large file' may be to get a hold of the song (or rebuild it) in a tracker/sampler format (Try OpenMPT or ReNoise) as you can in effect make a sampled file play forever after the intro by adding a loop command to the end of it.
The samples are usually in WAV (or FLAC for Impulse Tracker if you use OpenMPT and change some settings), or if you want to push it, OGG for FastTracker with OggMod, which is an FMODEx only version of sample encoding/storage.
Jan 31 2022, 2:12 pm
bump
Feb 24 2022, 7:20 pm
Working on this currently for 515.
Mar 9 2022, 2:56 am
Woo!
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