Maybe someone with just a wee bit more experience can help me with this one:

What I've got is a "power generator" room directly below another room in this map I'm working on. I've got all kinds of stuff going on in the generator room; beams, sparks, etc.

All of my other sounds (beams, etc) I've adjusted accordingly so that you can't hear them in the other room except the env_spark.

Trouble is, I can't figure out a way to change the volume on the env_spark (as there's no volume flag/setting for it). I really don't want the player in the room above it to hear all these sparks (about 8 of them) going on below.

My question is, is there an alternative to the env_spark that I could use in place of it so that I can control the volume?

I've tried "faking it" with an env_shooter (sprite for the visual) and an ambient_generic (for the sound) but I just can't get this looking decent enough. The other problem with this is I'd have to set a "random event" sequence with a bunch of buttons/beams. The entity count on this goes up drastically.

My question is, is there another way I can achieve this with a better visual or without an extreme number of entities? If it was one or the other I'd do this, but with 2 points against this method it's not really worth it.

I'd appreciate any ideas on this.

Thanks in advance.

-Ryandor

? posted by Cash Car Star

You could take the Gollum approach and code a new mod for your level that gives env_spark a volume flag

No, that would be far too easy.  To truly take the Gollum approach, you must combine code from at least two separate mods., one of which doesn't work and another of which is built on the old SDK 1.0 sourcebase.  You must also fill your level with so many logic entities that it looks like the fallout from a candy-truck crash.

Another solution... That works in multiplayer:

xen_plantlight. But either the generator room or the radius in which you want to hear/see sparks would have to be rather small.

Place the xen_plantlight somewhere near that area; the radius is quite small though (probably a 128-192 unit diameter) Have the xen_plantlight target the env_sparks. Then, have a trigger_auto target a env_render that sets the xen_plantlight to rendermode Solid, fx amount 0.

I had this problem back when I was working on the Resident Evil HL mod. I had a corridor in a hotel with dodgy wiring, and at random the wires would spark. Env_sparks, as with you, gave much too loud an effect for my windy map, so you heard it when you didn't want to.

My way around it was to use sprites and a sound instead, and synchronise them. Then have the random event generator from the VERC to trigger these. This way you can choose how loud you want your sound effect as you are using an ambient generic for them.

Its a very long winded method, and it was only suitable for me because I needed it for the electicity surge effect that took place in the same room. I don't personally suggest you bother, but I thought I'd mention the way I got around the problem anyway.