ambient generic question

Ok, I just have a couple of questions about the ambient_generic entity.

1)Is there anyway to set how often a sound loops

2)What does LFO stand for?

3)What does it (LFO) do for you?

If you want a sound to loop, well, The very crude way of doing it would be with a MM and an trigger_auto.

Feel free to disregard the above if it dosent make sense, I've been sick for over a month and cant really concentrate...

oh, well my best wishes, and i hope you get better, and your right...im a noob, it doesnt make any sense :rolleyes:

/me goes in to as much detail as 1000mg of Tylenol will allow

you will need to know how to use the ambience_generic entity, the Multimanger entity (my favorite) and the trigger_auto entity.

Put a ambience_generic and give it a name and a sound to play. Click the "start silent" flag also. Put a multimanager entity and give it a name. Now click the "smartedit" button.

Click "add". 2 boxes will appear. in the top one, write the name of the ambience_generic. In the second, write 0. Click add. Now repeat the same process but instead, put the name of the MM and a value equal to the lenght of your sound (ie: 3 for 3 seconds) Now add in a trigger_auto entity. make it target the MM and put a delay of 0.5.

Hope that helps :smile:

The looping methods listed above will work, so there's no need in restating it again.

LFO - Low Frequence Oscillator
LFO is a sound synthesis acronym that means "Low frequency oscillator"

MOD means modulation. rate is the frequency (how often the effect repeats itself).

So lfomodpitch means that the low frequency oscillator is affecting the pitch of the sound. This effect is commonly called "vibrato". You're probably familiar with the difference between a singer singing with and without vibrato... That's what you would do if you set lfomodpitch. Higher numbers mean more change in the pitch -- singers use very little, whereas a police siren uses alot.

lfomodvol means that the lfo is affecting the volume of the sound. This is sometimes referred to as "tremolo" although in some musical contexts tremolo and vibrato are synonymous. This is more of a "pulse" through the sound than a wavering of pitch as above. Hopefully you get the idea.

lfotype is the shape of the waveform that is used. I assume that sqr is a square wave, tri is a triangle (or maybe sawtooth) and rnd is a sine wave. All of these have different characteristics as to how they affect the sound. sqr will jump back and forth between low and high, tri has sharp transitions, and rnd has smooth transitions. It's difficult to explain in text, but easy to hear, just experiment with it.

(from VERC Collective - http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?ent=ambient_generic )