Dynamic Soundscapes

Builds living background audio for your scenes. A soundscape mixes looping ambience, random sound effects that play every few seconds, and a soundboard you can click during play. Parts of it can switch on and off by themselves when combat starts, when night falls or when it starts raining, so the audio follows the game without you touching the playlists.

Getting Started

Dynamic Soundscapes Button

The first time you enable the module, it creates a Soundscapes folder in the Playlists tab, with a ready-made example inside: Forest Ambience (Demo).

1. Open the Playlists tab in the sidebar and click Dynamic Soundscapes (or press Shift + S).
2. In the list on the left, click Forest Ambience (Demo) to see its sounds.
3. Click the play button next to its name.

The forest ambience starts for everyone. Start a combat, or change the scene's darkness, and listen to the sounds change.

The Soundscapes Window

Dynamic Soundscapes Window

On the left is the list of your soundscapes. Click one to show it on the right. Each soundscape has three buttons:

• Mood (the letter): switch the soundscape's mood between A, B and C. Right-click to go back. See Conditions.
• Play / Stop: start or stop the soundscape. Only one soundscape plays at a time.
• + (Add Sound): add a new sound to the soundscape.

Right-click a soundscape for the usual playlist options (edit, duplicate, delete...). New Soundscape at the bottom creates a new one in the Soundscapes folder.

On the right, the sounds of the soundscape are grouped in blocks: coloured boxes that decide how their sounds play. Each sound is a tile with its name:

• Click a sound to turn it on or off. Sounds that are on have a red border; only those are played.
• Drag the small slider at the bottom of a tile to change its volume.
• Right-click a sound to edit it: name, audio file, and a Soundscape Icon to show an image on the tile instead of the speaker.
• A spinning circle on a tile means the sound is playing right now.

The ⋮ menu in the window header has Toggle Compact Mode, for a smaller window with less spacing. Shift + Click the Dynamic Soundscapes button to reset the window's position.

Creating a Soundscape

1. Click New Soundscape, type a name and confirm.
2. Click the soundscape in the list, then add sounds: click + to add one, or Right-click the soundscape -> Bulk Import Sounds to add a whole folder.
3. New sounds go into the Orphaned block (it's hidden when empty). Click an empty spot on the right side to create a new block. New blocks start in Soundboard mode.
4. Drag sounds from Orphaned into your blocks, and set each block (see below).
5. Click the sounds you want to hear to turn them on, and press play.

You have created your first soundscape!

Blocks

Block Configuration

Blocks are containers for sounds. Drag a block by its header to reorder it, and drag sounds between blocks. The icon at the start of the header shows the block's mode, and the buttons on the right:

• Select All / Deselect All (the music notes): turn every sound of the block on or off.
• Block Configuration (the cog): open the settings of the block.
• Delete Block (the bin): Delete removes the block and moves its sounds back to Orphaned, Delete All also deletes its sounds from the soundscape.

In the Block Configuration window:

• Appearance: the block's Name, Color, and Size of its tiles (Tiny to Huge).
• Conditions: when the block plays (see Conditions).
• Mode: how the block plays its sounds:
  • Ambient: the sounds that are on play all together, on a loop. Use it for the background: wind, rain, a tavern.
  • Random: every few seconds, one of the sounds that are on plays once. Use it for occasional sounds: a wolf howling, a branch cracking. Play every (seconds) sets how often, and Variance how much that time changes each time (the hint below shows the resulting range, e.g. "every 7 - 22 seconds").
  • Soundboard: sounds can't be turned on; clicking a sound plays it once. Use it for effects you trigger yourself: a door slam, a scream. It only works while the soundscape is playing.

Click Update Block to save.

Playing a Soundscape

When a soundscape is stopped, none of its sounds play.

When it's playing:

• the sounds that are on in Ambient blocks loop,
• Random blocks play one of their sounds at the set interval,
• clicking a sound in a Soundboard block plays it.

Changes take effect immediately: turn a sound on or off, or change its volume, and you hear the result right away.

You can also start a soundscape from the Playlists tab, with the normal play button of the playlist, or by setting it as a scene's playlist.

Conditions

Conditions make a block play only in some situations. A block whose conditions are not met shows a crossed-out speaker icon in its header and stays silent; when the situation changes, it starts playing on its own.

In Block Configuration -> Conditions, add one or more conditions and choose the Condition Requirement: All Must Be True, At Least One Must Be True or All Must Be False.

• In Combat / Not In Combat: whether a combat has started.
• Day (Darkness Level < 0.5) / Night (Darkness Level > 0.5): based on the darkness of the active scene.
• Mood A / Mood B / Mood C: the soundscape's current mood, which you switch by hand with the mood button. Moods let you prepare variations, for example calm, storm and camp, and change them with one click. A new soundscape is in Mood A.
• Weather: the weather effect of the scene (Autumn Leaves, Rain, Rain Storm, Fog, Snow, Blizzard). If the FXMaster module is active, its weather effects are listed too.

In the demo soundscape, Storm plays only in Mood B, Camp in Mood C, Combat during combat, and the night and day animals depending on the darkness.

Advanced

Playlist Options

The module adds two options to the Playlist Configuration window of a soundscape:

• Soundscape Layout: Flex (blocks side by side, the default) or Rows (one block per row).
• Soundscape Mood: the current mood, the same as the mood button.

API

Set the mood of the playing soundscape. These are all the same:

ui.dynamicSoundscapes.setMood("A");
ui.dynamicSoundscapes.setMood("a");
ui.dynamicSoundscapes.setMood("moodA");

Play a soundscape, by playlist ID or name. Any soundscape already playing stops:

ui.dynamicSoundscapes.setPlaylist("sZVMukj7bSQreGvF");
ui.dynamicSoundscapes.setPlaylist("Forest Ambience (Demo)");

Stop the playing soundscape:

ui.dynamicSoundscapes.setPlaylist(null);