Hi all! I’m working on a 3D side scrolling game and I’d like to use the spatializer to only control the left to right attenuation of in-game sound effects, while leaving them audible no matter how far in front of the camera they are. So if there was an object emitting sound it would keep a constant volume level front to back (or up and down for that matter), but if the camera was moved away from that object to the left or right it would attenuate then drop off to nothing as usual. Right now my thought is to not use the spatializer but to use two parameters, one for volume and one for left to right panning. Not as clean as the spatializer could be, but is the spatializer not set up for this kind of thing?
There’s a number of different ways you could approach this. Without knowing more about your game, it’s hard to say which would be best for you - but I can at least describe some possibilities.
For example, have you considered using the spatializer effect normally, but also using a parameter to ramp the volume of an event to -oo dB if it moves off the screen? This would ensure that your events are spatialized in a way that seems consistent and exhibits verisimilitude, and would be fairly simple to impelment, while still preventing objects out of the player’s field of view from producing sound. You could even use a built-in parameter such as event cone angle so that the parameter’s value is updated automatically, though in that case you may need to adjust the automation curve different for objects at different distances.
Have you considered the possibility of positioning your event emitters on a flat vertical plane even if the in-game objects they represent are actually far in the background? In a side-scrolling game, players tend to focus on the objects they can interact with, which means the objects on the 2D plane of gameplay even if those objects are nominally in the background of a 3D environment.