How to setup one Transition Marker with a random Destination?

I’d like to have one Transition Marker that selects from random Destinations. I’m working around this by having stacks of multiple Transition Markers, each one that goes to another Loop Region with Probability ON — but doing the manual Chance % is tedious… surely there’s got to be a better way I’m missing?

A different way I’ve done this before is to make each “region” an event, and use Multi Instruments containing the events on a timeline to play a different event each X bars. That functionally gets me to a similar place, but the view is different, since I can’t see the timeline waveform like this.

So I’d like to find out if there’s a way I can do this… basically my desired behavior is summarized as follows:

  • Playback hits the Transition Marker
  • Transition Marker has a multiple-choice Destination selector that goes to another Loop Region, preferably weighted by Chance %
  • Loop Region starts playing, until playback hits that one’s Transition Marker
    … and on it goes.

In some cases I’d also want to add other fancy stuff that isn’t possible in just a Multi Instrument container.

Is there a way to do this, tidy and simply?

No. There is no better way.

You’re not the first person to request a more streamlined and intuitive way of creating a complex logic point. I’ve added your name to the list of people interested in this feature.

2 Likes

@joseph Thank you for confirming. Even though it’s not yet possible, I feel relieved in some small way to know I’m not alone.

You can kinda… Set a conditional param for the different options and transitions for each… Then randomise the Command instrument… Weirdly I can only make it work with “increment parameter” and not “Set parameter” and there’s of course mo way of weighing the random destinations…

1 Like

Whoa, thanks for looking into this so creativity. I wonder if this is being used in a way FMOD team didn’t intend? Curious for any more context, but yeah, weighing is important and I believe it’d be broadly useful!

This video explains it a bit more in detail. Making these are a useful way for me to remember what I actually did :grin:

You have to figure out a workaround for not being able to add weights as random essentially means it can repeat the same instrument a number of times in a way that makes it appear non-random… randomness is weird that way…

I’ve combined it with additional instruments that use probabilities and that way it’s less chance that any one instrument will repeat. It’s not an ideal solution but it works quite well in gameplay.

It does work with “Set parameter” on the Command instrument though. I’m not sure why it didn’t seem to do that at first.

Hope you find it useful!

1 Like

Ah! YES seeing it in the video is most helpful to understand how this is setup! Thanks again for sharing!

The specific features involved are being used as we intended. The specific combination is unusual, but not surprising.

If you want weighting, you could build it into the trigger conditions of the transition markers by giving some of them wider ranges than others. For example, if the parameter you’re using for randomization had a range of 0-100, and you gave your four transition markers trigger conditions of 0-10, 10-30, 30-60, and 60-100, you’d be ensuring they trigger 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% of the time, respectively.

Incidentally, you could make the design easier to maintain by not duplicating your logic points in every section of your event; instead, create a single logic point consisting of multiple transition markers and one destination marker at a specific point on the timeline, and just create a transition marker to that logic point whenever you need to use its logic.

2 Likes

Guys, please explain to me how this parameter works. I’m trying to make this system but I can’t get the same randomization feature as that in this video
Here are my Event, Parameter, and Command Instrument settings
Thank you all for your help and support :pray:


.

I’m afraid I can’t see any obvious problems from your screenshots. What trigger conditions have you set on the transition markers? And how long are their associated transition timelines?

Of course! Sometimes the obvious is too obvious. I’m not sure how transition timelines would work with that but that’s just something to try out. Thanks for the tip!

Bump on this one.

It would be really cool to see a “jump to random marker” in a future version of FMOD.

I did chop up this track for random jumps with transition regions and it works. But it gave me this abomination.

I believe this could be much cleaner if transition regions jus had a mode “to random” which lets you configure a pool of a random markers. It could use a similar UI as the Multi Instrument.
image

That would be a feature that I’d love to see.

I’ll add you to the list of people who’ve requested this feature.