HI,
I need some advice on how to handle playing an event in quick succession.
I’m building a card game and for events like drawing multiple cards, where the same event is played shortly after another, I can’t figure out a way to make it sound good.
The sound just keeps stacking on top of each other and it just gets louder, but you can’t really distinguish the individual clips anymore.
I tried stopping the previous sound with an AHDSR fadeout but it still doesn’t sound as I want it to. Adding a min delay or limiting the max allowed instances also doesn’t work because then the played sound doesn’t match the visuals anymore.
The only thing that kinda works is changing the audio clip to something that doesn’t include “sharp” (if that’s the right word) noises, which makes it sound ok-ish when played together but not on its own.
How can I solve this, what are best practices here?
I’ve learned there are a few common tools and techniques for dealing with this issue.
The most common solution is to replace large numbers of event instances playing at once with just one event instance that plays a more complex sound. In your case, that would mean that you record (or otherwise create an asset) that sounds like multiple cards being drawn in quick succession, and create an event that plays that asset. Then, whenever multiple cards are drawn, play a single instance of the “multiple cards being drawn” event instead of multiple instances of the “single card being drawn” event. This prevents the issue from occuring by preventing the circumstances in which it occurs, but may require adding additional triggers to your game’s code.
If you’d prefer to keep the individual event instances, you might want to try adding a limiter effect to the group bus your card draw event is routed into. This will allow you to reduce the loudness of multiple instances of that event playing at once, though it won’t help make the individual event instances sound more distinct from each other.
Adding a random modulator to your event’s pitch property may help make the individual instances of that event sound ore distinct and distinguishable from each other. Even a tiny amount of pitch variation can make a big difference, so setting the modulator’s value to half a semitone is usually more than enough.
Do those solutions work for your situation? If not, please let us know so that we can suggest alternatives.
I’m using multiple clips with randomized pitch now and it sounds way better. Thanks for the reply @joseph .