As the title suggests, imagine I have 2 multi-instruments:
Loop A EndingA
Loop B EndingB
The first multi-instrument is playing sequentially, so if I’m transitioning out of Loop B how can I ensure that EndingB is selected instead of Ending A? I can think of a complicated solution involving nested events and parameters but if there’s an easier one I’d welcome it gladly!
Multi instruments are not the right tool for this task. Their playlist entry selection logic is entirely internal, and cannot be influenced by outside factors, so there is no way to influence which playlist entry a multi instrument selects when triggered.
Instead, I recommend laying your instruments out along the timeline as single instruments. Doing so will allow you to create a separate transition region for each of your loops, and to have each of those transition regions target the appropriate ending instrument for its loop.
Hey Joseph thanks for your reply. Good to know about playlist logic. I think perhaps I oversimplified my example to the point where I wasn’t demonstrating what I was actually after.
Here’s a shot of some of the project:
So in this loop some of the instruments don’t change whereas others have variants, and those variants change sequentially with each pass through the loop. The variants have their own unique endings so I don’t want Loop A to end up on Ending B.
If I’m understanding correctly you’re suggesting putting Loop A and B sequentially along the timeline, and using unique transition regions for each? I like this idea but if I have multiple possible destinations (Success/Fail/Restart for example) then I have to do unique transitions for each one, right? So if I have an instrument with 3 variants and 3 possible destinations then that’s 9 transition regions & destinations I’d have to set up, unless there’s a cleverer way to connect them up?
The solution I was considering was to nest the instruments in an event, and then cycle through them using parameter changes, but that brings its own complexities.
I wonder if there’s a simpler method?
You’re understanding correctly.
That’s correct, yes. I can’t think of any cleverer ways to connect them up with less work, but there may be methods that haven’t occurred to me.
That method could work, though you would need your game’s code to control the value of the parameter, rather than the behavior being entirely internal to the FMOD Studio event.
Thanks for the feedback and advice. I wonder if there may be scope in future to open up the internal logic of the playlist to make scenarios like this a bit more straightforward? Perhaps my use case is a bit fringe, but the workarounds we’ve found to achieve the functionality I was describing are a bit awkward and limiting.
I can see how it’d be useful to have more control over a multi instrument’s selection behavior. I’ll add that to our feature and improvement tracker.
