I seems I can’t add automation or randomization to the “total sound” value in the scatterer sound module. Am I mistaken or is there a good reason for this?
thx, wart
You’re quite right, it’s not possible to automate or modulate the Total Sounds property of a scatterer sound module. There are three reasons for this.
The first reason is that it’s not entirely clear what changing the number of total sounds would mean. If total sounds was set to four when the sound module was triggered, and then reduced to three while it was playing, should the total number of spawned sounds be three or four? What if the fourth sound had already started playing when Total Sounds was reduced? This ambiguity is considered undesirable, and preventing this property from being changed at run-time is a way of avoiding it.
The second reason is that Studio’s automation and modulation both support floating point variables and not integers, which is to say, they only support properties that can have fractional values. Since it’s impossible to half-spawn a sound, Total Sounds is an integer, and so our current automation curves and modulators are not compatible with it. We potentially could make our automation and modulators compatible with integers, but we will only do so if we first discover a solid use-case for it.
Finally, the usual way of changing the number of sounds spawned by a scatterer sound module is by removing the cursor from the scatterer sound module’s trigger region; This causes the scatterer sound module to stop spawning new sounds. In every use-case we have considered, this method is easier to set up than automating or modulating total sounds.
If you have a project that requires or would benefit from automating or modulating this property, I recommend you contact support@fmod.com with the details of your project. We may be able to suggest a workaround or alternative way of achieving the effect you want.
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