Just stumbled upon this a bit ago. ExploLRG, ExploMED and ExploSM are some of the few sounds in starcraft that play off-screen (distanced). I was curious to see if I could make it so other sounds could play off-screen.

I experimented with a few sound effects basically by matching their "General Properties" to what it shows in the screencap. Lo and behold, in-game the edited sound effects are played off-screen. This is handy for sound people wanting to create a atmospheric battle system in a mod.

I don't know if this is already known but I felt the need to share.

Also, you can create more varied sound effects using the Pss dialogue files of units. With some Iscript editing, I gave the Terran Marine seven different firing sounds and they work perfectly in-game. Requires a little extra work but the results are well worth it.

1) What are the exact fields and their corresponding values to allow a sound to play off-screen?

2) What do you mean by more varied sound effects? Do you mean replacing the Pss sounds with different sounds, and then playing the corresponding sound IDs through iscript?

Not 100% sure. All I know that if you look through Sfxdata.arr, a lot of the sound effects have different fields/values. I'm theorizing here, but I wager "Unknown4" deals with sounds playing off-screen as well as it's priority. ExploLRG has an "Unknown4" value of 40, ExploMED has 30 and ExploSM has 20. I've noticed that the sounds with "Unknown4 40" play louder then those with lesser values, though that could just be the volume of the actual sound file. Mere speculation.

The values are like what is shown in the screenshot I posted.

EDIT: I think I'm right. The Comsat scan sound has an Unknown4 value of 50, I dialed it down to 30 and it plays much quieter in-game. Same with the nuke.

Yeah, that's what I meant. The Marine only uses one firing sound, but using the Pss dialogue files and having them play via Iscript edits you can add more. "Unknown2" is somehow related to dialogue files, all dialogue files have an "Unknown2" value of 34.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 13 2014, 5:37 am by Pandut.

Unknown2 may have something to do with global sound playing. Ex. A Marine always plays its Yes sounds at a certain volume.

May also have to do with the "Unit Responses" boolean value in the Sound options in-game. Further speculation is that the "Interface Volume" option in Sound may affect it.

One may also have to do with the Mute Unit Speech sound volume.