1. I had working sound of footsteps and other sounds(e.g. stim, dying sounds of enemies e.t.c.).
2. I added a 5MB compressed(Audacity) file of ambient music to a map(Hazaard Zone).
- I'm using a deathcounter to loop it for each player.
- I played alone in Bnet and encountered the sound issue.
- My map making process is with SCMDraft2: add sound => lock with Guedit => compress with TinyMap2. Notice that compressions is done on a locked map(Otherwise I can't lock the compressed map for some reason)!
- I played around with the sound file and Audacity - figured that 16 bit mono with 8kHz sample rate and increased volume works nicely - OK quality + decent size.
- Also, I tried different options in TinyMap2. It seems that when I have less MPQ compression the sound issue is delayed, s probably I need to get rid of it completely? My last try was with MPQ compression for the big file and type 1 compression for the list and chk files. This decreases the size of the map 2-3 times(it's 4.5MB, otherwise it's as big as 12MB).

There are 4-5 other custom sounds - I added footsteps for each player, there is also healing and opening doors, others sounds seem to be taken from the default SC files.

The problem is that when I added this big file, the whole sound system crashes after 10-15min of playing. This means that sounds gradually stop working or you hear only part of the sound. An example - the end of the stim for the marine or the end of the dying sound of the infested kerrigan. Also the footsteps disappear.

I've seen that with other maps, usually where there's a lot of units/sounds(e.g. Poker for sure after 1+h of playing, The Architect also, if I'm not mistaking, Legends(or something with L) of Haean).

3. As with other maps, there is a dirty "fix" which prtially solves the problem - press cntrl + S twice - that restarts all music. Result - some short sounds start working again, but the ambient music stops and you have to wait for the next loop to begin(might be a 15 min wait! I don't like that!).

I have a couple of questions:


I'll try to work on 1. and 2. alone, first losing the compression, then trying with shorter file(e.g. not 15 min but 2 or 3). In the meantime I'd be happy to learn something from the pros, since I'm relatively new to the map making(been doing it for 1-2 months).
Cheers!

1. There is no way to stop a trigger sound in SC
2. no idea. probably not.
3. There is no known file size limit AFAIK, The Architect is like 80mb and plays fine aside from the sound issues.
5. Apparently SC accepts OGG files now, I'd look up the info on that. Other than that all I know for sure that reliably makes maps smaller is less sounds.

I've only encountered this problem since the new SC updates, maybe it's some sort of issue with the way Remastered SC handles sound? Dont take my word for it tho, maybe someone with a bit more knowledge knows something more about it.

just a technical info for now: Using 8 bit audio halfes file size, while being much less noticable than when you half the sample rate. This means you should save your sound as 8 bit 16kHz mono to improve quality. Probably can go as low as 11.025 Hz and it'll still sound better.

LOL problem solved - ogg map is 2.5MB instead of 6 Thanks for the tip, Butcher!

Otherwise I know that less sound = less size, but I've noticed that nice sound gives the map a really nice finished touch and can be the difference between a boring map and a fun/interesting one.