Overview
This is a guide on how to place ambient sound and music to your maps! Make the immersion even stronger!
Introduction/What are ambient sounds?
When you play Postal 2, you probably go around chopping peoples heads off and then urinating on their corpses. But wait – do you hear that? It sounds like birds are chirping to celebrate your actions!
This my friend, is an example of an ambient sound.
What ambient sounds are basically, is they are sound files that are meant to be played in the background to give more of an immersive feeling. Like if you’re walking in the forest, you probably hear birds and stuff like that (sort of like in our example). Well the reason you hear those bird chirps in-game is because in the map there is an ambient sound player that continuously loops bird chirps, to add more atmosphere to the forest.
You can add an ambient sound of a buzzer to a factory, or a sick beat to a gang hideout. It really enhances the experience.
NOTE: In order to do this easily, keep the game asset browser open! Don’t close it out.
How do I add ambient sounds to my map?
This part is actually pretty easy! Anyone can add ambient sound to a map easily with the modified PostED editor.
Step 1: Click on the Add a special actor button on the top bar.
Step 2: In the menu that pops up, hover over Audio, and click on Ambient Sound (Single) to have only one ambient sound play with that audio projector, or click on Ambient Sound (Multiple) to set multiple ambient sounds to play through one projector/in the same place.
NOTE: For easier use, I will only be going over how to use the single ambient sound projector.
Step 3: The ambient sound icon will appear when you spawn it.
NOTE: You may want to move it to a better place, because where the icon is in the editor is where the sound will project from when the player in-game is listening to it. This means if the sounds of birds chirping are coming from under ground, you may want to move the ambient sound projector higher up in the editor.
Step 4: Right click on the ambient sound icon. In the menu that pops up, click on AmbientSound Properties (New Window)
Step 5: In the new window that pops up, click on Sound to expand the menu and show more options.
Step 6: Click on None (next to AmbientSound) and click the … button next to Clear and Use.
Step 7: In the file browser, the Ambient Sounds browser will show up in the game asset browser. Sample the sound by double clicking on them. After you choose the one you like the best, click on it once and then in the AmbientSounds Properties windows click the Use button.
Step 8: Now if everything went as planned, the sounds name that you selected will have replaced the None next to the AmbientSound (in my case it’s Sound’AmbientSounds.fart3′).
Closing
Well done! You have just added some ambient sounds to your map. Now whenever someone plays one your maps, they will be met with a symphony of greatness. Well, maybe not that (seeing as I used a sound called fart3 which is basically a repeating fart track).
To test and see if your sound is exactly how you want it, just load up your map and go to the place where you placed the sound projector!
If you have any questions about this guide, or about something to do with the editor, ask me in the comments or post on the Workshop Support forums!