Sound and Music

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Sound in Source can be processed in many ways. It can emit from a location in the world, have its pitch or volume altered, trigger behaviours from NPCs, and be lip synced.

Entities

• ambient_generic — this is the basic entity to play a specific sound or soundscript, including music.
• ambient_music — audio in the music layer, overriding music queued by the AI Director.
• env_soundscape — for playing background noises and ambience. (see Soundscapes)
• env_soundscape_proxy Point entity that acts like a soundscape but gets all of its sound parameters from another env_soundscape entity.
• env_soundscape_triggerable Point entity just like env_soundscape except that it works in conjunction with the trigger_soundscape entity to determine when a player hears it.
• trigger_soundscape Brush-based soundscape trigger. Does not need outputs, as it automatically triggers the soundscape specified by its Soundscape property.
• env_microphone — detects sounds.
• env_speaker — plays sounds based on a set of Response System rules.
• scripted_sentence — used to make an NPC speak an idea.
• sound_mix_layer — used to set a mix layer to a specific value.
• logic_choreographed_scene — used for conversations and other sequences. See Category:Choreography.

Articles

• Category:Sound System — how sound works in Source.
• Soundscripts — advanced sound usage in Source.
• Hammer Sound Browser — documents the Hammer user interface for browsing sounds.
• Soundscapes — background sounds and ambience.
• Sound sensitive trigger — how to trigger an event based on the loudness.
• Startup Music — one way to add music to a mod's title screen (alternatively, put it in a Menu Background Map).

AI sounds

• AI sounds are not audible to the player; they are purely an AI construction. They can be placed in-map with the ai_sound entity.

Music

• Creating your own music — composing and adding music to a mod.

Materials

To specify the set of sounds for a custom material (the noises produced in response to hits, scrapes, etc), see Material surface properties.

Notes

• To play music, use Hammer Sound Browser to search for keyword music.
• Many entities can have sounds assigned to them. For example, prop_door_rotating can be assigned sounds for opening, closing, swinging, being locked, and being unlocked. See the individual entities for details.
• To make audio files affected by the music slider, add the # character before the file path when declaring (ex "#music/HL2_song20_submix0.mp3")
• Although Source supports surround sound, audio files can only contain up to two channels. Surround effects should be either downmixed to stereo, implemented using soundscape targets or ambient_generic entities, or worked around using carefully placed scene actors.

See Also

• Category: Level Design
• Left 4 Dead Soundscripts
• Custom sounds tutorial