Sound Revolution

As I work more and more with C2 I get the feeling the graphics is winning most of the attention over sound in the graphics/sound battle.

Here're some point I think deserve some attention to make the sound side stronger in this everlasting battle between graphics and sound:

• "Reload all sounds" is a must. It will save tons of time and keep the event sheet cleaner. Currently after 12 sounds the first page of the event sheet looks bad. 12 lines with the same "Preload this" and "Preload that". A single "Preload all sounds" line will make everything look and feel super professional.
• I got some messages complaining about he sounds being neglected in the iOS environment. A sound can only be played when the user touches something. This is bad for game creation and from what I read can be bypassed by some sort of sound fonts. If this issue is not solved the iOS games are out of C2 reach. One can't create a space invaders where the alien explodes and a message appears "1 alien has exploded. Would you like to heat it?"
• A play button should be added next to sounds in the projects window. When I click on a sprite, for example, I do see the graphics. To hear a sound I uploaded I need to go to the directory, find the specific sound file and upload it into a media player. A simple "play" rectangle will solve this issue
• Play random sound from X. I didn't check this issue but it would be great if sound could be defined into families of their own. This way an action can be added "Play Random - Shoot" which will play a random sound from the "Shoot" family. Play Random "Explosion" - will sound a random explosion from the list the user defined as explosions
• Is there a reason for showing the ogg/wav duplication in the projects window? I don't see the same happening with the jpg/png case. If I upload a sprite named "Shell" I only see the word "Shell". I don't care much if it's a jpg a Gif or a Png. If I want to see which file format it is I simply go to the sprite editor

Ok, that's it for now. Next week I'll have an iPad2 under my control so I guess I'll have more to add.

From my looong lists people might get the impression I don't like C2. For those who get this notion I have to emphasis I love C2 and I'm very pleased with the rate of changes/enhancements/upgrades this great tool gets.

Keep up the great work!

It's not really that there's a battle and audio is losing, it's that browsers still have pretty poor audio support, so there's far less features that can be done on audio than on artwork. We're aware of many of the issues and it's been on our todo list to fix them for a while (lots to do as always).

BTW you can play sounds in the project bar by right-clicking and 'Open'. You can also play random sounds with the 'play (by name)' action, e.g. "mysound" & floor(random(10)).

Hi Ashley,

Yes, I know about the random. This is how I implemented this. I didn't know about the "Open" thing.

A sprite approach to sound/s can be a cool thing. Imagine each sound as a "Frame" in the SoundSprite. This will solve so many issues like:

• Play random "Frame" in a soundSprite
• Play next "Frame" in a soundSprite

It will introduce more sound logic into game creation. (No pun intended)

An also maybe to associate a Sprite Animation with a sound.

that way everytime we play a specific animation, the sound will also be played...

I like the sound of those ideas ^^

Ohhh... Great Idea!   I could use something like that...